In my last column, I discussed some factors informing my opinion that the status of women in Korea today has improved in several respects, from life expectancy to autonomy. Korea continues to aspire to an equal opportunity society but is unequal in gender terms and in need of further change and reform, public and private. This column continues the discussion by focusing on factors for Korean mature, married women, known as "ajumma" or today as "gasa gwalissa" in some contexts.

It’s important to note the age and class dimensions of personhood. There are working, middle- and upper-class women. I have called these groups ajumma, "jubu" or "jungsangcheung jubu" and "samonim," respectively. The life prospects of middle-class and upper-class women are eased relative to ajumma by their access to higher status, education and income/wealth, other things equal. They are limited by those factors wanting or prompting women to remain homemakers and more broadly, "proper" women. This is as against entering or resuming work after childbirth, having a public presence for civic or other activities and of equalizing household and child care labor with men. More and more women are working, regardless of class, nonetheless.

Likewise, Korean women’s prospects are not equal by age. I see in the Korea Times that daughters are preferred nowadays, something I would’ve never thought to be the case. More women are achieving educational success on par with men. More younger women are delaying or foregoing the institution of marriage for personal choice and autonomy. These conditions bode well for equalizing prospects of Korean women.

The progress of Korean women has occurred largely through entry and progress in terms of education and labor/workforce participation, as well as through the nuclearization and even atomization of the Korean family. Individuality, education and income give Korean women power to claim new ways of living, to pushback against excesses of traditional or customary ways, and to forge new strands of identity. This may or may not be "woke" or progressive in Korean contexts but often a matter of necessity. Working women, and Korean mothers and families want more options and choices for their daughters and granddaughters.

In all this change, some may err by viewing women who behave and seek different goals or relational contexts as "bad" or "other." Indeed, the ajumma often have been termed "a third gender." I would hazard the guess that men who become full-time homemakers, a growing number in Korea, or men who are delaying marriage face similar stigma, perhaps analogous is better, but to a lesser extent. It’s always seemed to me that if it isn’t matrifocal or matrilocal, Korean culture does center on women as mothers. And yet Korea knows that the reality of women’s lives is more than this, as indeed it is in many other places on Earth.

As feminist scholar Song Ra-young and others have written, this ajumma is viewed as "unreasonable" or "shameless." Other better words, more neutrally projected, would be "brave" and "determined." It is remarkable to me that a group of Korean women associated as the major driving force of the Korean economy, is misunderstood, willfully, as odd or altern women.

In truth, as another scholar, Ha Na-young, has noted, Korean women, perhaps in particular those whose lives lead them to challenge stereotypes of Korean women, are “organic intellectuals” who have different perspectives and can act "out of place" because their lives are seeking income, security and education for their families, too. Their lives "challenge and transform dualities." Today’s women, increasingly, no longer simply grow from being an "agassi" or young woman to an ajumma and eventually to a "halmeoni" or grandmother. What lifespan development means is more contingent, variable and in the process of being renegotiated.

Other commentators write of the hegemony of the Eurocentric paradigm of women, which I think is far-fetched. Korean culture has its own patriarchal and patrilineal norms and paradigms, whatever similarities they may have to Europe or America. Korean women today are growing in power as a group and individually to modify those paradigms. Seoul wasn’t built in a day, and changing to an opportunity society of equality by gender doesn’t happen overtime, anywhere.

I continue to find valuable the truth of the proposition that Korean women of all classes represent many value streams, including Confucianism. This isn’t the Confucianism of Lao-tzu or the neo-Confucianists. It is their version, but a version that all can learn from. It is one of mutual self-development for the good of self and others through the avoidance of scapegoating. That is a wordy sentence to explain something of many variables that is complex. While it may be a stretch to say that ajummas are seeking to be "sages," Confucianism admits of the reality that all of us can give of oneself to make the world better for others and oneself in turn, according to scholar Lee Un-sunn. As Lee indicates, this is the practice of Shin Saimdang and Yi Yulgook’s maxim in today’s Korea and beyond: "practicing goodness together with others."

*Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is professor of Political Science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of The Korea Foundation and a past visiting professor at the Hanyang University Graduate School of Public Administration. *