How Has Higher Education Influenced the Empowerment of

Modern-Day South Korean Women?

Teri Jayun Ham

Institute of Education (IOE) at the University College London (UCL), United Kingdom (UK)

t.ham.16@ucl.ac.uk

Keywords: Gender, empowerment, higher education.

Abstract: South Korea faces a rising issue when it comes to its under-developed female labor force, but this is not due

to a lack of supply of educated women. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) reported in 2009 that 54.7 percent of students enrolled in post-secondary non-tertiary education

were female; yet, only half of working-aged Korean women are participating in the workforce. Due to South

Korea’s low fertility rates and shrinking population, the country is on track to experience a severe shortage in

its labor force, which will only be amplified if women continue to opt out of the workforce. For these timely

and relevant socio-economic reasons, this paper will explore whether highly educated Korean women feel

that they can make empowered choices when it comes to their life choices after obtaining university degrees,

and will apply the empowerment framework—as interpreted by Alsop and Heinsohn, as an analytical lens

used to guide the discourse.

1 INTRODUCTION

When it comes to gender parity and empowerment,

the lines can be blurry and difficult to define (Kabeer,

1999; Narayan-Parker, 2002; Rowlands, 1995). For

example, in drawing from the quote above, does Min-

Ji’s predicament reflect more a case of gender

inequality in the workplace, or a lack of individual

empowerment to overcome perceived sociocultural

and workplace barriers (Lee, 2014)? This essay will

attempt to explore such questions by examining South

Korean women who have obtained higher education

degrees. The reason for this specificity is that this

particular group of women represents a very socially

relevant and interesting backdrop for analysis.

Among all of the Organisation for Economic Co-

operation and Development (OECD) countries,

Korea has the ‘lowest employment rate of highly

educated women’ (Lee, 2014, p. 796). Only about 50

percent of working-aged women in South Korea are

participating in the workforce (KOSIS, 2017). Due to

South Korea’s low fertility rates and shrinking

population, the country is on track to experience a

severe shortage in its labor force, which will only be

amplified if women continue to opt out of the

workforce (Chang, 2003; Brender and Jeong, 2006).

For these timely and relevant socio-economic

reasons, I have chosen to take a closer look at the

barriers, forces, and other influential factors that are

causing this select group of women to make the

choices that they do. As the government looks to

identify root causes and possible solutions to address

these potentially harmful trends, I would like to offer

one analysis using a gendered lens—in particular, the

empowerment framework—as interpreted by Alsop

and Heinsohn (2005). Through their framework, the

essay will explore whether highly educated Korean

women feel that they can make empowered choices,

or exercise ‘freedom of choice and action’, when it

comes to their higher education attainment and life

after graduation (Narayan-Parker, 2002, p. v).

2 KOREA: DEVELOPMENT AND

ECONOMIC

TRANSFORMATION

To better understand how higher education, gender,

and empowerment collide in South Korea, it is

important to first gain a deeper grasp of its history,

Ham, T.

How Has Higher Education Inﬂuenced the Empowerment of Modern-Day South Korean Women?.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 1, pages 29-37

ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8

and the country’s path of development over the last

50 years. In economic and political circles, South

Korea is known for its incredible story of

transformation. Within just a few decades, South

Korea was able to recover from approximately 40

years of occupational rule and a civil war to being

considered a powerhouse in many areas including

technology, research, and education (Rodrik, 1995;

Chung, 2007). For nearly four decades, Japan

occupied Korea under colonial rule from 1910 to the

end of World War II. Korea’s emancipation was

followed by the Korean War, which lasted from 1950

to 1953. After these two crushing sociopolitical

events, the global opinion was that there would be a

very long road ahead for Korea to recover

economically and reach any substantive level of

stability (Chung, 2007). To make matters worse, the

country split into two distinctive parts (the South and

the North) after the Korean War, with the North

retaining control of critical natural resources and

heavy industrial related assets (Chung, 2007). This

contributed to the South’s economic status being

lower than many sub-Saharan African countries

(Rodrik 1995), but as of 2002, South Korea was able

to expand its economy by 14-fold (Chung, 2007). So

how did South Korea rapidly rise from a war-torn

developing nation to becoming the ‘11th largest

economy’ in the world (Brender et al, 2006, p. 1)?

