Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Reviews
being a woman </3 pain </3
cried loads <3
I know this book is supposed to show you the reality of the misogyny is South Korea, but I really can't feel the struggle from this book. The writing is so dry and uninspiring, I feel like the writer try so hard to be 'raw' but it doesn't quite capture the emotion.
i am so enraged right now
I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT ENDING WHATTTTTTT
Underneath it all is pain.
Kim Jiyoung's experience is one shared universally, so writing about it honestly isn’t anything new or surprising to any other woman, but it’s difficult and honest and radicalizing nonetheless. Written in a tone that’s emotionally numbing and clinical, backed with real news articles from South Korean presses, Cho Nam-joo illustrates the journey of a woman going mad from a powerlessness and a downward-projected fate she’s possessed since even before she was born. She details the unspoken and openly demanded expectations of women in the home, workplace, and society. Everywhere, women are viewed as both too much and not enough, mentally and physically stretched far too thin to maintain a sense of self.
And yet in Cho’s depiction of the tragedy that is the female experience, there exists a glimmer still in the fact that this is very much real and shared. Beauty exists in daughters that help their siblings out when they realize what their mothers carry, in strangers that recognize a scared girl’s call for help in crises that don’t otherwise concern them, in one woman’s demand for action for the sake of all the women beside her affected by injustice. Beauty exists in the light of a community that uplifts and heals each other. Ultimately, as bleak as the circumstances are, I don’t find this story or its message to be as such. In the eyes of Kim Jiyoung, I see hope in a future still being molded by women unafraid to get their hands dirty if it eases the load of those beside her in a common struggle. And that’s the most beautiful thing.
A very important book content-wise but still meh. Maybe a lot of nuance is lost due to translation. I also never realised the full extent of how much Korea just sucks ass, esp if you're a woman
This book is the story of Jiyoung, a 30-year old something mother who suffers from some sort of nervous breakdown and her background story gives a lot of insights about how does it feel to be a woman in a strong patriarchal society in South Korea. Must read for women!
4.5
4.5 ⭐ someone add this book to both the korean literature canon and feminist literature canon
I desperately wanted to love this book. It centres the mundane to detail the effects of systemic misogyny on one woman's life in South Korea so covers a very important topic and one I am particularly passionate about. But there is one huge issue with the book! It is *very* dry!!!! Whilst the reasoning behind this becomes quite clear towards the end, I found it really difficult, even painful, to actually get through the book. I found myself putting it down repeatedly and reaching for others in the long month that it took me to finish it. This is really unfortunate because the book invites you to reflect on the countless ways misogyny impacts women's lives and could have made for a very important read for anyone, especially men (and women who have yet to grapple with this topic).
I love how Korean fiction seems to have gotten me out of my last two stress/anger-induced reading slumps ! Also I for once can say I literally read this book in one afternoon, probably my lowest time to page ratio ever
** spoiler alert ** Such a greaaaaat book!! I loved every single chapters from it. Feels like i haven’t read a book this good in a long time and i couldn’t be more grateful to have read this one because all the sexual harassment topics were very real & raw in working/office environment for women up to this day.
the suppressed female rage is so real
I feel bad about giving this book 3 stars, it’s more 3.5 stars to be exact. The book portrayed real-life scenarios that anyone can experience at the hands of men which was insightful but the actual plot of the book was a little boring.
Tan real que duele 😭
i really enjoyed reading this book. it’s a very relatable one as this still happen in the world we live in today where men are better options other than women.
the fact that this isn’t a real biography is wild
kim jiyoung, born 1982 is a very moving story about what misogyny feels like and how much of a toll it actually is on a woman.
kim jiyoung (and the other women around her) have faced misogyny before they were even born. from the regret of unimportant relatives that the child is a daughter, from the mistreatment of daughter in the family with a son, to sexual harrassement and double standards in school to the glass ceiling and other mistreatments in the workforce, a woman is born to suffer in the society that we know of.
this is a great start if you want to further your understanding of feminist theory; not that this piece is a theory text, but it makes you angry and frustrated and it can be a segue to other reading and doing the work to understand the patriarchy and why feminism is still a necessary movement.
what is deeply unsettling, but very real, is that in the end the male psychiatrist talks about how hard it is being a woman and how he wasn't aware of it before his wife had to deal with social 'consequences' of being a mother. and yet, on the very last page, he is still a misogynist acting like a woman leaving her job is more of an inconvenience to him than it is devastating to the woman in a predominantly misogynistic society.
