How Asian Gender Roles Evolved over Time Essay

Gender norms are socially constructed and thus change over time. East Asian women, from ancient times to the contemporary era. start by tracing social and ideological construction of womanhood and femininity in pre-th century East Asian contexts, and critically examine the shifts and transformations of womens gender roles. Social and ideological construction of woman has varied throughout the past century.Being in pre-19th century East Asian, women were often considered low status. The most deep-rooted ideologies where primarily sexist and originate from the confusion era. Here, the concept of filial piety was the most dominant form of ideology as it relates to woman pre 19th century. According to research conducted by Bauer and Wang, filial piety as practiced pre 19th century, was based on three core tenets (Bauer, 1992). The first tenet is that women must obey men at all times, irrespective of how if this behavior can adversely impact woman or her standing in society. Second, citizens must obey their ruler, and third, the young must obey the elderly. For thousands of years pre 19th century, these three tenets help maintained a patriarchal structure in which women where primarily subordinated to men. This led large abuses on the part of men which included purchasing and selling women as if they were objects, beating women, and even engaging in female infanticide. The most brutal of customs was that foot-binding. In Eastern Asian, women with small feet where…

Some parts of this document are missing

Click here to view full document

…feminist movement in east Asian history (Wang 1997). This movement would challenge the gender stratification of Chinese society in a much public fashion. By 1949 the movement had become much more robust. This would eventually lead to the new government of the Peoples Republic of China to make a legally documented commitment towards the equality of both men and women in society. The law established in 1949 would essentially abolish many of the elements within the feudal system and allow women to enjoy equal rights and privileges of men in society. This would eventually lead to a transformation of gender roles in which women where able to enter the work force, obtain higher education levels, and ultimately compete with their…