How was the Korean Housewife Constructed?

Yesterday I posted a critique of the lazy way we toss around the term Confucian to describe contemporary Korean gender roles. A great comment by a reader prompted me to add additional explanation of what we might overlook when we focus on ‘Confucian’ and ‘traditional’ values. For a more specific discussion of Confucian ideology, I have written about Confucianism and the Choson Dynasty on this blog a few times: Power & Gender in the Early Korean State, Fashion: Regulating the Inner/Outer in Choson Korea, Comparing Marriage in the Middle Ages and Korea’s Choson Dynasty: 서양의 중세 초기와 조선의 결혼비교, and 조선 초기의 파워와 젠더체제. Here I’d like to throw out for our consideration some important alternate explanations of the contemporary construction of family life in Korea. 

I point out internal and external factors that have affected Korea in its modern history to emphasize the breadth of forces at play that are left entirely out of the discussion when we rush to attribute something to Korea's Confucian past. 

Many Confucian social and legal regulations were codified that affected family life, especially between 1300 and 1700. But there is significant doubt as to how deeply Confucian values penetrated into the common social consciousness, as they were largely codes to regulate the elite yangban. The colonial period was immediately predated by a ‘rush to modernize’ to avoid colonization in the late 1800s. On top of that the colonial period through 1945 was a major disruption in so many social structures that we might dub ‘traditional’ so that what we are calling ‘traditional’ today is a complicated reassertion or reconstruction or reclaiming of ‘traditions’ which shouldn’t be presented as a continuous march to the present. There are absolutely some lingering legacies, but we need to add depth to our understanding of Confucianism if we are going to throw it around as an explanation for Korean society today. Worse, I fear that by relying too heavily on the convenience of the Confucian explanation, we overlook more important influences on family life.

For example, in talking about housewives, we should not have this conversation without discussing the following major influences in recent history:

THE FIRST being the urbanization drive under Park Chung Hee, which disrupted ‘traditional’ family life in incredibly transformative ways. In Confucian and even in colonial period Korea family structures were generally larger multi-generational networks and geographically close. Pre-industrialization in Korea (which was only partially ushered in during the colonial period) families were more agrarian and family roles quite different from today. Here on the blog we have discussed the Theory of Compressed Modernization, which describes how Korea underwent rapid transformation in under 60 years that Europe process over the course of 200 years. When Park Chung Hee pushed urban industrialization, state policy transformed the family. Where once a network of women and men cooperated in a large family unit, now a mother was mobilized to prepare her husband, children (male and female) for economic competition in the city and factory. When the state didn’t have the foresight to prepare some social safety nets for the elderly left in the countryside, it was more convenient to criticize women for abandoning their ‘traditional’ roles than acknowledge how the state had reconstructed family life without preparing to care for the old. Newspapers in the 1970s criticize women (similar critiques emerged of the ‘New Woman’ in the colonial period). This transformation under Park Chung Hee sounds a lot more like the housewife Harper describes than anything in Confucian texts or dating back to Choson. There are absolutely some lingering legacies of Confucian ideology in Korean society, but these are redefined and deployed by contemporary actors.

SECOND, we can’t overlook the reality that European and North American societies made basically the same general decisions about gendered division of labor amidst industrialization. This is another reason to doubt a uniquely Korean tradition that created the housewife.

THIRD, I think the intensification of competition for rapid modernization probably has had the most direct and adverse affects on human rights conditions in Korean society. This means that in thinking about how to address these harms, we are distracting ourselves with ‘Confucian tradition’ when maybe we should instead be thinking about the hegemonic way Samsung corporate structure harms family life in contemporary Korea, or the continued mobilization of the people by government to make steep sacrifices with inadequate social safety nets. Looking too distantly and too ‘culturally’ into Korea’s past obscures the political and economic changes we can demand today that are changing patterns of inequality. We need only look to the incredibly important influence of the IMF crisis in the 1990s, which reversed a lot of trends in Korean society toward gender equality. Not unlike recessions in other regions, women pay a heavier price for economic slowdown, and that isn’t unique to Korea. It is a failure of most societies to adequately engage women productively in society in ways that respect their human rights. For more discussion of Compressed Modernization Theory on this blog, please see Compressed Modernization for Gender Studies 압축적 근대성와 젠더 and 압축적 근대성 이론 Compressed Modernization Theory for Korean Studies.

