Girls in South Korea

 The chapters that we read in Cynthia Enloe’s The Curious Feminist reminded me about how much we focus on the treatment of women in the United States but we often forget about women in other parts of the world. With so much mentioned about South Korea in the 1970’s and 80’s I reflected on what South Korea is like today: I was a part of Colgate’s study group to Seoul last fall.

As an Education Studies and Asian Studies sponsored trip, we took classes that were about multicultural education. As a part of the class, we went around to visit different schools. One of the schools that we went to was Donggu Marketing All Girls School. As the name states, this school was an all-girls school. The school would be what some call a vocational high school with a focus on getting girls into jobs right after they graduate. Some girls go on to college, but usually at a 2-year school as opposed to the 4-year universities. We were able to meet with some of the administration and were able ask them some questions about how the school was run and some of their philosophies. One of the things our professor asked was what they do to empower their girls and if they teach them anything about prior women’s movements. They said that they do not have anything stated in their curriculum. They teach the girls English so that they will be able to be employed at large multinational companies. However, the jobs that these girls will be expected to have are secretarial. They are not given the tools necessary for them to be able to get promotions out of that position. Parents elect to send their daughters to in order for them to gain employment after graduation. They do have a successful employment rate and these girls do receive larger salaries than many others without this school do. Large corporations consistently go back to the school to ask for recommendations on girls to hire. It is through these companies that they get higher salaries.

There are many other social differences between the US and South Korea, but this was just one instance of an educational one that is linked to economic ones.