This article popped up a couple of days ago in the NYT:

This disparity seems to surpass that of any other
country, they said — a finding, they wrote, that was perhaps
unsurprising in light of China’s one-child policy.

Unfortunately, nothing new in this, just confirmation of a trend that has long been building up over the past couple of decades.

But let's not blame Confucius for this outcome (and, it should be noted, the authors of the original report do not mention Confucius or Confucianism).

It is true that, historically, Confucianism was fused to patriarchy (and Legalism) to produce a strong cultural bias in favor of male heirs.  Women married into the husband's family and it was the husband's surname that was entered into the the family records.  Thus, when "filial duty" was translated into attitudes toward reproduction, men felt strongly that they had to have a male heir to carry on their father's name.  This attitude carried into the twentieth century and was the energetically criticized by May 4th anti-Confucian modernizers.  The Communists, too, (as anti-Confucian modernizers themselves) took up the cause of gender equity (even if Mao was an infamous womanizer).  Whatever shortcomings there might be in CCP ideology, in principle it defended the equality of women, and, I believe, this made a difference for many Chinese mothers and daughters.

But that old male bias is hard to break.  In the post-Mao era, as socialist ideology faded and neo-traditionalism surfaced, and as the one-child policy confronted parents with tough choices, the male preference came to the fore in new, and deadly, ways.  Before sonograms were available to guide sex-selected abortions, female infanticide was not uncommon.  The outcome now is one of the most unbalanced gender ratios in the world.

None of this, however, none of it, is necessary for a modern Confucianism.  I have argued elsewhere that women, in their attention to the cultivation of close loving relationships, can be considered better Confucians than men, in general.  And, if that is true, than a female can be as Humane and dutiful an heir as a male.  Names, I believe, matter less than the actual performance of Duty according to Ritual to move toward Humanity.  Ancestors must be remembered, for Confucians, but that work can be done by daughters and sisters as well as sons and brothers.  And female ancestors, in all of their Humanity-creating goodness, deserve remembrance and veneration, too.  

Yes, patriarchy was a hard reality of actually-existing historical Confucianism, but it distorted then, and would continue to distort now, the primary Confucian value of Humanity (ren).  We can leave it behind and be confident in the moral consistency and textual continuity of a modern, gender neutral, Confucianism.