While the answer is multi-dimensional and complex,

academics agree that education played a pivotal role

in Korea’s rise to economic empowerment (Chung,

2007; Lee and Brinton, 1996; Rodrik, 1995).

3 HOW HAS HIGHER

EDUCATION CONTRIBUTED

TO SOUTH KOREA’

GROWTH?

While the country’s economic success cannot be

solely attributed to education, it has been touted as a

major factor in turning around the nation’s economy.

During Japan’s colonial rule, formal schooling was

restricted, which led to the population being largely

illiterate. Immediately following Korea’s

independence, national illiteracy rate levels reached

80 percent. The government’s response was to focus

on school enrolment, and by 1990 primary and

secondary school enrolments were at 90 percent (Lee

and Brinton, 1996). The government recognized early

on that they would need to lean on their skilled and

educated workforce to help transition the national

economy from an agricultural-based society to an

industrial one (Chung, 2007; Lee et al, 1996; Rodrik,

1995). Chung (2007, p. 69) points out the role higher

education played in spurring economic growth:

[South Korea] possessed a nucleus of well‐

trained, able, and disciplined young bureaucrats: a

large pool of college‐educated persons…with

managerial and clerical skills; literate, schooled...

It proved to be an effective strategy.

Manufacturing in South Korea increased by 200

percent from 1966 to 1985 (Chung, 2007), while

agriculture, which represented nearly 60 percent of

the workforce, declined to 21 percent by 1990 (Lee et

al, 1996). As the economic needs changed, so did the

balance of laborers versus skilled workers. By 1990,

the professional occupational workforce rose from 10

to 25 percent, and the number of professionals with

advanced degrees began to form Korea’s middle class

(Lee et al, 1996). Korea’s move to an industrial based

economy meant that the nation would need to

increasingly maintain a steady pool of highly skilled

workers (Chung, 2007), and that trend has continued.

In 2003, South Korea achieved a 98.1 percent literacy

rate, and in 2015, OECD (2015) reported that citizens

from the ages 25-64 years old with tertiary education

achieved a 77 percent employment rate

(NationMaster, 2003). But what underlying gender

and empowerment issues do these growth and

workforce attainment figures mask? That is what this

essay will seek to understand through an

empowerment focused analysis.

4 GENDER AND

EMPOWERMENT IN SOUTH

KOREA

As highlighted in the introduction, South Korea does

face a rising issue when it comes to its female labor

force, but this is not due to a lack of supply of

educated women. Although data has not been

consistently collected, United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO,

2009) reported in 2009 that 54.7 percent of students

enrolled in post-secondary non-tertiary education

were female. Despite favorable enrolment numbers,

only ‘52.7 percent of working-aged Korean

women…[participated] in the workforce’ and the rate

for women seeking employment, among those who

were unemployed, was only 3.2 percent in 2016

(Draudt, 2016). This is particularly interesting given

the fact that in a 2003 OECD survey examining

different gender inequalities in higher education, 80

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

percent of Korean girls were ‘expecting to exercise a

highly qualified intellectual profession by the age of

30 years’ (Vincent-Lancrin, 2008, p. 10). Vincent-

Lancrin (2008) is quick to point out that while

expectations do not always equate to actions being

realized, research does show a correlation between

intention and career actualization. The reality is that

in 2012, only 34 percent of women were in job roles

that required high qualifications, and 25 percent of

women were in roles that required low or no

qualifications (OECD, 2012). It is clear that the

aspirations of young Korean girls were not translating

into careers in highly skilled professions.

Even though South Korea ranked 11th in the

world for gross domestic product (GDP) in 2015, the

country has very low Gender Empowerment Measure

(GEM) scores, which attempts to quantify

inequalities in opportunities that exist between men

and women (World Bank, 2015; Moser, 2007). In

2002’s GEM figures, South Korea ranked 60th out of

65 countries (NationMaster, 2002). Compared to the

nation’s GDP figures, Korea’s gender empowerment

has not kept pace with its rapid economic growth. In

societies where women are not being overtly

suppressed in terms of educational access, it can be

difficult to understand whether issues with

empowerment and inequality exist. In South Korea’s

case, both enrolment and attainment numbers for

women surpassed 50 percent in 2010 to 2014 (OECD,

2010-2014). Therefore, one may argue that contrary

to low GEM rankings, the nation’s educational

policies have been effective in promoting gender

equality in education. But statistics can be misleading

and do not always reveal deeper underlying issues.

