Confucianism and the Low Status of Korean Women

Those who had taken pains to remind me that Korean men are chauvinistic and Korean households male-dominated would be happy to know that their views have been validated by Korean studies expert Martina Deuchler.

Okay, maybe not.

But Deuchler did point out in the preface of Korean Women View From the Inner Room that Confucianism had the effect of ensuring that men were "the structurally relevant members of society" and that women were relegated to "social dependence".

But this subservience of women had not always been the case as women were, during the Koryo period (918 - 1392), largely in command of their own lives.

Deuchler wrote: "Residence patterns, inheritance rules, and social and ritual recognition provided women with a firm and independent standing in Koryo society. In fact, the high status of Koryo women indicates that Korean society during that period was structurally quite different from the society that developed later on during the Yi dynasty. The introduction of Confucianism brought about a decisive change."

"Indeed, Confucianism subordinated women to men, assigned them to stereotypic social categories - chaste woman, devoted wife, dedicated mother - and confined them spatially in the inner rooms of the house."

But despite the pervasive onslaught of Confucianism, not all social groups adhered to the doctrine to the same extent, and it is possible that Confucianism never, according to Deuchler "managed to put its roots as deeply into Korean soil as scholars have heretofore assumed".

After all, only upper class families could afford separate living quarters for men and women, and allowed their women folk to ride in sedan chairs when they go on with female servants, mainly at nights, and away from the prying eyes of men.

As Deuchler noted: "Perhaps even more important, living on the periphery of Confucian consciousness, the lower classes were only mildly indoctrinated, and they preserved older social patterns."

But how pervasive were these "older social patterns"? I get the sense that in a rigidly hierarchical society like Yi Dynasty Korea, even those living "on the periphery" aspired to move up the social ladder, or at the very least mimic upper class behavior.