Confuscious was not a feminist

Well before I arrived in Korea, I'd heard that Korean culture (and Asian culture generally) was quite patriarchal. And in my classes last semester many of the trainees would talk about the traditional preference for sons here. Of course, Asia isn't the only place with this bias.

But, these past couple of weeks, I heard stories that took it to another level.

One of the classes I'm teaching is Presentation Skills and the students have to give self-introductory speeches as their first assignment. More than one woman said that her parents dressed her as a boy when she was a young child because they were ashamed not to have a son and disappointed when she was born a daughter. Apparently, there's also a superstition that if you dress a girl as a boy the next baby born in the family will be an actual real live biological boy. One woman who had this experience said that adults, including teachers, used to make a game of pulling down her pants to check if she was a boy or a girl.

As recently as two generations ago, a woman who didn't give birth to a son could be kicked out of her husband's household and he'd be free to take another wife.