Men still suck (2)

By Deauwand Myers

From the most recent data, Korea ranks highest in wage disparities between men and women of all member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Korea's the worst at tackling wage parity between the sexes.

Nonetheless, Korea has its successes. In less than 30 years, after the devastating bifurcation of the country in the catastrophic Korean War, wracked with poverty and a string of quasi-dictatorial president/generals, mass protests, bloody government repression of political freedoms, and surviving both the Asian financial crisis (1997) and the Great Recession (2008), on many metrics, Korea is better than the United States, the richest, most powerful nation in human history.

Korea has low crime, high literacy, high attainment of tertiary education, an adequate universal healthcare system, a high life expectancy, gleaming infrastructure and low taxation.

Yet, Korea's high unemployment rate for young college graduates, low wage growth, cutthroat academic competition, high suicide rate (highest of all OECD countries), and a fairly weak social welfare state (relative to its economic power) bedevils its government.

The country's fairly weak social welfare state (minus healthcare) is a major contributing factor to the rest of the aforementioned problems. A more comprehensive social welfare system, one that rewards higher wages and fairer hiring practices, promotion, and remuneration of women, universal childcare, strict legislation against unpaid overtime, and better retirement benefits for the elderly, particularly elderly women, would all benefit society.

Unlike America, Korea is much more like a Scandinavian country. Empirically, Korea is racially and culturally homogenous, and though there are regional and political differences, the deep strife that often comes with more diverse populations in other countries, particularly where certain groups are historically marginalized, doesn't exist in Korea.

(These are generalizations, of course. Sexual minorities, religious minorities, and for this article, women, aren't treated fairly on a broad spectrum of indices.)

Korean women, like women in every country on earth, outperform their male counterparts on most standardized tests, particularly college entrance exams. They are more educated and have better aptitude in every field of study we have data for, more or less.

This is why, just like in America, Korean women actually are rejected more from university entrance than their male counterparts, simply to keep the male/female ratio at near-parity. This kind of male affirmative action benefits Korean men and white men more than anyone else.

If women, simply on merit, particularly exam results, were allowed college entry, most universities would have anywhere from a 55 percent to 65 percent female population.

I mention this now because we have seen the recent scandal of Judge Kavanaugh's rocky Supreme Court confirmation proceedings. It's alleged he was a classic frat boy, prone to drinking to excess and sexual assault.

His bombastic, self-aggrandizing testimony attested to what many white men often believe to be true: They deserve all power, all access, and all glory. Kavanaugh believes his hard work, not his upper-middle class, white, male upbringing during the glory days of Reagan, is how he was accepted to Yale.

Indeed, besides the usual suspects undergirding conservative political thought in America (white supremacy, sexism, misogyny, and androcentrism); there is entitlement.

Worse, for white folks (especially white men) in America, like Korean men in Korea, as Dr. Ryan LeCount says in his recent study of white resentment during the Obama Era asserts, "When you're used to privilege, equity feels like oppression."

Case in point: even as Korean women lobby for fairer working conditions, equal pay, and the basic dignity of not being sexually objectified and/or worse, violently exploited, some Korean men say even pointing out what any social study will tell you: Korean women aren't getting a fair shake in the broader society, is an attack against men.

Cosby, Weinstein, Moonves, C.K. Louis, Lauer, Rose, An Hee-jung (the disgraced, former governor of South Chungcheong Province) … the list is extensive, have come to a reckoning, to varying degrees. Yet, the current president of the United States has nearly two dozen allegations of sexual misconduct and sexual assault levied against him.

Men commit most of the violent crime on the earth. They aren't as smart as women; nor do they work as many hours or as hard in terms of the kinds of jobs women (particularly women of color) are overrepresented in doing, including unpaid and unrecognized care of the home, children, and elderly relatives.

Men control most levers of power, which is why in Korea, Japan, and America, policies that would actually help women and their families are slow, painfully slow, in coming.

It's 2018, folks. Men still suck.

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul.