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Contributors address questions about gender equality in a Confucian context across a wide and varied social policy landscape, from Korea and Taiwan, where Confucian culture is deeply embedded, through China, with its transformations from Confucianism to communism and back, to the mixed cultural environments of Hong Kong and Japan.

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1. Introduction: Gender and Welfare States in East Asia; Sirin Sung and Gillian Pascall 2. Work-family Balance Issues and Policies in Korea: Towards an Egalitarian Regime?; Sirin Sung 3. Rhetoric or Reality? Peripheral Status of Women´s Bureaux in the Korean Gender Regime; Sook-Yeon Won 4. Continuity and Change: Comparing Work and Care Reconciliation of Two Generations of Women in Taiwan; Jessie Wu 5. Gender, Social Policy and Older Women with Disabilities in Rural China; Xiaoyuan Shang, Karen R. Fisher and Ping Guo 6. Confucian Welfare: A barrier to the Gender Mainstreaming of Domestic Violence Policy in Hong Kong; Lai Ching Leung 7. Emerging Culture Wars: Backlash Against ´Gender Freedom´; Kimio Ito 8. Prime Ministers´ Discourse in Japan´s Reforms since the 1980s: Traditionalization of Modernity rather than Confucianism; Emiko Ochiai and Kenichi Johshita 9. Conclusion: Confucianism or Gender Equality?; Gillian Pascall and Sirin Sung

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Sook-Yeon Won, Ewha University in Seoul, Korea Shu-yun Wu (Jessie), National Chi Nan University, Taiwan Xiaoyuan Shang, University of New South Wales, Australia Karen Fisher, University of New South Wales, Australia Guo Ping, China Research Center On Ageing (CRCA), China Leung Lai Ching, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Kimio ITO, Kyoto University, Japan Emiko Ochiai, Kyoto University, Japan Kenichi Johshita, Kyoto University, Japan

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