** spoiler alert ** I read this book within 24 hours, just squeaking in my book goal for this month. 👌 I admittedly picked this up because I was born in 1982 and was curious about parallels and differences between my life and that of this fictional/real-ish character who would've experienced the same life phases when I did. The prose is simplistic, but elegant. The one English word I didn't know wasn't spare - while niche, it was creatively used. That word was "antediluvian," by the way. The book didn't need dressing-up with big words. I found it more convincing with less flowery language - it felt like a diary written about the main character by an interested observer. The simple language lays bare all the little sexist microaggressions this character experiences day after day, from birth to death. They're not agonized over, though, which indicates how normal that sexism is. Nobody's clutching pearls here, not even the narrator. However, we know Jiyoung's inner dialog shows she's infuriated and sick of it, but feels trapped. A majority of women in the book avoid "making trouble" by brushing aside all the little jabs and offenses over time. I only wish the author went into Jiyoung's present more so we could know how her life continues and how her condition progresses or changes.
someone add this book to both the korean literature canon and feminist literature canon
This book made me realize what life has in store for me as a woman. It is terrifying.
i laughed i cried and goddamn did i relate i love this book with my whole heart
the feral rage after reading this book. every man must mandatorily read this book even for once in his lifetime.
Highlights
Help out? What is it with you and ‘helping out?’ You’re going to ‘helpout’ with chores. ‘Help out’ with raising our baby. ‘Help out’ with finding me a new job. Isn’t this your house, too? Your home? Your child? And if I work, don’t you spend my pay, too? Why do you keep saying ‘help out’ like you’re volunteering to pitch in on someone else’s work?”
The percentage of female employees who use maternity leave has increased from 20 percent in 2003 to more than half in 2009, and four out of ten still work without maternity leave.11 Of course, there are many women who have already left their jobs due to marriage, pregnancy, or childbirth, and have not been included in the statistical sample of maternity leave. The percentage of female managers has also increased steadily but slowly from 10.22 percent in 2006 to 18.37 percent in 2014, but it’s not even two out of ten yet.
Doesn’t matter if they’re new or the youngest—they never do anything they’re not told to do. But why do women simply take things upon themselves?”
People who pop a painkiller at the smallest hint of a migraine, or who need anaesthetic cream to remove a mole, demand that women giving birth should gladly endure the pain, exhaustion, and mortal fear. As if that’s maternal love.
She couldn't win: exercising all the rights and utilizing the benefits made her a free-loader, and fighting tooth and nail to avoid the accusation made things harder for colleagues in a similar situation.
Onto the feelings left unsaid for so long that they were desiccated and crackling, a tiny spark of a flame fell and instantly reduced the most shining romance of youth to ashes.
soooo nicely written
Seungyeon always said girls don’t need special treatment—they just want the same responsibilities and opportunities.
She knew better than anyone what it was like to give up on one’s dreams for the sake of the family, having made that sacrifice herself.
oh, this hits too close to home
“You’re right. In a world where doctors can cure cancer and do heart transplants, there isn’t a single pill to treat menstrual cramps.” Her sister pointed at her own stomach.
“The world wants our uterus to be drug-free. Like sacred grounds in a virgin forest.”
Do laws and institutions change values, or do values drive laws and institutions?
What do you want from us? The dumb girls are too dumb, the smart girls are too smart, and the average girls are too unexceptional?
Why do I have to deny myself something I want right now to prepare for a future that may or may not come?
