Juyeon
Park
With Professor Miliann Kang (Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, UMass Amherst), I am currently co-authoring two articles about highly-educated South Korean working mothers’ work and family balance. Our primary focus is to identify which external supports (i.e., family-friendly employers and policies, job security, family members’ assistance) Korean mothers, especially those in public sectors, need to continue their career in the Korean labor market.
In our paper recently published at Gender, Work & Organization, we argue that Korean (public school) teacher-mothers have achieved a “work-family alignment” by relying on the government’s reliable protection of their job and relatively good family policies, although they need to constantly realign their motherhood and career, often relying on their parents’ support for childcare.
In another paper we are currently writing, we discuss the benefits and limitations of protected and feminized occupations (i.e., public school teachers and government employees) for Korean mothers in detail. By doing so, we aim to contribute to the theorization of "glass bowl" occupations, particularly in the context of contemporary Korea.