This article explores the class-specific and gender-specific effects of the economic crisis of the end of the nineties in Korea. The foreign exchange crisis generated massive layoff and unemployment. It disclosed the implicit rules of recruitment and layoff which were associated with class and gender. The working class and married women were the most vulnerable to unemployment. However, married women in search for an alternative source of income increased simultaneously their participation to the labor force. All this entailed a paradoxical reconfiguration of gender relations: social patriarchy was reinforced, while familial patriarchy was undermined.
Asian Economic Crisis - Unemployment - Social Class - Gender - Marriage - Patriarchy
Kwang-Yeong SHIN is a professor of Sociology at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Korea. He has published widely on class structure and class mobility, the political economy of economic growth, and comparative labor movement. Pr Shin is researching on job mobility during the economic crisis and the impact of neo-liberal economic regime on labor market instability in Korea.
Author Name (Year), “Title”, in: The International Scope Review, Volume Number, Issue Number, TSCF Editions, Brussels.
This article is a revised version of a paper presented to the Conference on Transitions in Asia Pacific Societies, 4th Conference of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association, 14-16 September 2000, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. This research was financially supported by Chung-Ang University.
All work published in The International Scope Review is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any manner or in any medium – unless written consent is given by The Social Capital Foundation represented by its President, unless the author’s name and the one of The International Scope Review as the first publication medium appear on the work or the excerpt, and unless no charge is made for the copy containing the work or excerpt.
Any demands for obtaining consent for reproduction should be sent to sg@socialcapital.is
 |
This is a PDF document.You may need Acrobat Plugin to view it. |