5 EMPOWERMENT THEORIES

Therefore, to better understand the disparity between

economic and empowerment development, I will

apply Alsop and Heinsohn’s (2005) analytical

framework to examine a variety of cultural, social,

and political forces that may be impacting the

empowerment of women in South Korea.

In their work for the World Bank, Alsop et al

(2005, p. 5) defined empowerment as ‘enhancing an

individual’s or group’s capacity to make choices and

transform those choices into desired actions and

outcomes’. Kabeer, another widely referenced

theorist, has interpreted empowerment to be ‘the

process by which those who have been denied the

ability to make strategic life choices acquire such an

ability’ (Kabeer, 1999, p. 435). The main difference

in the two conceptualizations of empowerment is that

one focuses on the enhancement of choices made,

while Kabeer more strongly relates lack of

empowerment to individuals who were denied

opportunities to make certain choices. I have chosen

to use Alsop and Heinsohn’s adaptation because it

seems to fit South Korea’s context more, given that

Korea is no longer a developing country and does not

outright deny women access to education or the labor

market (OECD, et al).

Empowerment as a concept and theory gained

traction in 2000, when the World Bank first

highlighted it as one of their development goals

(Ivasiuc, 2013). From a development perspective,

empowerment is used as a tool in spaces where the

‘poor’ are seen to be repressed in terms of

opportunities and choice due to their low economic

standing. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

have found empowerment strategies to be an effective

tool in reducing gaps in access to opportunities for the

economically disadvantaged (Narayan-Parker, 2002;

Rowlands, 1995). The World Bank has deployed over

1,800 empowerment-related development projects

since 2005 (Ivasiuc, 2013). The wide usage of the

concept and framework may be attributed to its loose

definition and the fact that it is open to interpretation

and allows for flexibility. Users of the framework

may have to adjust the scope and structure according

to their context and needs, a liberty I will also take

(Alsop et al, 2005; Medel-Anonuevo, 1995; Narayan-

Parker, 2002). Although the lack of a standard

definition can be seen as a weakness, Narayan

highlights its diversity as a framework, in that it can

address multiple values, has relevance at different

levels, and can be applied to individuals or groups:

Empowerment is of intrinsic

value…instrumental value. Empowerment is

relevant at the individual and collective level, and

can be economic, social, or political. The term

can be used to characterize relations within

households or between poor people and other

actors at the global level (Narayan-Parker, 2002,

p.10).

Although Narayan (2002, p.10) and other

academics working in education, gender, and

development tend to focus on empowerment

applications around the economically disadvantaged,

I do not see claims of ‘voicelessness’ and

‘powerlessness to negotiate better terms for

themselves’ as being exclusive to the poor. These

issues of suppressed empowerment can also be

applied to varying groups of different socioeconomic

and educational levels.

How Has Higher Education Inﬂuenced the Empowerment of Modern-Day South Korean Women?

6 DEFINING THE FRAMEWORK

The rest of the essay will be spent using the

framework to examine the plight of educated women

in South Korea. In looking at this specific segment of

society, I will seek to understand whether these

women are making empowered choices both when

entering higher education and after graduation, or

whether their choices are being restricted by lack of

agency.

This essay will draw on a simplified version of

Alsop and Heinsohn’s (2005) framework, which

encompasses three core components: (1) agency, (2)

opportunity structure, (3) degrees of empowerment.

Although Alsop et al (2005) designed the framework

to also be used as a tool for measuring and monitoring

empowerment projects, I will apply the framework

for analytical purposes only, and therefore will only

engage with such measurement concepts as ‘domains

(state, market, society)’ and ‘levels (local –

community, intermediate – between community and

national levels, macro - national)’ indirectly.

