This book provides a timely discussion of gender and welfare states in the multiple contexts of the East Asian region. Gender studies scholars have theorised the differing development of welfare states, deconstructing the presumption of male breadwinner households and balancing the gendered division of labour without sidelining the unpaid work that is mostly carried out by women (e.g., domestic, reproductive, and care labour). However, as this book convincingly asserts, the discussion of gender regimes and welfare states has so far failed to extend a comparative perspective to non-western contexts beyond a generalised understanding of them as residual or sporadic welfare systems, with the implication of gender politics in these contexts as vaguely ‘traditional’.

By specifying core tradition that rules gender politics in welfare regimes in East Asia as Confucianism, the book examines ‘the extent to which Confucian values and practices of gender difference persist in the context of modern welfare states with gender equality legislation’ (historically speaking, neo-Confucianism is a more accurate term). Editors present East Asia as a fertile ground for thinking about welfare systems and gender relations because of the regional circumstance: successful economic growth in the late industrialisation process ‒ at least for a brief period ‒ and the recent institutionalisation of an extensive welfare state and gender mainstreaming in the form of Basic Livelihood Security, gender equality legislation or ministries of gender equality in each country of the region. The contributors analyze Hong Kong, Japan, People's Republic of China, South Korea and Taiwan, and most chapters arrive at similar conclusions: despite recent changes in legislation owing to multiple factors (e.g., local women's movements, global pressure through gender mainstreaming, decreasing fertility rates and an increasingly aging population), East Asian welfare states only scratch the surface of gender inequality and do not shake up the entrenched culture or conservative ideologies in politics and daily lives.

Rather than deploying ‘gender’ as a neutral criterion that legitimises East Asian welfare systems as simply different from the west, this book problematises the specific influence of Confucianism in impeding improvement of social policies for women or implementation of improved social policy in reality. Recognising women's entitlement to state support for their reproductive role and expected care labour, the book refuses to take a paternalistic or patronising approach that stigmatises women as being dependent and needing protection. The chapters use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to describe a range of social policies: Chapter 2 examines the discrepancy between a working mother's view of equal responsibility between spouses for care of children and the elderly and the reality in South Korea; Chapter 3 evinces the limited authority and human resources of gender equality officers in South Korea, which excellently reveals the difficulties of femocrats (government officials with feminist ideas and beliefs), who are distrusted by both the administration and women's advocacy organisations; Chapter 4 presents a generational comparison of working women's care responsibilities in Taiwan that demonstrates the gap between legislation and practices; Chapter 5 uncovers the particular disadvantage of older women with disabilities in rural China; Chapter 6 analyzes the challenges of implementing domestic violence policy in Hong Kong; Chapter 7 traces the conservative backlash against gender mainstreaming in Japan; and Chapter 8 investigates the Japanese government ministers’ speech on Japanese welfare as an example of conservative nationalist discourse that locates women's glory and responsibility in the domestic space.

All of the chapters, except the final one, understand Confucianism as a root cause of varied situations of gender inequality. From their perspectives, it might have been hard to find alternatives to Confucianism as the cultural culprit that produces gaps between ideals and practices, legislation and implementation, administration and activism. Tradition is too general, not regional-specific; Buddhism, Yin-Yang theory, and shamanism are fused together; Christianity, no less a stalemate for achieving gender equality in South Korea, is specific to that nation; and conservative nationalism, whether produced by anti-imperialism, modernisation, Cold War ideology or developmentalism, is not much different from the experience of the rest of the world.

But precisely because of the complexity of ‘origins’ for contemporary gender regimes in East Asian welfare states, it is insufficient to lump all the cultural or ideological sources of gender relations into Confucianism. Doing so risks reproducing an impression of the region as not-yet modern in a lineal view of historical progress where the west is located as the final destination. The book's editors and contributors are aware that tradition needs to be constantly reinvented, even in modern times, and that historical customs, including matters of gender and sexuality, are not are always maintained at the same level of prominence, but rather are contingently evoked or received, depending on the flux of political and economic situations. In this context, it is worthwhile to pay full attention to the final chapter's doubts about the unifying conclusion of Confucianism. The chapter does not justify Japan's gender/welfare regimes as a weaker case of Confucian style; rather, it reveals how Confucianism is not always salient in explaining East Asian gender/welfare regimes. The chapter also shows the intertwined relationship between west and non-west ‒ here, East Asia ‒ through the irony of Japanese conservative nationalism. It evokes Japanese tradition from ancient communalism in the context of competing with western modernity, both rejecting it and adapting a variation of it. I see the book's great utility in helping to understand how in some contexts Confucianism influences gender and welfare regimes in East Asia, potentially reading texts on Confucianism along with this book (for the Korean case, see Deuchler, Reference Deuchler1992; Haboush, Reference Haboush1991; Jung, Reference Jung2009).