Reconstructing Gendered Knowledge: Women’s Education and Neo-Confucian Revival during the Qianjia Period

Abstract

The revival of the Neo-Confucian thought (1736-1795) had a powerful impact on the system of knowledge and education especially regarding gender. Although women played a very significant role in transferring cultural values, literature has largely failed to point out all their roles in the educational reform of this era. Such a historiographical gap restricts our knowledge of Neo-Confucian idealism in terms of gender roles and the intellectual contribution of women. This paper tries to recreate gender knowledge as viewed through an examination of the education of women in the Qianjia era within the movement of the Neo-Confucian revival. This study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) approach, utilizing secondary sources of information from educational books, personal notes, and historical writings. Crucial observations are made with references to the fact that even though the Qianjia period simply reinforced existing gender roles, it still permitted subtle types of intellectual activities on the part of women, especially holding on to and transmitting Neo-Confucian teachings. Education of women, although restricted, became a domain of struggle and bargaining where intellectual spaces were born that conditioned slightly gendered knowledge generation. The contribution made by this study to the overall discussion where gender, education, and Confucianism meet has implications when it comes to explaining historical and modern gender interests in East Asia. The results demonstrate the difficulty of recognizing the status of women in education in the Neo-Confucian setting, and they call into question any straightforward interpretation of gendered intellectual history.