»Jiyoung, versuche dir bitte auch einmal vorzustellen, was du dadurch gewinnen kannst, und versteife dich nicht nur darauf, was du alles verlieren wirst. Wie bedeutungsvoll und bewegend es doch ist, Eltern zu werden. Selbst wenn alle Stricke reißen, falls wir also niemanden finden, der auf unser Kind aufpassen kann, und du deshalb zu arbeiten aufhören müsstest, brauchst du dir keine Sorgen zu machen. Ich werde nicht von dir verlangen, dass du Geld verdienst.« »Und du, was verlierst du dann?« »Wie bitte?« »Du meinst, ich solle nicht nur an das denken, was ich verlieren würde. Ich werde vielleicht alles verlieren, meine Jugend, meine Gesundheit, mein soziales Umfeld genauso wie meine Arbeitsstelle, meine Kollegen, meine Freunde und meine Zukunft, ja alles. Aber was verlierst du?«
According to reports, more than half of the women who quit their jobs are unable to find new work for more than five years. Even if they do manage to find new work, it is quite common for them to end up with jobs that are more menial than their previous employment. Compared to the jobs they had before childbirth, the ratio of women working in places with four or fewer employees doubles. Fewer women get manufacturing and office jobs, while a greater number end up in the hotel industry, restaurant business and sales. Frequently, the pay also decreases.
according to statistics, a stay-at-home mother with a baby under the age of two has four hours and ten minutes a day to herself, and a mother who sends her baby to daycare has four hours and twenty-five minutes, which makes only a fifteen-minute difference between those two groups. This means mothers can’t rest even when they send their baby to daycare. The only difference is whether they do the housework with their baby beside them or without.
In 2014… one in five married women in Korea quit their job because of marriage, pregnancy, childbirth and childcare, or the education of their younger children. The workforce participation rate of Korean women decreases significantly before and after childbirth. Its percentage starts at 63.8 for women aged between twenty and twenty-nine, drops to 58 per cent for women aged thirty to thirty-nine, and increases again to 66.7 per cent for women over forty.
In the late 1990s, the dispute over the hoju system (the traditional family registration scheme, in which all members of a family must be registered under the patriarch) began in earnest with the emergence of organisations arguing for its abolition. Some people publicly used both of their parents' surnames, and a few celebrities revealed their painful childhood memories of being picked on for having a different family name to their fathers. At the time, a very popular TV show about a single mother at risk of losing custody of her child, whom she'd been raising all on her own, to a deadbeat dad taught Jiyoung about the absurdity of the hoju system. But there were still those who thought its abolition would turn blood relations into strangers and make Korean society savage.
The hoju system was finally abolished in January 2008 and replaced with a new law. This was possible after the Constitutional Court found hoju incompatible with the constitution’s gender equality clause in February 2005. Today, there is no such thing as ‘family registry’, and people are living their lives with the new individual identification system. It’s not compulsory for a newborn to take the patriarch’s last name any more, and a couple has the option to decide - upon signing their marriage registration - to give the mother’s surname and family origin to their children. Technically, it is possible, but there have been only 200 cases in which children took their mother’s name since the abolition of the hoju system in 2008.
The gender pay gap in Korea is the highest among the OECD countries. According to 2014 data, women working in Korea earn only 63 per cent of what men earn; the OECD average percentage is 84. Korea was also ranked as the worst country in which to be a working woman, receiving the lowest scores among the nations surveyed on the glass-ceiling index by the British magazine The Economist.
The percentage of female employees who use maternity leave has increased from 20 per cent in 2003 to more than half in 2009, and four out of ten still work without maternity leave. Of course, there are many women who have already left their jobs due to marriage, pregnancy or childbirth, and have not been included in the statistical sample of maternity leave. The percentage of female managers has also increased steadily but slowly from 10.22 per cent in 2006 to 18.37 per cent in 2014, but it's not even two out of ten yet.
In 2005… a survey by a job search website found that only 29.6 per cent of new employees at 100 companies were women, and it was even mentioned as a big improvement. Another survey conducted in the same year showed that, among recruiting managers of fifty large corporations, 44 per cent of respondents chose that the ‘would rather hire male to female candidates with equivalent qualifications’, and none chose ‘would hire women over men’.
While the economy remained bad and college students got by with part-time work and help from parents whose job security still hung in the balance, college tuition fees (frozen during the financial crisis) climbed as if to make up for lost time. In the 2000s, the cost of college tuition increased by over twice the consumer inflation rate.