Domains and levels are used to categorize defined

measurements in a linear, tabular format. As I will not

be using their empowerment table templates, I will

not directly categorize empowerment by domains and

levels, but will instead include them discreetly

throughout my analysis.

For empowerment to occur under Alsop and

Heinsohn’s (2005) framework, both agency and

opportunity structures need to be examined. In

analyzing how agency and opportunity structures

engage, degrees of empowerment can be determined.

While agency focuses on the person’s capacity to

make choices, opportunity structures are the

‘institutional context in which choice is made’ and are

assessed through formal institutions (‘laws,

regulatory frameworks’) or informational institutions

(‘norms governing behavior’ and customs) (Alsop et

al, 2005, p. 4-9). At a basic level, agency refers to

whether individuals can imagine and conceptualize

different options that they may want to pursue.

Empowerment is achieved by either an individual or

a group when they have the ability to transform their

desired choices into desirable outcomes. To help

identify if agency is occurring and to what extent,

Alsop et al created ‘asset endowments’ or

‘psychological, informational, organizational,

material, social, financial, or human’ related asset

indicators (Alsop et al, 2005, p. 8). The intention is

that these seven broad asset indicators/endowments

can be used to identify and quantify areas that affect

and limit agency. In an example that was given in

their work, they described a woman of low

socioeconomic background who was deliberating

about whether to send her daughters to school. She

was being discouraged by her husband and school

staff because they saw educating women as a waste.

This example highlighted that an informal institution

– social influences – limited the mother’s agency to

make an empowered choice.

7 APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK

For the purposes of this essay, I will apply Alsop et

al’s framework in the following way. I will utilize the

below three degrees of empowerment (DoE)

questions as a lens to identify ways in which agency

may be limited in informal or formal institutions

(within opportunity structures) (Alsop et al, 2005, p.

62):

(1) whether a person has the option to make a

choice

(2) whether the person decides to make use of the

option to choose

(3) whether the person achieves the desired result

after making a choice

If the framework is applied in its most standard

sense at local and intermediary (regional) levels

within market and societal domains, a quick analysis

of degrees of empowerment might look like: (1) Can

South Korean girls go into higher education – yes

(OECD, et al), (2) Do South Koreans go into higher

education – yes (OECD, et al), (3) Are they able to

make desired choices after graduation – arguably no

(see evidence provided in section (1) DoE analysis).

However, in order to get a richer and deeper analysis,

I applied the DoE framework in a slightly different

manner. I have chosen to use the lens to assess the

empowerment of Korean women at different stages of

their lives, that being before and after higher

education attainment. Through this analysis, I will

demonstrate that while the standard application of the

framework may initially show a (3) or relatively high

level of empowerment, this may not be the case if the

context is examined through the three-part-lens that I

have framed below.

7.1 DoE Analysis: Do South Korean

Women Have the Option to Make

Educational Choices?

The concept of personal choice is not something that

is always easily discernable. How and why an

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

individual makes a choice can be linked to a number

of factors. For instance, choices can be a result of

familial, societal, and cultural influence, whether on

a conscious or subconscious level. These are just a

few of the many possible factors that lead an

individual to believe that she/he can or cannot do

something (Walker and Unterhalter, 2007).

And while tertiary attainment for women in Korea

is high, it is important to understand the underlying

influences at work as to why girls enter higher

education and choose what they study. In the Korean

context, agency appears to be affected by

psychological and social asset endowments due to

informal, cultural, and familial institutions. Even as

early as elementary school, Korean mothers are seen

as the academic caretakers/rulers of their children.

They wield tremendous power over their child’s

schooling and have an almost unhealthy focus over

their children’s’ educational journey and attainment

(Chung, Lee, H., Lee, J. and Lee, K., 2015, p. 904).

Although family structures are modernizing due to

Western influences, Confucian based practices still

dictate how families operate and make decisions

(Chang, 2003; Kyung‐ Sup and Min‐ Young, 2010;

Lee et al, 1996). Mothers are so concentrated on their

children’s academic performance that they often do

not know what is happening in their children’s lives

outside of school. Research has linked issues with

unhappiness and other behavioral problems in Korean

children with parents’ lack of compassion and

inability to help their children deal with the stress of

living in an ultra-competitive society (Chung et al,

2015). In this way, I see Korea’s competitive culture

as also being an inhibitor of agency, affecting girls at

psychological levels, in informal institutional

(family, societal) spaces. Overwhelming stress can

lead individuals to believe that they have no other

options and be less apt to seek out information

(another asset indicator) regarding life choices.

