Towards a Proper Relation Between Men and Women: Beyond Masculinism and Feminism

Abstract

As an early 20th-century Confucian scholar has commented, “the womanhood in a nation is the flower of the civilization, of the state of civilization in that nation” (Ku 1922, p. 74). The status and treatment enjoyed by women in a civilization are associated not only with its forms of production, ways of life, political and economic affairs, and family structure, but also with the concept of self-consciousness that has been taken for granted in that civilization. Based on a particular concept of feminine nature, a civilization’s feminine ideals provide orientation and guidance for how women should be treated by men and women’s role towards men. Confucianism, as a long-standing institution, holds a specific understanding of feminine nature quite different from that of modern Western feminism. Many people seem to think that the important distinction between Confucianism and feminism regarding women lies within Confucianism’s emphasis on the differences between women and men, whereas feminism stresses the sameness of women and men.