“Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly with them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it.”

These words are attributed to Confucius, who lived 551-479 BC, and their sentiment still influences the lives of women and girls in China and throughout the world. In 2006, what to do with these inferior and contrary women, these givers of pleasure and life and nurture, still confounds men.

Subjugation of females, both egregious and subtle, continues to be the favored solution to male vexation. As devastating, perhaps more so, is actual denial of female existence.

Joining enlightened men who seek equality for women is Kong Dehong. A descendant of Confucius and keeper of his family’s genealogy, Mr. Dehong is for the first time in 2,500 years adding females to his honored family tree. This will be the fifth family tree update, eighty generations, and he will reveal his completed work in 2009. It is possible that three million descendants will be added, as many as 200,000 of them female.

For these newly recognized women, daily life may improve. “Even if a woman has to leave her family when she gets married to live with her husband, that does not change the fact that she is descended from Confucius,” says Kong Dehong.

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