As soon as my eyes landed on the topic of this essay, I was fraught with uncertainty and hesitation. If truth be told, I seem to have never experienced sexism and gender inequality that bothered me. Being a student in a single-sex school, I see girls of my age dominating the sports ground and triumphing in a host of competitions, taking up leadership positions on campus. We have had our first female Chief Executive after 20 years since the handover, ridding us of the stereotype that the female sex is the weaker sex. I feel fortunate to be a girl living in Hong Kong in this day and age, and yet, I am asked to probe into the difficulties that females in Hong Kong encounter today. I therefore scrutinize my life and observations, and I uncovered that such a sense of satisfaction could be the biggest challenge. Are we authentically content with what we have now, or is there still an immense curb on women?
Read MoreIn China, one of the major challenges and issues women or girls face is patriarchy. Sadly, bias in family status and discrimination in the workplace are still common in our society.
Read More“Becoming yourself is really hard and confusing, and it’s a process. It’s often not cool to be the person who puts themselves out there.” - Emma Watson
It is indeed true that society cares too much about unnecessary conventions for women, and we, as females, care too much about society’s perception of us.
Read MoreThe idea of gender—not experience, initiative, work-ethic—but gender preventing qualified individuals from pursuing ambitious goals is incredulous. In the international school I was raised in, success basically came hand-in-hand with merit and hard work—as it should be. Ambitious girls took advanced math courses, led entrepreneurial clubs, and participated in scientific research because they wanted to—sometimes in greater numbers than boys.
Read MoreA headline on a morning news show caught my eyes. The chief of the Tokyo Olympics had expressed annoyance towards women in his speech, stating that “women talk too much” because “they are competitive”. What was wrong with women being “competitive”, I wondered. Why was it annoying when women talked too much? Even though I knew this man was not addressing me in his speech, I nonetheless felt my lips tightening as if the comment really had been made about me, about my passion for making speeches, about my ambitious personality. At the same time, my face took on a competitive shade of red as it occurred to me that I lived in a country where people responsible for representing the nation were instead degrading women in public.
Read MoreBeing the only one in class who couldn’t bring her mother to school for Mother’s Day was definitely not a joyful experience for an eight year old. My mother couldn’t come to school that day because she had to work. I watched in silence that day, as every other kid in class recited their poems while their mothers took photos and smiled proudly at them at the back of the class. When my mother returned home from work late at night that day, I let out the tears that I have been holding all day long, and screamed at her saying ‘I wish you were normal!’ Normal. Back then, to an eight year old child who knew nothing about a glass ceiling, hardworking businesswomen were not ‘normal’.
Read More“What a great opportunity! Don’t hesitate to take the chance," said my mom.
A few months ago, I happened to overhear a conversation between my aunt and my mom when they were discussing my aunt’s future career path. My maternal aunt, a former journalist and a professor at a university near Seoul, had been offered the position as the first female dean at the university. However, some of the male professors were reluctant to support her nomination, largely because she was a woman. Moreover, when my aunt received the proposal, she first and foremost thought, “If I take the position, which doubles my work, would I still be able to take good care of my young children?”
Read MoreMy childhood ran on a conveyor belt of nannies. Even with a lineup of women helping her, my working mom regretted thinking she could have the best of both motherhood and career. “Maybe I should have chosen one over the other,” she tells me now. The generation succeeding her expresses even greater disillusionment. Among increasingly individualistic Koreans struggling with modernity in a collectivist society, millennial women feel conflicted between raising a family and pursuing a career. Stuck between progress and tradition, these women see a dim future on both fronts. Consequently, the fertility rate is falling near one (the lowest OECD level), and the gender employment gap for those aged 15-64 is the fourth largest among OECD countries at 18%.
Read MoreThroughout our life as human beings, we are bound to encounter pressuring environments. In school, some may feel the need to demonstrate outstanding academic performance to please their parents; in social settings, the pressure to succeed and prosper in life with a stable career is a common struggle among many. Yet in South Korea, there exists another breed of societal duress that haunts women and girls of all ages: The pressure to become beautiful. While it is true that women in other countries are also commonly influenced to polish their appearances, the social pressure Korean women face is a whole another concept that demands attention. Those who refuse to conform to K-beauty are confronted with severe societal oppression that enforces submission to a defined idealistic appearance, thus leaving no room for diversification.