TO wrap this up, I think it is really skipping quite a few steps to simplistically say that the housewife in contemporary Korea is a Confucian tradition unique to Korea. It just isn’t that linear. Better to understand a variety of factors and locate the influences that have the most detrimental effects on women’s human rights.

--
Lastly, I've written a few times about the problem of associating violence against women as 'unique' to certain societies. Some of these earlier posts could definitely use some revisiting, revising or renewed debate. In the following posts I emphasize that HOW we talk about violence against women is very important:

Sexual Violence as a Migrating Woman, Re: India Story You Never Wanted to Hear

Yoon is NOT in a 'sex scandal'

Buzzfeed! Fearing rape is not a “Unique side effect of being an Indian girl”

Single Moms & Korean Fertility Policy 싱글맘와 한국의의 가족계획

~녀 뉴스 or Nyo News, the Female Files

MBC 응답 Responses to MBC's The Shocking Reality About Relationships With Foreigners

Rape and Sex Offender Registry in Korea 성폭행와 성범죄자알림

Values & Modernization Theory: World Values Survey (WVS)

Modernization theories provide a set of lenses through which social changes might be analyzed, including: occupational differentiation, association, shifts in community, population growth and women’s work, etc. To touch briefly on the issue of family and occupational relationships, the earliest modernization theorists didn't really anticipate that societies would choose to maintain systems of ethics, such as Confucianism, to maintain family status ties. This is why some recent work in this area aims to understand how these values systems undergo change. 


An anonymous reader shared one such example here, thanks! Here is another:

The World Values Survey (WVS) Chairman Ronald Inglehart and Vice President Christian Welzel frame modernization theory in terms of Durkheim’s theory of solidary and Tönnies’ theory of association; but also argue that although societies are on different paths, modernization is a somewhat predictable process that gives rise to increased autonomy, gender shifts and democratization (Inglehart & Welzel, 24).

Thus, with their modernization theory and WVS work Inglehart and Welzel not only reintegrate foundational theories, but add a provocative new tool for examining cultural changes. They might see the democratization of Korean society as predictable, given changes in economic development (18). Could this also mean that Korea is on a trajectory toward greater personal autonomy (perhaps evidenced by movement away from parental authority, and decline in primacy of first sons’ ancestral worship rituals) and greater gender equality (perhaps evidenced by women’s workforce participation, declining birth rates)? Yet, in contrast with theoretical predictions, WVS Cultural Maps from 1999-2004 and 2005-2008 (presented below) show that Korean society shifted toward less self-expression and more traditional values in recent years. It will be interesting to see how the research evolves in the next data set in a few years. 

What do you think might be behind the shift? 

The World Value Survey Cultural Map 1999-2004 (Korea’s X-Y values are -0.5 by 1.0):

The World Value Survey Cultural Map 2005-2008 (Korea’s X-Y values are -1.25 by 0.6):

What other studies have you read that might offer insight into what influences dating and marriage patterns? 

The Korean Gender Cafe is open to your reading suggestions and also hope to provide reviews of material that ought to be part of the conversation about gender in Korean society. We will keep working to share content for discussion and study. 

---

Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, "Changing Mass Priorities: The Link Between Modernization and Democracy." Perspectives on Politics June 2010 (vol 8, No. 2) page 554.

Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005: page 63. 

Compressed Modernization for Gender Studies 압축적 근대성와 젠더

              The ultra-low birth rate in South Korea is a good example for the application of compressed modernization theory in gender studies. South Korea could be characterized as a country that has made rapid and significant gains in gender equality in individual-oriented institutions such as education, workplace and democratic participation. Women’s political rights have increased, there has been a dramatic rise in educational attainment and women’s workforce participation continues to rise. In family oriented institutions women have not experienced such significant shifts in household work, and religious institutions still emphasize men’s rights. Thus, Korea could be characterized according to Peter McDonald as a country likely to experience a rise in fertility only when family-oriented institutions reform to embrace more gender equity. Until then, women are likely to delay marriage and make birth control choices to affirm their participation in institutions outside the home as they hope to change their life course (McDonald, 431, 438). Yet, women and men choose to perpetuate familism, and it’s consequences are analyzed by Ochiai according to the theory of compressed modernization.

