NY Times: Where Boys Were Kings, a Shift Toward Baby Girls
December 23, 2007
Where Boys Were Kings, a Shift Toward Baby Girls
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea � When Park He-ran was a young mother, other women
would approach her to ask what her secret was. She had given birth to
three boys in a row at a time when South Korean women considered it
their paramount duty to bear a son.
Ms. Park, a 61-year-old newspaper executive, gets a different
reaction today. “When I tell people I have three sons and no
daughter, they say they are sorry for my misfortune,” she
said. “Within a generation, I have turned from the luckiest woman
possible to a pitiful mother.”
In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal
societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys is fast receding.
And that has led to what seems to be a decrease in the number of
abortions performed after ultrasounds that reveal the sex of a fetus.
According to a study released by the World Bank in October, South
Korea is the first of several Asian countries with large sex
imbalances at birth to reverse the trend, moving toward greater
parity between the sexes. Last year, the ratio was 107.4 boys born
for every 100 girls, still above what is considered normal, but down
from a peak of 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990.
The most important factor in changing attitudes toward girls was the
radical shift in the country’s economy that opened the doors to women
in the work force as never before and dismantled long-held
traditions, which so devalued daughters that mothers would often
apologize for giving birth to a girl.
The government also played a small role starting in the 1970s. After
growing alarmed by the rise in sex-preference abortions, leaders
mounted campaigns to change people’s attitudes, including one that
featured the popular slogan “One daughter raised well is worth 10
sons!”
In 1987, the government banned doctors from revealing the sex of a
fetus before birth. But experts say enforcement was lax because
officials feared too many doctors would be caught.
Demographers say the rapid change in South Koreans’ feelings about
female babies gives them hope that sex imbalances will begin to
shrink in other rapidly developing Asian countries � notably China
and India � where the same combination of a preference for boys and
new technology has led to the widespread practice of aborting female
fetuses.
“China and India are closely studying South Korea as a trendsetter in
Asia,” said Chung Woo-jin, a professor at Yonsei University in
Seoul. “They are curious whether the same social and economic changes
can occur in their countries as fast as they did in South Korea’s
relatively small and densely populated society.”
In China in 2005, the ratio was 120 boys born for every 100 girls,
according to the United Nations Population Fund. Vietnam reported a
ratio of 110 boys to 100 girls last year. And although India recorded
about 108 boys for every 100 girls in 2001, when the last census was
taken, experts say the number is sure to have climbed by now.
The Population Fund warned in an October report that the rampant
tinkering with nature’s probabilities in Asia could eventually lead
to increased sexual violence and trafficking of women as a generation
of boys find marriage prospects severely limited.
In South Korea, the gap in the ratio of boys to girls born began to
widen in the 1970s, but experts say it became especially pronounced
in the mid-1980s as ultrasound technology became more widespread and
increasing wages allowed more families to pay for the tests. The
imbalance was widest from 1990 to 1995, when it remained above 112 to
100.
The imbalance began to close steadily only in 2002. Last year’s ratio
of 107.4 boys for every 100 girls was closer to the ratio of 105 to
100 that demographers consider normal and, according to The World
Factbook, published by the Central Intelligence Agency, just above
the global average of 107 boys born for every 100 girls.
The preference for boys here is centuries old and was rooted in part
in an agrarian society that relied on sons to do the hard work on
family farms. But in Asia’s Confucian societies, men were also
accorded special status because they were considered the carriers of
the family’s all-important bloodline.
That elevated status came with certain perquisites � men received
their families’ inheritance � but also responsibilities. Once the
eldest son married, he and his wife went to live with his family; he
was expected to support his parents financially while his wife was
expected to care for them in their old age.
The wife’s lowly role in her new family was constantly reinforced by
customs that included requiring a daughter-in- -law to serve her father-
in-law food while on her knees.
“In the old days, when there was no adequate social safety net,
Korean parents regarded having a son as kind of making an investment
for old age security,” Professor Chung said. It was common for
married Korean men to feel ashamed if they had no sons. Some went so
far as to divorce wives who did not bear boys.
Then in the 1970s and 80s, the country threw itself into an
industrial revolution that would remake society in ways few South
Koreans could have imagined.
Sons drifted away to higher-paying jobs in the cities, leaving their
parents behind. And older Koreans found their own incomes rising,
allowing them to save money for retirement rather than relying on
their sons for support.
Married daughters, no longer shackled to their husbands’ families,
returned to provide emotional or financial support for their own
elderly parents.
“Daughters are much better at emotional contact with their parents,
visiting them more often, while Korean sons tend to be distant,” said
Kim Seung-kwon, a demographer at the government’s Korea Institute for
Health and Social Affairs.
Ms. Park, the newspaper executive, said such changes forced people to
rethink their old biases. “In restaurants and parks, when you see a
large family out for a dinner or picnic, 9 out of 10, it’s the wife
who brings the family together with her parents, not the husband with
his parents,” she said. “To be practical, for an old Korean parent,
having a daughter sometimes is much better than having a son.”
The economic changes also unleashed a revolution of a different sort.
With the economy heating up, men could no longer afford to keep women
out of the workforce, and women began slowly to gain confidence, and
grudging respect.
Although change is coming slowly and deep prejudices remain � in some
businesses, women are pressured to leave their jobs when pregnant �
women are more accepted now in the workplace and at the best
universities that send graduates to the top corporations.
Six of 10 South Korean women entered college last year; fewer than
one out of 10 did so in 1981. And in the National Assembly, once one
of the nation’s most male-dominated institutions, women now hold
about 13 percent of the seats, about double the percentage they held
just four years ago.
“When I first joined the company in 1995, a woman was expected to
quit her job once she got married; we called it a `resignation on a
company suggestion,’ -” said Shin Hye-sun, a 39-year-old who works at
the TBC television station in Taegu in central South Korea, Now, she
said, women take a three-month break after giving birth before
returning to work. “If someone suggests that a woman should quit
after marriage, female workers in my company will take it as an
insult and say so,” Ms. Shin said.
According to the World Bank study, one of the surprises in South
Korea was that it took as long as it did for the effects of a booming
economy to translate into changes in people’s attitudes toward the
birth of daughters.
The study suggests that the country’s former authoritarian rulers
helped slow the transition by upholding laws and devising policies
that supported a continuation of Confucian hierarchy, which
encourages fealty not only to family patriarchs, but also to the
nation’s leaders.
With the move toward democracy in the late 1980s, the concept of
equal rights for men and women began to creep into Koreans’ thinking.
In 1990, the law guaranteeing men their family’s inheritance � a
cornerstone of the Confucian system � was the first of the so-called
family laws to fall; the rest would be dismantled over the next 15
years.
In 2002, the narrowing of the gender gap signaled that attitudes
about the value of women � and ultimately of daughters � had begun to
catch up to the seismic changes in the economy and the law.
And last year, a study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social
Affairs showed that of 5,400 married South Korean women younger than
45 who were surveyed, only 10 percent said they felt that they must
have a son. That was down from 40 percent in 1991.
“When my father took me to our ancestral graves for worshiping, my
grandfather used to say, `Why did you bring a daughter here?’” said
Park Su-mi, 29, a newlywed. “But my husband and I have no preference
at all for boys. We don’t care whether we have a boy or girl.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/world/asia/23skorea.html