VOLUME 3 (2001) - ISSUE 6 (WINTER)

Asian Crisis, Class, and Patriarchy in Korean Society

by Kwang-Yeong SHIN

SUMMARY

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.


KEYWORDS

Asian Economic Crisis - Unemployment -  Social Class - Gender - Marriage - Patriarchy


AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION

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.


HOW TO CITE THIS SITE:

Author Name (Year), “Title”, in: The International Scope Review, Volume Number, Issue Number, TSCF Editions, Brussels.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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. 

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