This year, 2016, South Korea reached another major milestone as the ratio of boys born compared to girls was at par with global averages, roughly 105 boys born for every 100 girls each year. In fact, since the introduction of ultrasound technology in the 1980s, fewer girls were born as testing became widespread. As I mentioned in my first lecture, a traditional patriarchal Confucian society and it son-preference has certainly contributed to such gender imbalances at birth. However, by the 1990s the South Korean laws not only allowed daughters to inherit an equal share of the inheritance. It prohibited doctors from revealing a baby's gender curbing selective abortions. It's taken more than 20 plus years, and recently Korean families are showing a preference for daughters. Despite leveling the playing field at birth, according to the Global Gender Gap Report of 2016, South Korea still ranks 116 out of the 144 countries, almost dead last in many categories. I want you all to take a closer look at this report, and focus on the country's scorecard and selected contextual data. It's quite clear that South Korean women have done fairly well in terms of educational attainment. Yet if one does a qualitative analysis of the field of higher education, one can see how these figures are somewhat misleading. For example, if you look carefully at the statistics, women continue to struggle to gain entrance in elite fields like STEM, as well as professional occupations such as lawyers, doctors, and university professors. One can also see that in areas of economic participation and opportunity, the figures are extremely low. While Korean women might have a healthy life expectancy, they are almost at the bottom when it comes to political empowerment as well as economic leadership. Another discrepancy is in female leadership, where South Korea ranks very high relative to other countries, because it is one of the few countries, even among OECD nations, to elect the female president. Yet as we've witnessed this past year, President Park's scandals have gotten many women worrying of the backlash and misogynistic stereotypes, where women leaders will find it much more difficult to gain prominent positions in the future. What kind of misogynistic stereotypes do you think men will use to discourage women from seeking positions of power, such as running a large company or a bank, let alone the presidency? Unlike the U-shaped projectory for men, who typically get employed in their mid-twenties and retire at the mandatory age of 65, a woman's employment pattern in South Korea is M shaped. A Korean woman usually gets hired at her 20s, takes time off at her early 30s because of childbirth or marriage, and returns to the workforce in their 40s as non regular workers, making it impossible to maintain her job at one place, let alone get a promotion because of these social barriers. Despite these obstacles and deep divides between men and women, South Korea has certainly had a landmark year for gender diversity in the IT fields with Naver and Kakao promoting female executives. I'd like you to read the short article in Forbes on the growing number of female entrepreneurs in the IT fields, and how they are trying to break the proverbial glass ceiling. While the digital gender gap still exists, it's inspiring to see young women make these strides in becoming the trailblazers of the IT fields. Just this past year, in two of the SKY schools, SNU and Yonsei, a lesbian was elected president of the student council. Likewise, twilight divorces of women who are in their 50s have increased significantly in the past couple of years, as the stigma of divorce has begun to wear off in this Confucian society. More telling is that a growing number of women are not only financially capable, but there have been changes in inheritance and pension laws.
