A Conceptual Understanding of Women's Studies

(1) You may ask me a question. That is, how a Korean man like me is reading a paper like this at a scenic place like Chiang Mai, Thailand? I am honored to address myself to some aspect of this question in front of distinguished scholars and university administrators.

I was trained in the tradition of analytic philosophy and I started to teach at Ewha Womans University in the year of 1977. Some students of mine kept asking me a question among others and were particularly skeptical about what's the use of analytic philosophy. It was the time when what's called 'analytic philosophy' was not that familiar around in Korea. There were many reasons for me to answer this question really good.

After many months of deliberations, I decided to take Philosophy and Sex (edited by R. Baker & F. Elliston; published by Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1975) as a text for a course called 'Philosophical Topic' in the fall semester, 1978. For each class session of the course, I presented a brief summary of each paper in the anthology, analyzing the arguments in it and led the class discussions. After the semester, I realized that I turned a feminist. Since then I have been called by my students sometimes 'a women's scholar', other times 'a sex expert'. I am proud of these titles.

(2) what was it that was powerful enough to make a conservative analytic philosopher a liberal feminist in one brief semester? I believe that it was the conceptual structure of the oppression of women which I was made appalled at in the period of three months. I would like to share with you here what I came to understand as the core of women's problem. This conceptual probelm may be illustrated in terms of five different cultural contexts.

(21) Historians of Korean Architecture notes that there was a shift in the concnept of residential architecture in the Middle Period of the Chosun Dynasty.1) It was the change from the notion of class- free architecture to that which observed the importance of class. In one residential manor there were at least three distinct housings and courts, one for gentlemen, another for servants, and the other for women.

Then, women were supposed to be engaged in what's called 'Anil'(家事, inner work or house work) at 'Anmadang'(內庭, inner court), they resided in 'Anchai'(內屋, inner house), and they slept only in 'Anbang'(內室, inner room). It was not strange for the master of the house to call his wife 'my Ansaram'(內者, inner mate).

Those different spaces have been defended by some as a mechnism to allow freedom for those different classes of people and to protect them from each other. Bur were they? The change of the architecture was due to Chu Hsi's(1130-1200) Neo Confucianism (School of Principles, 性理學), which noted importance of the patriarchical values. They may be summed up in this context in terms of the purity and the continuity of the paternal lineage. I am inclined to think that women were not protected but prisoned, by those spaces.

Korean women have lived not only in those architectural structure but also in those conceptual world. So have lived all Korean men. With this background it is almost a conceptual truth even today for a conservative husband to say to his outgoing wife that the inner work is the work to be done by the inner mate (roughly translated, house work is the share for the house wife). Then there is no conceptually persuasive rebut possible coming from the wife but only agonized silence.

(22) Many countries in East Asia share a culture of Chinese characters. In this culture they have one strand of ancient cosmologies in Yin-Yang (陰陽) theory. The theory, properly understood, is a functional theory, emphasizing notions of balance and harmony. Any one object has functions, both Yin (negative) and Yang (positive). For example, the Moon plays a Yin role toward the Sun but at the same time plays a Yang role toward the earth. The Yin-Yang theory was supposed to mirror the order of the nature and then it is to be the theory to explain human phenomena as well.

Enter scholars of one school of Neo Confucianism. They eliminated the functional character in the relative relationships between objects in the Yin-Yang theory. Instead they reified the relationships and absolutized them into a hierarchical scheme. We may call this particular explanation of the Yin-Yang theory 'the substantialization version'.

In this version, man is a Yang and woman is a Yin. And it is absolutely so. Then, woman is to follow man's wishes as the Moon is receptive only of what the Sun gives. Man rules over woman and woman obeys man. If a woman tries something deviant from this path she will be recognized as a renegade to the order of the nature or simply as an evil spirit. But remember that the language of Yin-Yang was the only language known to man and woman in East Asia for so long. They could not imagine anything in terms other than this.

(23) Montesquieu wrote a book called Persian Letters.2) Since it was not a scientific description there must be much gap between the Persian reality and what the book portrayed. But we will limit ourselves to what the book says of one Persian family.

Usbek had Roxan as his primary wife and carried many concubines at their seraglio, their residence compound. The master was residing in Paris, writing letters not only to his wife and some of his beloved concubines but also to his servant captain. The title of the book came therefrom. The captain was to rule all the men and women in the seraglio including his master's primary wife. The women were separated from each other while their master stayed in the seraglio but they were united while he was away and the captain was in charge.