Another component influencing educational

choices can be linked to beliefs and norms around

marriages in Korea. Traditionally, the decision to

marry is one that is heavily influenced by both

parents. And even though families are adopting

Western ideologies, Korea has not departed from its

Confucian beliefs and traditional values still remain

prevalent in Korea’s modern society (Choi, 2011;

Kim 1996). Marriage rates for those considered of age

are at 90 percent, and parents still exercise their voice

when it comes to spousal choice. This includes having

a preference for daughter-in-laws who take charge of

household chores. And if they do enter the workforce,

careers in teaching/education are seen as highly

desirable (Choi, 2011). A successful marriage, which

is the goal of Korean parents, is often tied to social

status, high levels of education, and profession

(Chang, 2003; Choi, 2011). In 2005, 71 percent of

women graduated with education degrees,

representing a 0.1 percent change since 1998

(Vincent-Lancrin, 2008). Therefore, it could be

presumed from the aforementioned observations that

parents are exercising an unhealthy amount of

influence over their children’s way of thinking

(psychological and information asset indicators) and

decision-making processes and are either using

education as a vehicle for securing more attractive

marriages for their daughters and/or are influencing

their daughters to adopt these values into their own

belief systems.

Agency entails individuals first contemplating

different options and then making decisions about

which choices they want to make. While it is true that

there are no apparent formal institutions limiting

agency, like laws or regulatory frameworks, this does

not necessarily mean that empowered decisions are

being made. I would argue that if Korea’s female

graduates were truly empowered, then it would

appeal to common reasoning that the distribution of

degree choice would be more diversely spread out

across different types of fields, and not overly

concentrated on education. Girls may be so

indoctrinated by informal institutions like familial,

societal, and cultural pressures from a young age that

they may not be able to discern their own personal

preferences from what they were ‘informed’ to

believe. For full agency to occur, individuals should

bear the responsibility of setting life-goals for

themselves based on their preferences and should not

be unduly influenced or indoctrinated to choose one

path over another by other groups or norms (Walker

et al, 2007).

7.2 DoE Analysis: Do South Korean

Women Make Use of Their Option

to Choose?

The next question I will examine is, once women

receive their degrees, are they exercising higher

degrees of empowerment and ‘making use of their

option to choose’ (Alsop et al, 2005, p. 62)?

As stated in the introduction, among all OECD

countries South Korea has the smallest number of

educated females entering the labor force of all of the

countries assessed (Lee, 2014). Data has shown that

Korean women are not leveraging their degrees after

graduation and instead choose to get married and stay

at home (Chang, 2003). Being a stay at home wife or

mom certainly does not preclude someone from being

How Has Higher Education Inﬂuenced the Empowerment of Modern-Day South Korean Women?

empowered. If a woman desires to be a stay-at-home

mom over other options, including a career, then that,

too, can be an empowered choice. But when half of

Korea’s degree-holding female eligible labor force is

opting out of the workforce, then one may draw the

conclusion that empowered choices are not being

made (Draudt, 2016; KOSIS, 2017).

So what factors might be limiting agency? The

first informal institution limiting capacity of choice

can again be traced back to ‘patriarchal Confucian

culture’ which calls for the wife and/or mother to be

the main caretaker of the family and household, even

at the expense of her own career aspirations (Kim,

1996; Lee, 2014, p. 794). For decades, the patriarchal

ideology and Confucian roots were commonplace not

only in the home, but also permeated into the

workplace. While the women stayed at home, over 92

percent of male university graduates entered the

workforce. This created an unfair imbalance of

suitable jobs that were left for women. Female

graduates found themselves competing for secretary-

type roles, non-leadership positions, or jobs outside

of their degree of study (Lee, 2014). Between 2003

and 2008, the highest level of attainment of women

reaching managerial roles was 5 percent and the

highest level of attainment of women in professional

job roles was 10 percent (OECD, 2003-2008).

