Study on the Differentiation of Women's Movement Organizations of Korea in the 1980s

Abstract

After the liberation, the women's movements in Korea mainly focused on the improvement of women's status in the society until the 1980s. The movements of the 1960s particularly aimed to approach the gender equality in education, employment and politics. However, women's movement of Korea began to change with a different aspect in the 1980s. In the 1980s, women's movement meant continuously working towards eliminating the basic social economical structure which discriminated, suppressed and exploited women against men, whereas women's movement organizations meant the groups that practiced distinct goals, ideologies, and programs of such women's movement. Thus, women's movement in the 1980s began to be differentiated from previous women's movement, new women's movement and others. The new women's movement, in particular, held various ideologies, goals and activities, and it approached women's issue in its own distinctive way on one hand and supported social class movement on the other hand. This particular study aims to investigate the differentiation of women's movement through the materialization of women's movement organizations, focusing especially women's movement that was diversified in the 1980s. The work of such materialization will depend on how women's movement is defined and how women are identified in discussing women's movement. The standards of such a materialization work may appear as the limitation or restriction in women's movement. However, it would still be significant in terms of presenting new aspects to the previous studies of women's movement, since it could allow the comprehension and the comparison of peculiarities of women's movement organizations, which have been differentiating with the restricted concept of women's movement.