SAMURAI WOMEN
By the early 1700s, the number of samurai women was a small fraction of what it was only one hundred years before (at the beginning of the Edo period). There are two main reasons for this:
1. In the Analects, Confucius says the following regarding women: "Only women and petty men [servants] are difficult to deal with" (Confucius 98). Confucianism teaches that women are naturally subordinate to men, and that they should be confined to the home. Due to the increasing popularity of Neo-Confucianism in Tokugawa society, the rights and freedoms of women were greatly diminished. According to PBS, "women were now encouraged to supervise their children's education and manage the home" rather than train as samurai. Furthermore, samurai women were often harassed and intimidated when they passed through government stations on the Tokkaido road. All this discouraged females from becoming samurai.
2. Samurai training was no longer needed given the absence of wars, during which a woman would defend her home and children to preserve her family's honor.
1. In the Analects, Confucius says the following regarding women: "Only women and petty men [servants] are difficult to deal with" (Confucius 98). Confucianism teaches that women are naturally subordinate to men, and that they should be confined to the home. Due to the increasing popularity of Neo-Confucianism in Tokugawa society, the rights and freedoms of women were greatly diminished. According to PBS, "women were now encouraged to supervise their children's education and manage the home" rather than train as samurai. Furthermore, samurai women were often harassed and intimidated when they passed through government stations on the Tokkaido road. All this discouraged females from becoming samurai.
2. Samurai training was no longer needed given the absence of wars, during which a woman would defend her home and children to preserve her family's honor.
http://www.tenshinichiryu.com/articles/womenSamurai.html