Montesquieu stressed the socialization of women, their sexual fidelity and the instituition of monogamy. But he claimed 'that it is nature which has distinguished men by their reason and strength and women by their charms, and that the sexual boldness of men and the shame and resisteance of women are likewise dictated by nature'.3) Montesquieu may not have intended to endorse the seraglio structure in the Persian family. But I wonder how far he could distantiate himself from it. The ideology of nature he imported into his conception of gender appears different neither from that of the substantial version of Yin-Yang theory nor from that of the seraglio form of life.

(24) There is a clear example of sexual stereotypes also in the Judeo-Christain tradition. It is 'the Creation of Adam', painted by Michaelangelo on the ceiling fresco in the Sistine chapel. The painting is powerful and moving even hundreds years later.

But there are numerous puzzles in the painting. The focal point in the painting is the meeting of the index finger of the Creator and that of the first man. But the message of the canvas dictates the viewer's attention to the male symbol of young looking Adam. For it was supposed to be the physical origin of the human race. Not one thing of women's role was hinted at all here.

God was portrayed as a male, a powerful man, even though the painting was designed to show the creation of the first man. And yet God wore clothes on, perhaps afraid to show his male symbol. God's clothes is a puzzle because God himself considered clothes as a consequence of the human fall. And take a look at angels surrounding God. They are women and children. The painter might not have intended them to be human. But they are full of human representations.

One thing which is clear is this. If Adam was to be the first of the human race then God and angels could be represented as other than male or female. God was dominant and male; angels were subservient and female or children. This is one powerful symbolism which contributed to construct one sexual stereoype. The painter may protest by asking how to give personhood to God and angels if not by allowing them particular human forms. I may concede that the sexual ideology in the painting is not the painter's making. But he blindly followed that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And it may be remembered that many ancient paintings of Buddha are androgynous.

(25) There is one interesting English word which I would like to consider. It is 'feminine'.4) We all know what the word means. It may be assumed that this English expression may be translated into any known language with meaning similar to its English counterpart. Then it can be said that the analysis of the English word may be applied to other languages as well.

What does the word 'feminine' refer to? It denotes a property or a set of properties. They would be properties like being pretty, tender, elegant, unassuming and shapely. We see the adjective can be used to describe those properties. Then, the word 'feminine' has a symmetric relation to the word 'masculine' so far as the latter designates an independent set of properties such as being tall, sturdy, strong, and bold.

But the story seems to go farther than this. Is there any other way in which those adjectives may be used? When we say 'she is feminine', what we often intend to say is not merely to describe those aspects she has but also to say that she is satisfying what she had to satisfy. This indicates the word is used not merely descriptively but also prescriptively.

'Feminine' is a word of criterion which all persons called 'woman' are expected to live by. Then, if a girl is outgoing by personality she has to subdue it. If a woman is in fact not pretty she has to do something to look pretty. But if a boy is in fact not tall still he does not any obligation to be tall. If he is masculine it is good for him, but if he is not it is yet all right with him. The word 'masculine' here does not have a prescriptive use. When half of the human race are born woman they are born conceptaual prisoners of the word 'feminine'. But the other half are born man and free.

(3) If the five analyses above are plausible it would be reasonable to infer a few conclusions from them: (31) Women in general have been oppressed; (32) The oppression of women is conceptual; (33) The conceptual oppression is due to ignorance of rights of women if not due to intention; (34) The resulted oppression is instituitional and systematic.

I am not taking more time to explain the four conclusions above. Rather, I will consider some other charateristic features of the oppression of women: the paradox of oppresion and the exaggeration of the problem.

There has been a question whether the term 'oppression' is too strong to describe precisely the nature of pains which women went through. If you oppressed your enemy succesfully there must be several requirements you satisfied. One of them would be that you need to have intention to oppress him. But in case of what's called 'the oppression of women', who is the one that intended to oppress women? There seems no occurent intention on the part of any reasonable social instituition nor latent one to oppress women. So goes the thesis of the exaggeration of the problem.

But the thesis is weaker than it sounds prima facie. When Oedipus killed the King Laius they said that Oedipus killed his father. Oedipus himself agreed to this, even though Oedipus did not kill him under the intention to kill his father. Generally speaking, physical actions like 'hitting', 'running over', 'shooting', are ascribed to an agent when he is in a causal chain to result that event described by the action expressions even though he did not have the relevant intention. And I believe that the oppression of women is a kind of action which is physical.