However, over time, this quandary of ‘uninteresting’

and ‘unchallenging jobs’, coupled with lack of

upward mobility in the workforce, created new spaces

of empowered thinking.

As women began to become more frustrated with

their predicaments and lack of agency, new trends

around marriage began manifesting. As modern

influences challenged core traditional societal values

more and more, women began to have new reactions

to their prolonged suppression of freedom and

agency. With gender discrimination in the workforce

beginning to improve, more women began to choose

to stay single, rebelling against informal opportunity

structures such as religious, societal, and cultural

norms. These shifts resulted in opening up more

opportunities for women to leverage their education

to become more financially self-sufficient (thus

positively influencing financial, psychological, and

social asset indicators). Women now wanted to wait

for the ‘right partner’ rather than engaging in an

unfulfilling marriage based on societal-prescribed

notions. This trend became so prevalent that a new

term ‘bihonyeoseong (non-marrying women) [was]

coined to describe the single women for whom

marriage is just a matter of personal choice’ (Chang,

2003, p. 603; Choi, 2011). And for those women who

were already married, some began to go against

Confucian ideals by separating or divorcing (Kyung‐

Sup et al, 2010; Lee, 2014). It can be argued that these

new trends represented informational, psychological,

social, and financial asset endowments. New Western

and modern ideologies (informational) influenced

how women valued themselves (psychological), and

inspired them to challenge traditional beliefs (social).

Gender-friendly changes in the workplace (informal

structure) opened up new opportunities and affected

women’s choices around money and independence

(financial and social) (Alsop et al, 2005; Kyung‐ Sup

et al, 2010).

Up until now, evidence to support informal related

opportunity structures has mainly been highlighted,

but these next few paragraphs will discuss some

formal institutions that can be seen as empowerment

influencers.

South Korea has made a concerted effort to build

a global reputation around their universities and

research. To bolster such aims, the government made

several major moves in the hopes of increasing their

university ranks including: (1) the Brain Korea 21, a

seven-year $2 billion program that was launched by

the Ministry of Education to promote academic-

industry relationships and capacity building, (2)

Internationalization and globalization policies to

promote the hiring of foreign professors and attract

foreign students, (3) Additional policies to counter

the fact that only 15.6 percent of Korea’s academic

positions were filled by women (Brender et al, 2006;

Kim, 2005). Despite these well-intentioned

initiatives, lack of enforcement around hiring-related

policies resulted in only a handful of foreign hires out

of the 400+ budgeted. The government had hoped that

the above initiatives would push universities from

their traditional ways of thinking to a more

democratic system. However, in reality, the policies

proved to be ineffective.

Although formal institutions intended to create

opportunity structures for women to make more

empowered decisions about their educational and

career choices, the new regulations and proposed

projects failed to overcome stronger informal social

and cultural related institutions. Korea’s traditional

cultural influences and Confucian ideology were too

deep-rooted and pervasive to allow for drastic change

within academic institutions (Brender et al, 2006;

Kim, 2005). With such a shortage of academic female

role models, it makes sense why female students were

not empowered to pursue higher education leadership

positions and overcome organizational (in

universities) and social (Confucian ideology) barriers

to full agency. Female academics were often

relegated to the periphery and held too little power to

ICES 2017 - 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences

instigate any real progress or change (Kim 2005).

Even the male professors who studied and lived

abroad did little to influence culture as they often

became more nationalistic upon return (Brender et al,

2006; Kim, 2005). Korea has been long known as a

homogeneous nation in terms of population and social

and cultural practices (Kyung-Koo, 2007). I believe

that this is an area of focus that the government must

continue to pursue if they want to see lasting and

substantial changes in empowerment of the female

population. As long as the males rooted in traditional

ideals continue to dominate teaching, academic, and

leadership positions, it is unlikely that homogeneous

molds in thinking, pedagogy, and content within

academic institutions will change (Kyung-Koo, 2007;

Moser, 2007). As pointed out by Jones, Presler-

Marshall, and Van Anh (2016, p. 552) empowerment

needs to be about changing belief-systems, not just

behaviors. For women to be able to exercise and

leverage their human asset endowment of education,

changes need to be made in informal related

opportunity structures in universities to match formal

institutional changes (Alsop et al, 2005). Instead of

training girls how to not make empowered decisions,

educational institutions with the right leadership and

content can just as easily teach girls what empowered

thinking means and how to go about making newly

empowered decisions moving forward.

