FTV News on Tuesday last week published an article with the headline “New milestone for gender equality” that described how Yuqing Temple in Miaoli City changed its rules to allow female volunteers to enter its inner sanctum, an area previously only accessible to men.
Women had been prevented from entering the area due to a taboo originating from the belief that the presence of menstruating women would offend the gods.
However, women were only allowed in as workers for the traditional cleaning ahead of the Lunar New Year, while more significant tasks, such as dressing statues, are still the exclusive realm of men.
This is the change being described as a groundbreaking, progressive move by the temple.
An elderly woman who has volunteered at the temple for many years said in the FTV News report that she “feels honored” to be allowed in and “there is now more of a gender balance.”
As an educator, I have two responses to this:
First, gender equality education is not only for young people. It should also include adults.
The seeds of gender equality awareness planted by teachers have grown and borne fruit in the past few years among students from elementary school to university level, but what happens when such a student returns home and sees their grandmother, who has long been dedicated to volunteering for a temple that has denied her access to its inner sanctum because of her sex, jubilant about finally being allowed to enter it — to clean.
At the same time, their grandfather gets to dress the statues, simply because he is a man.
This surely would confuse the student.
Is the temple’s “progressive move” real gender equality, or is it a tiny concession of a patriarchal system that allows it to say it is “progressive” while its unreasonable system persists?
It is reminiscent of the rhetoric of a group that opposed homosexual marriage saying — prior to the law changing — it “would not know how to teach children” if same-sex marriages were to be legalized.
Reports such as the FTV News one confirm just how important education is.
Sexism disguised as so-called “traditional customs and taboos,” and ideas such as “women who are menstruating offend the gods” should be re-examined.
My second response is I hope the Miaoli County Government or other authorities will step in.
The “progress” the temple’s management is touting is little more than an advance from being “very discriminatory” to “discriminatory.”
As a woman, it is sad to read about the “joy” of the female volunteers.
If I were a volunteer at a temple and had been treated differently because of my sex, I imagine that my experience would have been unpleasant and I would have left, never to return.
These women have been oppressed by a patriarchal system for many years. A temple that they devoted so many years of their life to treats them as inferior, and its “kind gesture” gives them joy.
God knows how many grievances and how much these women have been through.
Such news is by no means a “milestone for gender equality.” The power structure of male superiority over women stubbornly remains.
Gender equality education should not merely be a theory taught in school; it should be implemented in every aspect of life.
Chao Nan-hsing is a junior-high school teacher.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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