Global Changemakers

Countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have been through a lot of changes in the past few decades. We all know that during the world wars, women started to become “more important” than before, doing the jobs that the men left behind, keeping the economy from crashing, fighting their own civilian rights and advocating gender equality. Even though the countries in the above mentioned have also been through the two world wars, fighting their own enemies with guns and fighter planes just like what we call “the western nations”, society saw no change in the state that East Asia’s women has been through for five thousand years. Unlike the women in the west, East Asia’s women couldn’t taste the victory of the two world wars, which was supposed to be their victory too.

Take China, for example.

For five thousand years, Chinese society has thought of women to be “lesser” than men, because they cannot “continued the family line and pass on the family glory”. Women was just something to be exchanged or married off, and someday they will take their husbands names and their family names will be forgotten, thus failing to carry on the line. Well, guess what? What the old Chinese value the most is “the family line” and “the family pride”, if you cannot carry on these two things, you’re totally useless! Confucius actually said in his teachings, “A woman with no knowledge is a good woman”, what kind of biased comment is that? Here’s another very famous one (not from Confucius though), commonly said during the Qing dynasty, “Women’s feet should be bound in order prevent them from leaving the premises, so the family can have ultimate control over them”, seeing the old pictures and photos or deformed feet of Chinese women whose feet had been bound tightly since the age of three, I feel very ashamed and disgusted by this particular belief and tradition of my culture (thank god it’s gone!). Since the Chinese LOVE their own culture and old teachings, these unjust thoughts will definitely be passed on for another hundred years or so. Chinese women will always be the “lesser ones”.

The traditional restrictions for women in Chinese culture have been very injustice and repressive. Nowadays, with China’s thriving economy and advancing education, women are no longer the weak ones at work. Chinese women of the 21st century are now making a breakthrough through the traditional cultural limitations and making a change to the society through their own families and work, but their efforts are held back by Chinese men and traditions. As long as the Chinese society keeps holding on to the inequality between different sexes, Chinese women will have a hard time trying to find a balancing point between women’s rights and the teachings and traditions of the past. In my opinion, the greatest challenge facing girls and women in China (and Taiwan) is that they can’t find a balance between strictly followed traditions and the modern world. The modern world encourages the promotion of women’s rights, but Chinese traditions repress the statuses of women and are sometimes strictly followed by the society. If we want to have equality and women’s rights to be legislated, China would have to educate its people to abandon these old and biased traditions, which is not an easy task.

While the west keeps making a steady progress, the concept of equality will be ever more salivating for East Asia’s women. This is the era for change, the time for East Asia’s women to stand up and say, “enough”, the decade for girls to grow up in a changing society that is finally starting to treat gender equality as a serious issue. As one of East Asia’s girls and women, beneath the high literacy rate and employment rate of women, I think that  the invisible bonds of 5000 years of inequality is still slowing or paces, fighting against our yearnings for the ultimate freedom.

Guys… you have definitely done a good job in the field of gender equality by respecting girls and women (it is partly because of your contribution that the bad traditions are going away) , but sometimes you also have to break the 5000 year old rule that have been present throughout the ages. What mom and dad say aren’t always right, what the books say aren’t always right either. No matter how hard we want to change the current situation, we also need your cooperation.

I am still searching for the love and the acknowledgement of my achievements on my grandfather’s face. I am still trying to change this world in order to make it a better place for the next generation of girls to live in, to feel loved, and to truly develop their skills and talents without restrictions. Even though I didn’t get a full taste of gender equality during my childhood, I can at least make sure that the girls of the new generation won’t feel as bad as I did.