• International Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.65-75
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• 2011

This study attempts to examine family attitudes and gender role divisions of married women in contemporary Vietnam and Korea. Drawing data from the 2003 Vietnam Family Study and the 2005 Korean Marriage and Fertility Study, this study investigated 1) attitudes of married women toward marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and having children, 2) decision making on household expenditures, and 3) household work division between husband and wife. The results showed that married Korean women were less inclined toward traditional family attitudes regarding marriage and children than married Vietnamese women. Decision on routine household expenditures was made and household work was done mostly by the wife in the two countries. In comparison, married Vietnamese men took more responsibilities for important financial decisions and child education than married Korean men. These overall findings imply that patriarchical family and gender role norms were preserved to larger extent in contemporary Vietnam than in Korea.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.33-62
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• 2005

This study aims to explain the current upheaval in marriage that many young Korean men and women postpone or deny their marriage. In order to explain the delayed marriage, we need to understand the taste by which men and women choose their partners, the opportunity by which they find their ideational half in reality, and the context in which these values and opportunities of marriages intersect. This study examines the way in which the value and opportunities of marriage among Korean men and women have intersected differently in the changing economic conditions. Using KLIPS(Korea Labor Income Panel Survey, 1998-2002), differential effects of education and occupational status on marital time according to marriage cohort and gender are analyzed. Results find that the opportunity of marriage among men turns out to have been stratified significantly according to their educational achievement and labor status since the 1990s. For women, education and economic activities are likely to influence marriage decision in a discordant way; during the period of 1990-997, highly educated women are more likely than their counterparts to be married earlier while there is no significant difference according to economic activities. This implies that status homogamy has been intensified since the 1990s and many women with high motivation for social status are able to achieve a vicarious social status through marriage in a prosperous economy. For women married after 1998, however, the educational effect is insignificant but economic activity contributes to delaying marriage. This suggests that under the economic restructuring since the late 1990s, the constraint of opportunities finding decent jobs particularly for men results in the contingent change in women's perception about family roles and economic activities by reducing their expectation to achieve a vicarious status through marriage, but increasing their motive for their own economic activities.