Cause and Effect World

What the status of girls in Korea tells us about women working in the US

Wow!  Girls are thriving in South Korea. Even though the ratio of boy to girl births is still out of wack (107.4 boys to every 100 girls, which is considered above normal as compared with rates in other parts of the world), it is far down from the peak of 116.5 boys for every 100 girls in 1990, according to a World Bank study and reported by the New York Times.

So, how is it that centuries of tradition have changed in a few short years?    

“The most important factor in changing attitudes toward girls was the radical shift in the country’s economy that opened the doors to women in the work force as never before and dismantled long-held traditions, which so devalued daughters that mothers would often apologize for giving birth to a girl.”

So, what does that have to do with us, you ask? 

Hillary Clinton got in a lot of trouble for saying she could have stayed home and baked cookies; conservatives pilloried Hillary for demeaning the role of motherhood in our society and regularly call out for women to stay at home to raise children even though it puts their lifetime earnings at risk and can mean impoverishing themselves in old age.  Yet, conservatives say that it is selfish for women to put their own adult needs over the needs of their children.

However, it turns out that baby girls grow up to be women (!) and that if women are not valued in a society, that girls are also not valued.  Strange, but true.  So, when conservatives say women should sacrifice themselves ‘for the sake of the children,’ they are actually promoting behaviors that put girls at risk (as well as the women that those girls will become - that is, if they actually make it).

Now, in the interests of full disclosure: I have a dog in this fight.  I am a woman and used to be a little girl, so one could argue that I am not completely objective.  However, men have a stake in this too - it turns out that in South Korea, those working daughters are more likely to take care of both parents (father and mother) than their brothers are.

So, it seems like a win/win proposition for pretty much everyone except for the boys and young men, who just aren’t going to get this ultimate ‘affirmative action’ going forward.  Poor babies are going to actually have to compete with their sisters.  We’ll see if they’re up to it.