Many signs of the second demographic transition (SDT) as described by Lesthaeghe are present in contemporary Korean society: rising divorce rate, delayed marriage, rising proportion of singles (Lesthaeghe, 212). Lesthaeghe argues that premarital cohabitation must become more acceptable for the SDT to occur (Lesthaeghe, 234). However, it is not yet clear how popular cohabitation will be in South Korea. On the one hand social surveys show conservative attitudes toward cohabitation, but surveys of college students have also showed up to 10% of students have experienced cohabitation and 87% of college students do not oppose premarital sex (Yonsei Annals, 2012.03.10). In addition, KDI forecasts the single population to reach 20% in the near future.

Lesthaeghe points out that political (democratization) and economic (IMF crisis) explanations alone are not enough to explain low fertility (Lesthaeghe, 244). However, in contrast with the developed welfare states described by Lesthaeghe, South Korea does not have an adequate system in place to support families. Thus, the explanation offered by Ochiai may be the most accurate. Ochiai’s theory includes reference to South Korea’s compressed modernization which affected both economic and political institutions, but also addresses the risk-averse individualistic behavior of Korean women in delaying or avoiding parenthood. “Such familial burdens and risks are particularly onerous to South Korean women because of the fundamentally gender-based structure of family relations and duties that has in part been recycled from the Confucian past and in part manufactured under industrial capitalism (Chang, KY and MY Song, 2010).” The lack of a strong welfare state in Korea may contribute to persistent conservative familism that drives down births outside of wedlock.

한국은 학교, 직업, 민주주의와 같은 개성중심적인 제도나 기관에서의 성평등에 있어서  비약적 성취를 이룬 나라로 특징지어 질 수 있다. . 여성의 정치적 권리가 증가하였고, 교육적 성취는극적으로 증가하였고  여성 인력 참여는 계속 상승하고 있다.또한 피임약을 처방전 없이 살 수 있는 액세스가 있다. 복지가족부에 의하면 낙태에 대한 정부의 금지에도 불구하고 미혼 임신  여성의 85%-94 %의 이상이 낙태를 선택한 것으로 추정된다. 정부는 과거에 심지어 McDonald의 "사회 허가 및 피임 서비스에 대한 접근"(McDonald, 434)을 만들게 된 "딸 3형제"와 같은 캠페인 동영상을 통해  소가족들을 격려했다. “딸 3형제” 영화는 자매들의 각 가정이 가족계획과 의사, 회사원으로서 사는 행복한 가정의 이미지를 보여줌으로  60년대의 교육받은 한국 여자들이 높은 삶의 포부를 이룰 수 있는 모습을 묘사한다.  

가족 중심적 교육기관에서 여성들은 집안일 업무에선 상당한 변화를 경험하지 않고있고 종교기관은 아직도 남자의 권리를 강조한다. 따라서 McDonald의 이론에 의하면 는 한국은  오직 가족 중심의 제도들이  보다 성별의 공평을 포용할 때만 다산의 상승을 경험할 가능성이 있는 국가로 특성화 수 있다. 여성 삶의 진로를 바꿀 수 있도록 노력하겠다로서 그때까지는 여자들은 그들의 삶의 방향을 바꾸기 위해 집밖 기관들에 참여를 확고히 하기 위해 결혼을 연기하고 피임의 선택을 하여  (McDonald, 431, 438).

Lesthaeghe가 설명한 제 2차 인구변천의 많은 징후가 현대 한국 사회에 나타나 있다: Lesthaeghe에 의해 제2차인구변천 (SDT) 설명된 징후를 많이 현대 한국 사회에 존재: 이혼비율 상승, 지연된 결혼, 독신의 비율 증가  (Lesthaeghe, 212). Lesthaeghe는 SDT이 발생하기 위해선  혼전동거가 더 수용 되어야  한다고 주장했다 (Lesthaeghe, 234). 하지만 한국에서 미래에 혼전동거가 얼마나 더 인기가 있을지는 아직 알 수 없다. 한편 사회조사는 동거에 대해 보수적인 태도를 보여주지만 대학생들의 설문조사는 동거 경험이 있는 학생이 10%로 나타났고 대학생 87%가 혼전성관계를 반대하지 않는다고 했다 (Yonsei Annals). 게다가 한국개발연구원에 의해 가까운 미래에는 미혼인구가 20%에 도달할 것이라고 예측하고 있다.

