Abstract

The paterfamilias society based on the Confucianism deprived women of the opportunity of education and obtaining political positions. The fact caused social inequality between men and women. Therefore, women could not only independently plan their life by their own decisions, but also they could not live along well with men in the same society To men, women were merely subjects to be enlightened by men, and women were only passive human beings who should he extraordinarily submissive to men all the time. Buttressed by the philosophy of human nature and human laws that was studied by Yim throughout her whole life when the images of submissive and obedient women were the epitome of all women, Yim strongly asserted that women should be treated and educated equally. Yim mainly insisted that women should be able to receive equal education to men and also broadened her study fields to a political sphere by claiming the philosophy of human nature and humanlaws. One more claim that Yim declared was that women themselves were able to establish their independent subjecthood and could be a sage through studying and researching hard on specific subjects they were interested in, even though the society extorted women from living only as helpful people for men's lives. By her books Yim tried to transmit her scholastic philosophy from generation to generation and to reproduce the continuous self-consciousness about the subjective lives of women. This fact should be evaluated considerably meaningfully.