Documentos CIDOB Asia; 12

The description and analysis of the social rights of women in Japan, Korea and China since the 1950s is the point of departure of this essay. Offering an overview of social changes and their effects on the lives and attitudes of women as well as those of society in general, the authors of this paper, experts in the study of gender relations, coincide in showing that in the country of the imperial democracy, the country of “Confucian governance” as well as the socialist country, the change began with a distancing and even the abolition of the previous institutions which sustained a more patriarchal society. The three give details and demonstrate that the women of East Asia have shared a position of subordination; a situation that should be changed in the face of new challenges. As the scholar, Li Xiaojiang, describes in regard to globalisation, “...I feel that for Chinese women it represents a unique historic opportunity which offers each woman more chances of overcoming the family, the society, the nation and the State to establish her own options for becoming an individual....”.

Muta Kazue; Seungsook Moon and Li Xiaojiang. Amelia Sáiz (ed.)

issn: 1696-9987 (print edition)

issn: 1697-381X (online edition)

114 pp.

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