7.3 DoE Analysis: Do South Korean

Women Achieve their Desired

Result After Making their Choice?

This question brings to the forefront a new trend that

is gaining momentum among the intellectually elite.

Dissatisfied with their situation after making certain

life choices, frustrated housewives who feel under-

utilized and who were begrudgingly forced into roles

of motherhood and marriage are looking for new

ways to fulfill themselves (Chang, 2013; Choi, 2011;

Lee, 2014). A group of women known as ‘mature

students’ (students older than 25) are now seeking to

exercise their agency to ‘correct’ or ‘make-up for’

unempowered choices they made earlier in life (Lee,

2014, p.794). Discontent housewives are now

choosing to exercise their agency by complementing

their higher degrees with further learning. Some are

returning to school to make up for missed

opportunities to attend university, due to marrying at

a young age, while other women are motivated by the

fact that less gender discrimination happens in

classrooms than it does in the workplace, and lastly

some women are hoping that further education will

lead to better careers and higher salaries (Lee, 2014).

Going back to Kabeer’s (1999) focus of denied

opportunities, it can be argued that when these

women looked back at their younger selves, they saw

themselves as having been deprived of agency.

Rather than let opportunity structures continue to

inhibit their agency, these intellectually elite women

found empowerment within themselves to make new

decisions and finally explore other alternative

lifestyles and career choices that they may initially

have thought were closed to them due to familial

responsibilities and social and cultural norms (Alsop

et al, 2005). In these cases, lack of agency and

freedom has actually triggered a level of

discontentment that has motivated women to change

their situation and trajectory and make empowered

decisions that are more closely representative of their

capabilities and desires (Lee 2014). This nicely

reinforces Heise’s supposition (in Jones, et al, 2016,

p. 541) that ‘it is easier to build new norms than it is

to eliminate old ones’.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The intent of this essay was to question to what extent

South Korean women were able to make empowered

choices concerning their higher education attainment

and life after schooling through an adapted version of

Alsop and Heinsohn’s (2015) empowerment

framework. Through this analysis, the essay

discovered that, generally speaking, young girls

experienced limited agency and therefore lacked

empowerment when it came to their educational

choices and paths. Girls were so influenced by

familial pressures and social and indoctrinated

cultural ideologies that they opted out of the

workforce due to marriage or motherly duties after

graduation, without much regard to alternative

possibilities.

At a national level, the Korean government tried

to rectify poor gender parity trends, specifically in

universities, by implementing measures and

programming that promoted culture and gender

diversity. Unfortunately, due to weak enforcement,

not much improvement resulted.

One of the surprising points the analysis

uncovered was that years of suppressed

empowerment actually instigated women to make

empowered decisions later in life. Wives and mothers

frustrated with their previous lack of empowered

decisions sought out other alternatives, like divorce,

new career aspirations, and even going back to school

to receive more education. This trend also resulted in

empowering younger generations by spurring a

How Has Higher Education Inﬂuenced the Empowerment of Modern-Day South Korean Women?

movement where women could choose to rebel

against cultural and social stigmas and remain single,

giving them the freedom to choose opportunities

more in line with their desires. It is important to note

that due to the brevity of this essay, not all influencers

of agency were examined. The examples highlighted

here were chosen to shed light on how multi-

dimensional empowerment issues are, and how they

are not necessarily static in nature.

With the economic development of Korea being

so rapid, it may not be fair to expect that all social

areas like gender empowerment would keep pace,

especially when empowerment may not translate

organically both linguistically or culturally into all

societies (Narayan-Parker, 2002). Therefore, while

drastic improvements in empowerment have not been

made in Korea, it is encouraging that women,

especially later on in life, are demonstrating more

empowered decision making and creating new norms

for empowerment.

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