Mar 1, 2009

Gender discrimination problem in korea (Donghyuk Na)

I think that Korea has many problems due to its speed development during short time, but the worst social problem in Korea is gender discrimination.

When I was in Korea during a last summer vacation, I saw a middle aged man and a woman with her daughter were arguing. Though just simple arguing, the old man keep using the word "woman" during his speaking. For example, “Does any woman mean to defy man?? If woman is bad-tempered, she gives birth to a daughter. That was a right saying." and so on.
Although the woman’s giving birth to a daughter has nothing to do with the reason to their argument, he was making her angry by saying so.

Besides, there are so many similar examples. When female driver goes slowly, or makes accident, usually man is speaking like this way, “You should cook in your home, instead of driving a car in the road." This situation has been seen easily in Korea. Furthermore, in Korea, there is a word such as "Women’s high school", but no word like "Men’s High school".
Most Korean people usually speak the word "man" prior to the word "woman". This is a sharp contrast the western rhetoric such as "Ladies, Gentleman"

The most basic solution is that people change their mind.
Of course, it is very difficult. Therefore, to accomplish it, it should be done in step-by-step manner.
First, in individual base, "Men shouldn't ignore women, and women shouldn’t depend on Men. Second, companies should throw away such a stereotypic mind that men is superior to women, giving equal opportunity to any gender. Third, Government should provide the same education regardless of gender. If these solutions are carried out very well, I'm sure that Korea will be the most gender-equality country.

1 comment:

Leslie said...

As I think any change starts with us. There are not people who say this. They are we who think like this. No one is perfect in this world. Everything is either developing or decaying. To change people and their mentality, we need to change our selves and our eye sights. Everything is in our minds. Otherwise the world is really very beautiful.