The gender bias usually associated with Confucianism, at least in its institutionalized traditional social orthopraxy, can be understood, in a modern context, to be inconsistent with its highest virtue of Humanity.  Quite simply, on its own terms, Confucianism should hold that women should be treated ethically the same as men. 

   There is also another reaons why modern Confucianism must be premised upon gender equality, and it can be seen in stories like this:

China grapples with its legacy of "missing girls:

BEIJING – China is asking where all the girls have gone.

And the sobering answer is that this vast nation, now the world’s fastest-growing economy, is confronting a self-perpetuated demographic disaster that some experts describe as "gendercide" — the phenomenom caused by millions of families resorting to abortion and infanticide to make sure their one child was a boy.

The age-old bias for boys, combined with China’s draconian one-child policy imposed since 1980, has produced what Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, described as "the largest, the highest, and the longest" gender imbalance in the world.

     The clear inhumanity of such "gendercide" must be rejected by modern Confucians.