Leadership Lessons from Confucius: women and servants

Confucius said: “Women and servants are difficult to deal with: if you get too close to them, they become disrespectful; if you get too distant, they become resentful.”
子曰：「唯女子與小人為難養也！近之則不孫，遠之則怨。」

Stereotyping people is not just offensive. It is totally unacceptable. It should go without saying that we all should treat everyone else as we would wish to be treated.

Notes

This article features a translation of Chapter 25 of Book 17 of the Analects of Confucius. You can read my full translation of Book 17 here.

(1) There has been a lot of debate among commentators over whether Confucius is directing this comment at women in general or referring to the specific challenges of managing the female members of a large household. Even if the latter interpretation is correct, it does little to mitigate the casual contempt that Confucius shows to women by placing them in the same category as servants. Clearly, though perhaps unsurprisingly given the prevailing attitudes of the times he lived in, he was sexist by today’s standards. No amount of sugarcoating can ever succeed in hiding, much less changing, that fact.

I took this image in the Four Beasts Scenic Area in Taipei.