Aspects of Women's Status in Korea and Cameroon

Choi, Eun-Jung,Rebecca Mbuh Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.20 No.-

The purpose of this study is to compare the status of women in Korea and Cameroon. Women's economic participation, educational opportunities, and political representation are used as indicators of women's status. Official statistics and literature review are utilized to conduct a comparative study of both countries. The major findings of this study indicate that women were under-represented in the areas of work, education, and politics in both countries(although women's status is getting better); few women rise to leadership positions in every area; women themselves and governments have made efforts to improve women's status from the individual level and social level; and Cameroon women's status is far behind that of Korean women in every area due to differences in economy, social conditions, and stages of industrialization of both countries. While Korea went through rapid industrialization, and is now into an information society, Cameroon is still in the process of moving from agricultural to industrialized society. We conclude by proposing suggestions and recommendations to the governments in both countries. We advocate the necessity of global studies of women's status for achieving gender equality and encourage the sharing of differing national experiences and coping strategies concorning gender discrimination against women.

Biologically Childless in Cameroon : "Infertile" Cameroonian Women Speak Out

Susan Weinger Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.21 No.-

This qualitative study explores 'infertile' Cameroonian women's viewpoints about the influence of biological childlessness on their lives. They explain its impact on their perceptions of their self-worth, marriage prospects, ageing and legacy. Even though they perceive social isolation in this highly pronatalist society, these 'infertile' women do not have consistently uniform attitudes and social support. More research is needed to expose their individuality, personalize this marginalized group, and convey that infertility is a social not a personal problem.

African Businesswomen in Asia : A Cultural Interface in the World of Globalization

Rebecca Mbuh Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.21 No.-

This paper explores the expansion of African women's business practices from the local environment to the international arena. Though African women have been engaged in trading from time immemorial, the venture into transcontinental trading is a phenomenon which is only now gaining more visibility. Due to persistent economic hardships which began in the 1990s, many African women are taking advantage of the benefits of globalization and modern technologies to engage in international trade. While the benefits and rewards are gratifying, there are several challenges that these women face. Through detailed interviews conducted with selected women who trade between African countries and Asia, especially Korea, some of the difficulties and opportunities are highlighted. These challenges are experienced at two fronts: in their home countries and internationally as they share time between family responsibilities and their businesses.

Democracy in South Africa Today : A Feminist Perspective

Kusum Datta Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.20 No.-

The new democratic constitution and the three general elections in South Africa since 1994 have redrawn the political map of the country. South Africa has one of the most women friendly governments led by the African National Congress. Nearly thirty three percent of the members of its Parliament are woman, and a large number of its power cabinet ministries are headed by black women. Yet, women remain the most deprived and the poorest section of its population with minimal recourse to resources and employment despite many legal reforms and gendered policies. This paper argues that South Africa's elaborate national machinery for gender equity has failed to improve women's situation primarily for two reasons. The first is the weakening political will of the government partly because of the growing influence of international financial institutions that prioritize fiscal balance at the expense of social justice. Secondly, there is a growing disjuncture between the feminists within the government and the bureaucracy on the one hand and the fractured women's movement in civil society on the other. The paper underscores the imperative need for strengthening the new type of civil society organisations and their pressure group capacity to support women within the government and to hold them accountable to the feminist project.

Sleeping with Beauty : Romantic Love, Sex, Power and the Construction of Femininity in Heterosexual Young Adult Relationships

Louise Vincent,Caryn McEwen Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.20 No.-

This article draws on solicited diary entries detailing the lives and loves of eight young undergraduate women at an elite institution of higher education in South Africa. The research participants are occupants of a privileged place in society with access to education, and a middle-class lifestyle, have control over their reproductive functioning, are not wives, mothers or homemakers, and potentially have access to fulfilling, status-rich and materially rewarding occupations which make independence both of their parental families and of male partners a real possibility. Theirs then, is a world of information, choice and opportunity and if of anyone at all in society we would predict the emergence of a critical gender consciousness, it might be of these woman. One way of gauging the extent of the emergence of a critical consciousness among women is to examine the extent to which, in the stories they tell about their intimate relationships, they depart from, or conform to both the content and structure of the traditional romance genre and in particular, to the positioning of themselves in their stories as passive, submissive, dependent subjects while their partners are dominant and active. The present article argues that far from the democratisation of intimacy, the young, seemingly privileged and empowered women in the study remain locked into romantic narratives of love with their concomitant passive construction of femininity. In a social context characterised by putative sexual emancipation, these young women find themselves in the unenviable position of having to play a game of liberated sexual and gender politics while at the same time living a reality of feminine oppression.

