Abstract
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This is a study of family policy in Korea in 1990 with a focus on the maternity protection policy and the efforts to abolish the family-head system institutionalized in family law. The essay evaluates each policy agenda as follows: (1) Throughout the 1990s, women's movements rather than the legislature have made an initiative in proposing and articulating the issues and agendas on the women's policy. (2) While maternity protection policy was successful in setting the policy agendas, it tends to be lacking the conceptual foundation. In relation to this orientation, the viewpoints of the policy was largely limited by cost issue, rather than maternity being redefined. (3) By looking at maternity protection in terms of women's right for employment outside the home, the context of family tends to be neglected in the policy. (4) The family-head system's effects through the institution of patri-lineage, patri-local marriage, and patriarchal head-ship need to be examined more than the side-effect such as the imbalance in sex-ratio. The family-head system forces women to produce a son in order to continue the family lineage, and thus "naturalizes" child-bearing in the family. Its abolition will enhance women's and family's right to choose to have a child. Abolition of the system will also diminish "the-taken-for-granted" activities of mothering and promote social sharing of mothering responsibilities.
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| Keywords:
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Korea family policy, maternity protection, family head system, women's movement, hoju, family policy, family law, maternity, hoju system, patri-lineage, patrilocal-marriage, patriarchy, caring activities
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| About the author(s)
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Yang Hyunah (Yang, Hyeon-a) is Researcher of Brain Korea 21 (BK21) Law Program, Seoul National University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research, U.S. in 1998. She has published several articles including "Revisiting the Issue of Korean 'Military Comfort Women': Question of Truth and Positionality" (1997) and "Colonial Invention of the 'Custom' in Korean Family Law: the Question of Lost Temporality" (in Korean) (2000). Through the study on family law and Korean military comfort women, her research has thematized the interrelatedness of gender, coloniality, and culture in Korea. (E-mail: bori19@chollian.net)
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