Read MoreAs marriages are put off by young adults and the total fertility rate has dropped to the lowest in the world at 0.84 in 2020, South Korea’s population has begun to naturally decline with the number of deaths exceeding the number of births for the first time since records have been kept. In response to this existential crisis, the government has enacted a myriad of measures to encourage both marriage and childbirth, which unfortunately have failed miserably. However, one measure that has had success is international marriages which accounted for 9.2% of total marriages in 2019 and has risen every year since local municipalities started to subsidize private matchmaking agencies and rural areas such as South Jeolla Province have made welfare payments of $5,000 to Korean men over the age of 35 who marry foreign brides. The average age of husbands is 43.6 and the average age of foreign brides is 25.2.
Read MoreIt is no secret that many women feel conscious about the way they look. However, is it necessary for society to extend their vulnerability to the job market? Oemo jisang juui, a Korean term for ‘look-ism’ is a standard practice in the employment process for Korean women. A 2016 survey from Saramin, a Korean online job portal, found that more than 60% of Human Resources Personnel feel that one’s appearance does influence the applicant’s candidacy, especially for females. Thus, many Korean women find themselves in a situation where they are pressured to change their appearance to seek employment. The Korean job application process is already stressful, but the pressure for women to physically look good in their resume and interview adds a new dimension of stress. Over time, many Korean women became ‘numb’ to the discriminatory employment system and decided to take matters into their own hands by turning to professional photographers and even plastic surgery.
Read MoreBeing a feminist is to be a person who changes society by claiming that women and men exist equally. I represent myself as a feminist, with pride, since my parents have carefully nurtured me not to internalize the gender stereotypes inside. Since childhood, learning the identity which was being discriminated, such as gender, I recognized that women take the largest number among minorities, and that gender discrimination spreads both in public and private sector.
Read MoreAm I beautiful enough to be liked?
The high expectations and unrealistic standards teenage girls have to face daily
“Mirror, mirror on the wall…”
Read MoreDecember 8, 2020. I thought it was just another lazy Tuesday afternoon at home as I scrolled through the news feeds of my different social media accounts. It was apparent that 9 months of COVID-19 lockdown had taken its toll on me as I stared, glassy-eyed, at my phone’s screen. Suddenly, a news headline jolted me out of my boredom-induced trance.
Read MoreTo quote the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself.”1 Making the decision to bear and raise a child is not an easy task - it requires great amounts of effort, perseverance, and determination, if one wants to do it well. Mothers often struggle through sleepless nights and have to deal with the responsibilities that come with properly raising members of the next generation. This being said, while motherhood is an honorable thing, one problem arises within the Philippines - the rising number of women who have the unwanted responsibility of becoming mothers thrust on them.
Read MoreI am a constant reminder of my mother’s mistake. There have been many incidents wherein she’d tell me, out of anger, that I am worthless and that I should just pack my bags and live elsewhere. But the most striking times are when she would not have heightened emotions at all. My mother would tell me casually, “You are the root of my suffering. I wish I never had you.” My eyes would lock onto her and I would nod slowly, and walk away as I let the words of rejection fragment the foundation of my childhood, bearing fruit to insecurity and self-hatred.
Read MoreAs someone who grew up on the internet, I’ve always been aware of the underlying risks and dangers of using the internet, let alone how anonymity can give people the courage to persecute and full-on disrespect others online. This is evident especially in the Philippines, wherein it is almost an obligation to have a Facebook account. However, deeply rooted in online Filipino communities is a pattern of significantly male behavior that deprives women and girls of their online freedom and safety.
Read MoreRagged breaths echo around the room, the musky scent of sweat accompanied by the constant banging of the headboard to the adjacent wall. Cries of pleasure resonate throughout the four walls of the dilapidated bedroom. Two beings synchronized in an unpredictable yet rhythmic pattern, naïve to the possible consequences. Yet nine months later, she holds a miniature hand in her palm, but no one to hold hers. She’s only fifteen.
Read MoreAs I stood precariously on my desk, I reached for my copy of Filipina author Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo’s Catch a Falling Star, which was tucked into the very side of my upper-wall bookshelf. What possessed me to revisit the short story collection from my Grade 7 English class, I’ll never know. Surely it wasn’t for escapism, as the stories are undeniably realistic. When I first read “Beautiful Beth,” (96-110) my memory was already saturated with news of women kidnapped and raped and murdered. A high school sophomore being married off to her rapist after her being abducted was, however, shockingly novel to me.
Read MoreImagine that you have to marry because all you desire in life is going to university. You’re the biggest child of five, dearth of mother, and of a father who is mentally absent. You’re caring, yet you also want to have a chance in life, enough to be independent of the shackles that enroot you at home. So you make the biggest bid of your life and you marry a man who assures you education in exchange for being a loyal “wife.” This is one of the instances, an innocuous one, of a girl from Turkey’s rural skirts, who exchanges her life for illusory escapades, one that bears beatings, insults, and invisible scars.
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