또는 Lesthaeghe가  경제적(한국의 IMF 위기) 원인과 정치적 (한국의 민주화) 원인만으로는 낮은 불임을 설명할 수 없다고 지적했다. (Lesthaeghe, 244). 그러나 Lesthaeghe에 기술된 개발된 복지 국가와 달리 한국은 가족을 지원하는 적절한 시스템을 가지고 있지 않다. 오치아이에 의하면 “한국인은 매우 가족지향적, 사회적, 개인적 생활을 영위하고 있다”며 이를 장경섭의 ‘가족주의적 압축적 근대성’로 표현했다. 이는 급속한 근대화 과정에서 자본주의적 산업화, 도시화, 무산계급화, 교육성취의 극단적 추구, 사적 복지 보호 등에 노출된 개인을 보호할 수 있는  유일한 사회적 자원이 가족이었기 때문이다 (오치아이, 8).” 따라서 오치아이의 설명이 더 정확한 생각일 수 있다. 오치아이의 이론은 한국의 김대중 대통령이 IMF위기후 신자유주의와 글로벌화의 강제적인 적용 과정에서 이같은 문제에 직면핬다고 했다 (오치아이, 12). 또는 저출산의 이유로 경제적 정치적 기관들 모두에 영향을 미친 한국의 압축된 근대화를 언급을 포함하고 또한 한국 여성의 결혼 지연하거나 부모가 되는 것을 기피하는 위험을 싫어하는 개인주의적 행동을 다룬다. 경제와 정치 기관을 모두 영향뿐만 아니라 결혼을 지연하거나 피하면서 여성의 위험을 하는 포함됬다. 그러나, 한국의 강력한 복지의 부족이 혼외 출산을 낮추게 만드는 보수적인 가족주의의 지속에 기여할 수 있다.

           

·         젠더 문제: 이러한 가족적 부담과 위험성이 한국 여성들을 힘들게 한다. 왜냐하면 부분적으로 유교적인 과거로부터 다시 살아난  근본적으로 성별에 바탕을 둔 가족관계 와 의무들과 부분적으로 산업 자본주의 하에서 만들어진 부담이 함께 존재하기 때문이다. 근대화 이후 여성의 사회적 지휘 향상에도 불구하고 여전히 우리 사회는 여성에게 전통적 유교적 가치와 가족부양과 의무를 요구하여 많은 부담과 압박을 받고있다.

·         예: 가족중심사회를 위해 한국여성들은 급격한 사회혁명대신 점진적인 사회적 문화의 변화를 원하고 그래서 결혼을 연기하는 경우가 많다.

·         예: 많은 젊은 세대들이 경제적인 이유로 결혼을 미루고, 저출산을 야기했으며, 제대로 된 노인복지 제도가 없다.

·         예: 성 평등 면에서 여성의 지위는 교육부문에 빨리 성취되었지만 가족중심제도에서는 성평등을 위해 여전히 힘든 싸움하고 있다. 

Articles cited in English:

Chang, Kyung-Sup. 1999. “Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean society in transition” Economy and Society. 28(1): 30-55.

Chang, Kyung-Sup. 2009A. “Compressed Modernity in Perspective: South Korean Instances and Beyond” Presented at the International Workshop.

Chang, Kyung-Sup. 2010. “The second modern condition? Compressed modernity as internalized reflexive cosmopolitization” The British Journal of Sociology 61(3): 444-464.

Chang, Kyung-Sup and Min-Young Song. 2010. “The stranded individualizer under compressed modernity: South Korean women in individualization without individualism” The British Journal of Sociology 61(3): 539-564.

Chang, Kyung-Sup. 2010. “East Asia’s Condensed Transition to Second Modernity” Soziale Welt 61: 319 – 328.

Lesthaeghe, Ron. 2010. "The Unfolding story of the Second Demographic Transition" in Population and Development Review, 36 (2): 211-251.

McDonald, Peter. 2000. "Gender Equity in Theories of Fertility Transition" in Population and Development Review, 26 (3): 427-439.

Articles cited in Korean:

장경섭[Chang, Kyung-Sup] (2009), 『가족, 생애, 정치경제』, “1장. 압축적 근대성과 한국가족”, 창작과 비평사.

에미꼬 오치아이 [Ochiai, Emiko], 2011. "가족주의의 역살: 동아시아 사회는 왜 지속불가한가?" 한중일 가족심포지움 발표.