Women's Lives: Work, Family, Chlldren

Women’s lives and possible choices have changed dramatically in the past two generations.  One of the statistics related to those changes which has been getting attention and worry is the low fertility rate of Korean women: only 0.96, less than even one baby per women.  Yet most population experts say a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population stable (with other things like war and immigration also playing their parts).  

Korean fertility rates reflect common trends in societies which are being more urban and educated.  Traditional agricultural societies have had higher infant mortality rates and so more births were “needed,” and birth control techniques were often ineffective.  Women usually married in their teens and might have children until menopause.  

Women often run the small shops

Today in Korea women are usually well-educated, and usually working outside the home for pay.  After the Korea War ended, the government made special efforts to educate young people, needing them to help rebuilt after the destruction of the war.  And in Korea (as in Japan) unmarried women are unlikely to have a baby.  Women with less education are often shopkeepers, often cooking at the myriad of places to pick up a snack to keep you going.

Subway sign for Nursing Moms

All of these factors have helped to reduce the Korean birthrate: women education, employment, and little childbirth outside of marriage (and marriage is late for Korean women, at 30).  And women also report that if they have a good education and a satisfying job, there’s less pressure to not have children as employers will let a women “go” if she has a baby (a husband may be seen as a better, more reliable, employee).  This may be the reason that the age group in which women are most likely to have their (one!) baby is 30-34, after their employment is more secure.

   At right we see a sign of recognition for the needs of women with young children; other seats on the subways are designated for pregnant women.

The reasons Korean women are having fewer children grow out of other social changes, as noted, but also are causing other social and policy worries as well.  In the not-so-distance future, the population shrink rather than grow, and there will be fewer young people to replaced other ones who are retired (and need financial and practical help in their old age.  The age at which women marry and have a change is itself a problem: women who once had a baby at 20, over generations, would represent three generation by the time they were 60, but by having a baby at 30 only two generations would have been created.  And Korea, like Japan, has valued its cultural homogeneity, so immigration has not been a real answer to a declining population for either country.  

I’m thinking about difference in the post-war years in Korea (after the Korea War) and in the U.S. (after 1945, when I was born).  My sense is the Americans wanted to resume “traditional” family roles, making up for long time when people were postponing marriage and family, resulting on a “baby-boom,” falling to less than replacement figures for our population only after the new century.  In Korea, the fertility rate has been declining to record level, as well as marriage rates, and divorce has been also rising.  

Ad labeled 1899-2019

Young women in handbook dress

Young Korean seem to value more some of their old tradition about dress and looks, as well as modern styles. 

Note that the "modern" look for young women, at least in summer, emphasized bare legs but not the sort of almost-bare bosoms more common in similar age girls/women in the U.S.  

The importance of women's looks are emphasized in this wall-sized ad, one of similar ads at a subway station that thousands of people past by daily.  This "look" focuses on a "pretty face" but also perfection, as it's an add for comestic surgery to correct "imperfections."  We see an emphasis on skin lighter than mine (Scandinavian color), as well as the very red lips commonly seen worn by many women.  What I infer is that, no less than American women, the search for education, good work, and beauty can be part of the uneasy tensions in the lives of younger women in South Korea.   

How are the decisions that Korean have been making over the years been working out for them?  Barbara can say more that from her classes (with almost 40 women of various age with whom she’s been very impressed).  Overall, they often seem to be a preference for education and meaningful work ahead of marriage and children, in ways I didn’t usually see among women my mother’s age (among middle-class women, marriage and children were common, and working after one’s first children was not).  

If it’s any evidence that Korean seemed to be making satisfying choices, Korean women are living longer than in any other society (approaching 90!)—even more than Japan.