Many of the codified differences between men and women in Korea were introduced during the Chosun Dynasty, and women had fewer rights as a result of the transition into this new dynasty than they did during the previous dynasty.
1. How has this gender discrimination from the Chosun Dynasty affected Korean society today?
2. What kinds of restrictions or distinctions did this new way of thinking mark toward women during the Chosun Dynasty?
3. How were these Neo-Confucian principles applied to women's everyday lives?
4. Were there opportunities for women to enjoy some kinds of freedom during the Chosun period?
5. There was an abolition on the legal restriction for women to remarry. But what sort of other work is being done today to rectify some of the discrimination the Chosun period introduced?
1. THE LONG DISCRIMINATION
Korea's Justice Ministry abolished a legal restriction in May of 2005 that required women, but not men, to wait six months before taking a new husband. The longtime justification for this restriction was enough time to conduct a pregnancy test in order to determine who was the father in the event of remarriage.
The change in law occurred because women and men within Korea have made a concerted effort to address laws and practices that unfairly discriminate against women. Some other issues that Korean men and women have been attentive to are the lenience toward men in sexual crimes and gender discrimination in job recruitment.
These changes that allow for better treatment and equality for women would not have been heard of in the preceding era of Korea, the Chosun Dynasty, indicating real progress.
The Chosun Dynasty is special for the fact that it marks a major shift in gender discrimination that would not have existed even during the time of the previous dynasty, the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392). During the Goryeo Dynasty, women were permitted to freely associate with men in public, they could own and inherit land, and it was common practice for couples to live at the bride's parent's house. During the Chosun Dynasty, however, the character of social relations between men and women drastically changed, including the freedoms permitted to women.
The philosophy for the new Chosun regime was Neo-Confucianism, which was adopted and modified from China and quite zealously enforced. We can see echoes of the gender discrimination in the six-month waiting period for women, which was abolished in Korea in 2005. Women under the Chosun Dynasty were not permitted to remarry, and any woman who had a child out of wedlock was not allowed to take the state examination which would otherwise allow him or her (particularly him) to serve in any political capacity for the dynasty. And a woman was expected to remain a widow, no matter if her husband died naturally.
2. WOMEN'S PLACE IN NEO-CONFUCIAN PHILOSOPHY
As for the Neo-Confucian philosophy itself, it taught that the universe was government by the two opposing forces yin and yang, which represented “heaven” and “earth,” and “positive” and “negative” forces. Men and women were viewed as subject to these natural laws of the universe and that the way in which a man and a woman ought to live had to with fulfilling their proper or natural role.
Several stereotypes about women, which were self-reinforcing, grew out of the assumption of what a woman's role was. The ideal woman was silent, obedient, pure, and faithful. She was respectful to her father and the firstborn son of the family, her eldest brother. When she married, she was supposed to be obedient to her husband.
3. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES FOR WOMEN
Aside from dictating that a woman ought to be silent, there is nothing intrinsically odious in holding some of these principles. For instance, most people would like everyone to be respectful to their parents and to be honest and faithful. The problem arises only when these principles are put or interpreted in such a way as to force women to adopt them without consideration to their own lives.
During the time of the Chosun Dynasty, the noble (yangban) women could not leave their homes without male accompaniment. When the women did leave their homes, they had to wear a veil or only go at night so that they couldn't be seen. Female children and teenagers could not play outside of their homes, and if they did, beating was a common punishment.
Men and women's sleeping quarters were also partitioned during the time of the Chosun Dynasty. This was the case for both the noble class, although the complete segregation of men and women within the home could not be expected to be reasonably enforced among ordinary people because of the poor living conditions for most families.
These so-called natural differences between men and women were enforced in very early childhood. The wealthy families would give their male children a piece of jade to play with, which symbolized political power, with the hopes that the male children would go on to take part in government someday. Baby girls, on the other hand, were given a spool.
The discrimination fed into the education as well. From age six, boys were taught math and then received a broader formal education by age 10. The girls, however, were kept mostly illiterate, including most of the noble women. Schools didn't accept women into the educational system. To give a sense for how deep the education exclusion was, until the end of the 19th century, only four (4) per cent of women in Korea could read and write Hangul. The Neo-Confucian principles were interpreted to maintain these distinctions in practice. In practice, women were expected to raise children and do housework. The only jobs offically available to noble women during the Chosun Dynasty were raising silkworms and spinning cloth, although except was made to this discrimination from time to time.
4. POCKETS OF FREEDOM FOR KOREAN WOMEN
In some respects, there were pockets of freedom for women during the time of the Chosun Dynasty. Since the noble men were supposed to attend to “men's affairs,” like politics and outside society, men were not allowed to interfere with a woman's household management. But the pockets of freedom were even more available for women from the common classes.
Women from the common classes spent a lot of their time working alongside the men, and as such there were no restrictions on women's freedom to move around. Yet at the same time there were no rights that these women enjoyed that protected her from getting preyed upon. And in practice, this meant that neither common nor noble women had legal or political recourse to government protection against such things as rape or sexual or physical abuse.
When a woman became a mother, whether common or noble, she did begin to enjoy more of a position of authority in the family, more deference to her in how to deal with the household, particularly in how to raise the family. Also, in the early days of the Chosun Dynasty, when the dominant male of the family passed away, she was responsible for taking care of matters of future marriage of her children and some extended family as well as what to do with inheritance money.
Another legal practice that was charitable toward women during the early Chosun Dynasty had to do with the dowry that came along with her joining her husband in the new family. Whether or not she passed away before her new husband did, the money and property of the bride was to stay with either the bride or the bride's family. This was in some respects a legal device to make up for the fact that women could no remarry after the death of their husbands.
Furthermore, not even this right to money and property maintained itself in law throughout the Chosun Dynasty. Eventually, the money and property would be expected to go to the eldest son in the family, putting the eldest son in legal charge over his mother and not allowing her the power to control her economic life after the death of her husband.
As for the issue of remarriage, some provisions were made to allow a woman to remarry rightfully under the law if for some reason the man abandoned his household. Women had to petition the government for this remarriage on these grounds, and it seems to have come to very little practically. Women could also ask the government for a divorce if their husbands were beating them, but only if the husband consented as well.
Contrast these restrictions on women and marriage with the rights and privileges that men enjoyed. Men could divorce their wives on grounds of disobedience, for example, or jealousy, or even the inability to have a child. Fortunately for the women of the Chosun Dynasty, divorces were in fact rare.
5. WORK BEING DONE TODAY
Some of the issues in discrimination that Korean men and women are fighting today which have their roots in discriminatory Chosun policies are especially in the area of reported cases of sexual abuse as well as with differences in job opportunities for men and women. Chang Pil-wha who is director of the Asian Center for Women's Studied at Ewha Women's University says that these issues that men and women are still fighting for have much to do with the longstanding discrimination that has existed since the time of the Chosun Dynasty.
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family was established in 2011 and a special task force set up in 2013 to investigate cases in which men were charged with rape or assault against women. In some of the cases, police have pressured women to drop the charges and in several cases, after the men were convicted, judges imposed lenient penalties or fines, justifying the light sentencing with the negative effects a criminal record might have on a man's future, particularly his future employment.
As for job discrimination, the Ministry of Employment and Labor has prohibited employers from asking female jobseekers about their plans to have children on the grounds that this information could be used to discriminate. And other related issues are still being fought for, indicating real progress.
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