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The Making of Super-women: Parental Leave and Women’s Work in South Korea

Sat, August 11, 10:30 to 11:30am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Floor: Level 5, Salon G

Abstract

Despite the growing concern that parental leave policies may reinforce traditional gender roles, little research has investigated how women themselves view and use such policies. Analyzing in-depth interviews with 64 college-educated young Korean mothers, we investigate in what ways leave-taking affects women’s career choices and shapes their ideals as workers and mothers. We demonstrate that although women’s involvement in family responsibilities increases during leave, they become more constrained by cultural and organizational demands for ideal workers after taking leave. Our findings show that, in the first place, mothers take leave only when they are committed to continue working. During the leave, they strategize about leave length in order to accommodate workplace expectations. When they return from leave, they try to compensate for their absence. Through this process, leave-takers construct a strengthened work devotion. Some eventually quit, but their newly developed commitment to the family plays less of a role in that than do strict work norms which make it difficult to compromise on their work commitment. Our findings reveal how the experience of leave-taking can lead women to aspire to be super-women by more strictly following the ideal-worker ideology while managing family responsibilities.

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