Transcript Back to caring after years of working? Women’s retirement

Social changes in South Korea in the 1970s and
Women’s empowerment half-way through
Saemaul Undong
Yunjeong Yang, PhD.
Assistant Professor, GSIAS
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea
[email protected]
Paper presented at the DSA Conference
London,1 November 2014
Contents
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Saemaul Undong and introduction
Empowering women: agency and structure, plus care-sensitive
policy and institutional support
Questions to be asked and findings: Four remarks questioning
empowering effects of Saemaul Undong
Testifying women’s voices: still ongoing…
Saemaul Undong as top-down?
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a campaign initiated by the late president Park Chung Hee in
1970, with the slogan of diligence, self-help and cooperation
launched with 335 packs of cement being distributed, free of
charge, to each of about 35,000 rural villages
One condition attached to the free distribution was that it
should be used for the welfare of the entire community, not to
the benefit of any particular individuals
‘Korean version of integrated rural development (Whang,
1981)’, often defined as a ‘planned, government-led, and topdown movement for social change’
Saemaul Undong as bottom-up?
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Average number of yearly participants by village: over 3,000
ppl, i.e. almost everyone in rural areas
Contributing in unpaid labour (average 13 days per year per
household, excluding countless hours of meetings participated)
Community contributions outweighing govt support for the
movement throughout the 1970s, except 1974-5 (financial
burdens shouldered more by village, rather than by the state,
which spent an average 2.5% of its total revenue)
Transformation of villages by category (1972-1979)
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Source: drawn from Soh (2007: 104), Table 4.
Women in SMU
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Saemaul Undong’s success, in any sense, was partly due to the active
involvement of women, as well as it successfully engaged women, reestablishing women’s roles and capability (Choi, 2013; Das Gupta et al.,
2000; Lee and Chung, 2013; Yoo, 2001).
women were encouraged to participate actively in, and they successfully
initiated various programmes for savings and income-generation, such as
running village cooperative stores, collecting waste for sale and running
revolving credit unions, as well as non-formal education and agricultural
extension
The Saemaul Women’s Clubs organised communal kitchens during busy
farming seasons, operated daycare centres and used savings and funds for
common local benefits, such as building piped water systems and public
baths
female leaders and members of these Women’s Societies became part of
the general assembly of each village and took part in the decision-making
and implementation process of various Saemaul projects for their village,
alongside their male counterparts.
Overall assessment…?
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Saemaul Undong can be seen as a revolutionary event in the
sense that women who, under a strong patriarchal culture, had
been discriminated against severely and who had been taught
that respect and sacrifice for parents and husband was a
virtue, were now being acknowledged as having an
independent identity. In other words, Saemaul Undong allowed
women who had been excluded so far from opportunities for
and access to education, social and political activities, to
become capable and self-determined in their lives. In this
sense, Saemaul Undong was a movement of enlightenment,
and was also practical in awakening trust and cooperation
among village people.
(Lee and Chung, 2013: 363)
But questions remain…
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How can we account for the failed momentum of
empowering women in Korea after Saemaul Undong?
Or, can we even understand the process to have been
a genuinely empowering one, something beyond
simply rural economic development and the
engagement of female labour?
Empowerment engages,
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A process that increases [women’s] choices or ability to make choices
about own life as well as the environment they live in
(Allendorf 2007; Dreze and Sen 1989; Ibrahim and Alkire 2007; Kabeer 1999;
Narayan 2005; Rowlands 1997):
Agency (individual/collective level)
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A process of increasing
poor people’s freedom of
choice and action to shape
their own lives; at the same
time, considering them as
‘agents of change’
Structure (socio-economic contexts
and institutional changes)
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A process of changing
socio-political structures,
which frame and limit the
efficacy of individual
agency, by eliminating
discrimination and
promoting social inclusion
Critical questions to be asked
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Agency (women’s individual/collective capability
enhancement)
Are women aware of their issues/problems and do they have ownership of
their (re)action?
Are there any potential local (women) leaders who are willing to come
forward and bring changes?
If there are, how are these individual efforts compensated? (The process
should not require individual sacrifice only.) In other words, are there any
specific policies to help women, individually and collectively, to be active in
public domains?
Structure (context and institutional changes)
Does public discourse support (or obstruct) women’s participation? In what
contexts?
To what extent does discourse support materializing in actual institutional
changes (in favour of women’s participation)?
Critical questions to be asked (cont’d)
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Care-sensitive policy designing and public
support
Does the policy recognize the value of women’s care work and
attempt to institutionalize any rewards for women’s
contributions?
Does the policy involve any attempts to reduce the drudgery
associated with care work and also to redistribute care work
from women to men, and/or from families to the state?
Is there any systematic public support to encourage women’s
participation and representation in decision-making?
Is there any effective implementation and monitoring
mechanism of these (if any) care-sensitive provisions?