There could be another argument against the exaggeration thesis. Suppose there was a good Christian farmer living in the South of the US one hundred years before the civil war. He employed several slaves but he treated them good. Personally speaking, he did not have any intention whatsoever to oppress them. But we say that he was a slave holder and we ascribe him a moral blame. For he belongs to the social structure where some human beings are not treated as persons.

What's wrong with the oppression of women? This sounds a dumb question to ask. For nobody would deny its truth. But the seriousness of the question needs to be recognized. It is wrong for one human being to oppress another human being. It is worse that one individual is oppressed by the rest of the human kind. It is still worse that the half of the human race is oppressed by the whole human society. But the seriousness of the question goes farther than this.

Philosophers used to say that any human being cannot be a dictator without hurting his own person. Dictator is the one who dictates his people against their will. In the dictatorship he objectifies not only his people but also his own person. This logic can be extended to the notion of oppression: The oppressors of women end up to oppress their own persons. I will call it 'the paradox of oppression'.

(4) I happen to believe that what's called 'Women's Studies' is a legitimate science. It seems to me a science which seeks oppression-free form of life where all women and men are both humane. Being convinced of the paradox of the oppression, I support the integration of Women's Studies into the university curiculum.

Whenever there is a move to introduce Women's Studies into university curiculum there is some sort of objection against or reservation to, the effort. I suspect that the reason can be divided into two. The first is the question whether Women's Studies is a science for such a merit. The second is a belief that 'Women's Studeis' is nothing but a women's movement under the academically sounding title.

(41) What is a sciene? Its defining chracter has been the degree of coherence of a system. or the explanatory power of the system, depending on whcich the academic community chooses as the model of science, mathematics or physics. It seems now that there is not a formal condition which a system should satisfy to be a science. Rather it is whether a new candidate has a distinct problem area which academic communities recognize to be worthy of investigations.

The notion of oppression of women is the key term to identify the scientific character of Women's Studies. For the notion suggests the identity for the proper problem area of this new science. The problem is to be the area where the oppression of women takes place systematically. I would propose that the problem area consists of Family, Work, and Sex. There could be more items to be added, old and new.

It was said that there has been a pattern according to which many of new sciences went through to become a respectablly legitimate science. I believe that Political Sceince started it and Sociology followed it. Business Administration, Library Science and recently Cognitive Science joined the club. The pattern is that the new sciene starts as a multi-disciplinary science, goes through stages of cross-disciplinary science and inter-disciplinary science, and, if all goes well, they say it ends up happily with trans-disciplinary science.5)

I believe that Women's Studies has been coming through such pattern. People would properly disagree on where of the four stages Women's Studies would stand at the present moment. One thing which appears certain to me is that Women's Studies has better chance to go all the way to become a fully legitimate science than many of social sciences started earlier.6)

(42) What is the relationship between Women's Studies and what's called 'women's movements'? One may be tempted to say that Women's Studies is one of many kinds of women's movements. To my mind, the assertion is more false than true. The assertion would be true if it allows that any of real women's movements presuppose some understanding of actual predicament of women's lives. But the major thrust of the assertion tends to imply that knowledge is not necessary for a movement and hence it is false.

Let me explain what I mean by this distinction between Women's Studies and women's movements. Of course, I believe that Women's Studies 'seeks oppression-free form of life where all women and men are both humane'. This science of itself does not get you that form of life but it helps people to get it. Women's Studies is like Business Administration. BA as a science does not make you money but it helps you to run a business to make money. There is a world of difference between inventions of new techniques and deployments of them. The difference is like that between literary criticisms and literary works.

Women's movements are topic-centered. Some examples of them are education, work, leisure, political rights, abortion, rape, divorce, etc. Most of women's movements are organized by groups of individuals who are concerned with one of those topics. They are shy from reconstructing the society holistically but they are just aiming to eliminate the urgent problem before their eyes. Women's movements are in this sense piecemeal, bottom up, and passive.

But Women's Studies saw that what's called problems of women are not piecemeal but holistic. The solution it suggests is top down. It requires a change of ways of thinking. Women's Studies do not blame any particular individual nor a group of people, as women's movements do. Rather it takes out the whole ways of life as the culprit for the oppression of women. Some feminist activists criticize Women's Studies to be too abstract in this regard. The criticism is right, but I think that Women's Studies could be seen as more active than the activists.

Then, Women's Studies is a science and not a movement. It helps women's movements to have a goal and reasoning for those movements. For any goal is given only top down. Some feminist scholars are activists. They will be ok only if they are not negligent to fulfil their academic obligations. 7)


Daihyun Chung
Ewha Womans University
The Chiang Mai Conference on Gender, February 23-26, 1994