Women In The 1920's

Before the 1920s, under the colonial rules of Japan, the Korean male intellectuals claimed women’s equal rights. The Korean male intellectuals needed the new role of women for the nation building and strengthening. The male’s rhetoric of equal rights enabled women to access to educations. The practice of education bound women “to the welfare of men” (29). Given equal rights, women still remained in the domestic arena as “good wife, wise mother.”

In the 1920s, when intellectual “New Women” began to engage in creating gender discourse, they incorporated women’s freedom and equal rights into the women’s new roles in social and political sphere. It means New Women claimed that women should become the subject of their rights and freedom and to

They all aimed that, beyond “good wife, wise mother”, women expanded their roles to social and national level. Kim states, “We are [rightful] members of human society and the family” (31). Yi states, women should strive “to become a decent worker for society, to become a good companion for one’s family” (37). Im claims it is women’s responsibility to “call for women’s liberation on their own” and to “improve the lower-than-zero status of women” for “true happiness in human society” (38, 39). In these statements, New Women reveal their hope to be recognized as not only members of the family, but also workers for society, and the contributors for the colonized nation. Furthermore, in order to justify women’s new role in the public arena, New Women emphasized that women are called up for the nation strengthening. To illustrate, Kim Wŏnju states, “Our relationship to the Korean nation is significant” and Yi Chŏnghŭi writes, “Especially in the Korean situation, we expect a lot from you, and we all have great duties and responsibilities” (31, 37). New Women signifies the relationship between women and the nation and implies new roles of women as citizens belonging to Korea. New roles of ideal women should be engaged in the public sphere because women should respond to the nation and its crisis with a sense of

All of them agree that women should prove women’s equal and independent standing through their action. However, Kim and Yi more emphasize women’s action while Im focuses on the change of social and political relations with men. That is, Kim and Yi claimed women’s enlightenment as the tool to construct women’s new roles whereas Im identified the change of the women’s status in social customs and legal terms. Specifically, Kim asserts that women should achieve self-awakening because women equipped with “education, work, and responsibility” would not be negligible by the family and the society. Thus, women’s enlightenment is necessary to expand their roles in the public sphere. In the same vein, Yi states, “freedom can only be meaningful when one is aware of duty, responsibility, justice, humanity, and prosperity all” (37). In the arguments, Yi indicates the importance of women’s awareness and insights to exercise their freedom. It means, only through enlightenment, women could apply their individual rights into the public sphere. Enlightenment would lead women to take the social and national roles. However, Im asserts, in order to expand their roles in the national level, women should be liberated first from the miserable status of gender relations in hierarchy structure. She states, “present social institutions and old customs” are responsible “for degrading women’s