Up till now, many of our classmates have already presented on their respective topics and providing interesting insights towards their perspectives. After sitting through these presentations, I have gained valuable knowledge and information regarding the various subjects and I feel that my classmates have really done a great job.

I would like to specifically talk about what the student presenters have presented for the topic on the dichotomy between the East and the West which has interest me a lot. One of the student presenters talked about the difference in ideologies, which he thinks is one of the factors that can account for the differences and similarities between the East and the West. Personally, I feel that this is a very evident factor as people’s mindsets and viewpoints are mostly influenced by their ideologies especially when both the East and the West follow a different set of ideology – mainly Christianity for the West and Confucianism for the East.

Furthermore, the student presenter commented that these differing ideologies have lead to various dissimilar views such as gender favouritism. In my opinion, I think that this is very true as Confucian ideology has an obvious inclination towards the males and the western ideology follows equality in both genders. An example would be the male to female ratio in modern China where the gender ratio is 120:100. The reason why the Chinese wanted to have boys is because of their tradition where they feel that the male offspring would represent continuity of lineage and protection in old age and this traditional thinking is best described in the ancient “Book of Songs” (1000-700 B.C.). Also, this lack of girls in the country has lead to various societal issues which would result in 40 million Chinese men being unable to find wives due to the “scarcity” of females over the next decade. To deal with such problems, the Chinese government has launched a programme in the country’s poorest provinces where girls would be exempted from school fees so as to encourage couples to bear more female children. Besides this, couples who limit themselves to two girls would also receive a combined annual pension of about $150 for the rest of their lives and also subsidies in healthcare, housing etc.

However, personally speaking, I feel that this problem can be solved, with reference the an example of South Korea in 1992 when it had a 229 to 100 gender imbalance and this problem was solved eventually through public awareness campaigns and enforced laws on general selection.

On the other hand, for the Westerners, they uphold gender equality in their countries and they have been really successful in achieving their aim in recent years. To cite an example, it would be from a report by the U.S. Census Bureau where in 1999, the same percentage of men and women in the U.S. graduated from high school. Also, the percentage of women who completed a bachelor's degree was 23.7 percent, compared with 27.5 percent of men and while this study shows women slightly behind men in the completion of bachelor's degrees, these results demonstrate a marked improvement over the last thirty to forty years.

Thereafter, I feel that this part of the presentation on gender favouritism really grabbed my attention as both the East and West truly have a stark contrast particularly in this issue.

In all, I enjoyed the presentations given by my classmates so far and I hope everyone would keep up the good work and generate more productive discussion sessions in class.

- Tuea Jia Wen 3L2(11)

¶ 4:28 AM