Do Women Really Fare Better When Working Part-time? - Examining the Korean Case

Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2010 아시아여성연구 Vol.26 No.2

<P>As married women enter the labor market and the traditional gender division of labor is being undermined, concerns with gender equality have been soaring in terms of the distribution of total work between men and women. In solving the difficulties of accommodating needs of employed married women, part-time employment is being promoted as a strategy enhancing labor force participation of married women with children. Part-time work may have positive effects of reducing the burden imposed on married women who manage both paid work and family responsibilities. This study purports to offer better understandings of whether female part-time employment helps women reduce their workload. This study takes advantage of a nationally representative time use survey collected in 2004. The analysis shows that had women not worked part-time, the gender gap in the total work would have been much greater, but that the gender gap still remains intact even if women’s part-time employment reduces the gap in the total work. And women’s part-time employment hardly affects women’s share of the total work out of the household total work within households. That is, holding other things constant, women who work part-time perform almost the same share of total work within households as do women working who work full-time. But the fact that the sign of the coefficient is positive implies that women who work part-time could undertake a higher share than women who work full-time.</P>

Women's Human Rights Universalism and Cultural Relativism

Haitian Lu Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2004 Asian Women Vol.18 No.-

Economic Valuation of Unpaid Work in Korea

Kwon, Tae Hee Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.21 No.-

The measurement of economic value on the unpaid work, corresponding to a household's non-market production, has been performed since 1920's through numerous studies. The field of studies is recently facing newfound attention and necessity to find a more appropriate method for measuring unpaid work. As the United Nation's recommendation for "A New System of National Accounts" redirected related studies to develop a satellite account that measures estimated value of unpaid work as a supplementary index to the household sector of the national accounts since the 1990s. In Korea, unpaid work by women was not measured because the Time Use Survey Data was not available. The purpose of this study is to estimate the value of the productive unpaid work-like housework, food preparation, household maintenance, cleaning, construction and repairs, shopping and services, household management, child care, adult care and volunteer services-performed by overall women in Korea based on the Time Use Survey Data of 1999 published at the National Statistics Office (NSO). The measurement methods used are individual function replacement cost method; generalist replacement cost method, gross opportunity cost method; net opportunity cost method, and integrated cost method. The results of this study show that the total share of women's unpaid work in the "Enlarged GDP" ranges between 21.8 and 27.7%, but the men's share ranges between 4.9 and 5.4%. This work identifies key components of a household's production in the Korean economy, and the estimation of non-market production facilitates comparative analysis with the relevant data of developed countries, and reexamines the contribution to the nation's economic growth made by women's unpaid work.

The Naebang Gasa Revisited : Yangban Women's Discourse as a Means for the Confirmation Self-identity

Shin, Eun Kyung Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2005 Asian Women Vol.21 No.-

The naebang gasa or "inner-room gasa" is widely believed to be a poetic genre written in hangŭl, which was mainly composed by yangban women of Yŏngnam Province and flourished in the late Chosŏn period. As the social ranking system was destabilized in this period for various reasons, the yangbans or the ruling class began to feel a sense or crisis in maintaining their social status and already-acquired privileges. It was, therefore, needed for the ruling class to strengthen the Confucian practical ethic of personal autonomy and responsibility, distribute and infuse it to the commoners in order to facilitate their governing act and overcome the critical situation. The yŏllyŏ jŏn ("Biographies of Faithful Women") by yangban male literati and the naebang gasa by yangban women, both of which appeared in large quantities in this period, need to be understood as a way to find the solution of the critical situation. The gyenyŏ ga and the jatan ga, two subtypes of the naebang gasa, differ from each other in that the focus of the former is put to foreground the role of mother and that of the latter is placed to display the laments of an individual woman. On this basis, we can characterize the gyenyŏ ga as "the song of 'I' as a mother" who successfully completed her entry into the position of a matriarch, and the jatan ga as "the song of 'I' as a woman" who, in a sense, failed to carry out the task. If the former has greater affinity with "a sense of family," the latter with "the rise of self-consciousness." The naebang gasa secures a significant position in Korean literary history, because it functioned as a means for the confirmation of women's "sense of existence as a mother or as a woman."

Spiritual Essences in African Women's Fiction : A study in Feminist Aesthetics

Wirba Ibrahim Mainimo Research Institute of Asian Women Sookmyung Women' 2004 Asian Women Vol.18 No.-