Remark 1: Rural contexts calling for
women’s labour participation
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Korea in the 1960s rapidly industrialising, with the rural-to-urban
migration soaring*, leaving rural area short of labour
 public discourse began to change, calling for women’s involvement as
active agents of the Movement (certainly emphasised at Saemaul
Leadership Training)
“Our time no longer values women as passive and inactive. Women are now
expected to develop their potential and to act actively as professional and
valuable members of the society to the greatest possible extent…. Women should
go beyond looking after their own family and household as a housewife. It is
more desirable that women, as a proactive citizen, participate in various local
community activities.”
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(Saemaul Leadership Training Institute, 1973: 36–8, emphasis added)
 The discourse was not only simply ignorant of the value of the non-paid
care work but it also undervalued it.
Remark 2: Reducing women’s care work via
communal cooperation but not redistributing it
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“As we need to mobilise [women’s] labour for Saemaul Undong, a deficiency in
household labour should be solved collectively. Children can be taken care of at
childcare and lunch for the elderly [parents] can be offered at a communal
seniors’ room. Women, then, can freely, actively, and happily contribute to
Saemaul projects and the effectiveness will double.”
(Saemaul Leadership Training Institute, 1977: 130)
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Successful achievement of early Saemaul projects involve modernising living
environments, e.g. sewage improvements and introducing piped water
systems, building communal washing areas, etc, which certainly must have
contributed to reducing the hours required on domestic chores
But the gender division of labour remained intact: ‘traditional womanly
virtues should not be dropped’ (MHA 1978: 92); so reflected in the nature
of work done by women as part of the Saemaul Undong – e.g. small-scale
water supply, village cooperative shops, rice saving, communal kitchens, and
day-care centers during busy farming seasons, etc.
Remark 3: Individual agency and public
support to enhance women’s capacity
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Countless examples of women leaders with a strong sense of duty
for changes and also sensitive to village’s priorities
“It was not uncommon that I was ashamed as people would point their
fingers at me, saying ‘when the hen [women] sings, the family goes down’.
I endured and yet persuaded them [in the end].” (Kim, a former female
leader, quoted in Chang, 2008: 447)
 Financial incentives also matter. The increasing participation in paid
work via women’s clubs reflects women’s collective interest in
economic power and controllability (Yoo, 2001); increasing income
earned by women consequently served to empower women in the
dynamics of family relations (Choi, 2011; 2013).
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 Process of increasing self-efficacy via participation in projects,
notably among female leaders
Remark 3 (cont’d): public support
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Leadership training
more than 43,000 people (from about 35,000 villages) were
trained at the Saemaul Leadership Training between 1972 and
1979, with the Central Training Institute training about 1,000 female
leaders each year starting from 1973 (the total number reached
over 9,000 by 1980) (MHSA 1987: 102).
contents of the training sessions for female participants included
savings, family planning, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation, and
emphasised the new roles of women in a modernised society. In
addition, participants were also provided with practical sessions
regarding discussion skills and leadership enhancement, which were
intended to turn them into effective leaders and facilitators in their
home villages.
in women’s words..
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“It [the Saemaul Leadership Training] trained us to be able to lead a
meeting in an effective and democratic way. Female leaders in rural areas
[became capable to do so]. … young mothers talk well but can’t lead a
meeting properly. Leaders of Saemaul Women’s Societies, leaders of
Mothers’ Clubs, and leaders of Societies for Home Improvement CAN do
this. They know how to manage an organisation effectively [thanks to the
leadership training].” (Moon, a female participant, quoted in Yoo, 2001:
59)
“Men couldn’t refuse to help women. They said nothing more when it came
to Saemaul training. That freed women. That’s how women’s social status
got improved after all.” (Sung, a former female leader, quoted in Yoo,
2001: 70)
Remark 4: Representing women to a limited
extent
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Women’s societies
Women’s classroom (begun in 1967 by the MHSA);
Mothers’ club on prepared parenthood (family planning);
Women for home improvement (by the RDA); and
Saemaul Women’s Clubs (by the MHA),
all merged into the Saemaul Women’s Clubs in 1977.
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Targeting women relatively younger (aged 18 and 50), their objectives
were first, to increase savings, and second, to improve living conditions and
the income of farm households
 Mostly centrally institutionalized and managed in a top-down manner, led
by the government while women were often considered as ‘target objects’ for
education and training, rather than active ‘agents of changes’
Remark 4: Representing women to a limited
extent (cont’d)
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Nonetheless, criteria for evaluation included providing
institutional support at the local level to allow, and indeed
encourage, women’s meetings among themselves, as well as
with other male members of the village. Decisions about and
the planning of village projects were made at monthly
meetings where women also were to participate!
What matters, however, is the role of the women who
participated in the committees and to what extent their voices
and opinions were heard, discussed, and considered seriously,
if not implemented!!
Gendered approach (summary)
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Recognize – Reduce – Redistribute – Represent
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Aims of the policy/programs
Assumptions about gender roles, relations and
responsibilities for paid and unpaid care work
Training and resources for enhancing women’s
capabilities
Implementation mechanisms and institutions