This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's spring 2022 webinar series, Negotiating Women's Rights and Gender Equality in Asia.

This event is made possible by generous support from the Korea Foundation and other friends of the Korea Program.

Since 2013, women's higher education enrollment rate has outpaced men's enrollment rate in South Korea. Despite this increase in educational attainment, gender inequalities remain deeply rooted in Korean higher education, including gender gaps in STEM, doctoral program enrollment, and faculty diversity. Universities have also fallen short in including gender-related topics in curricular content and ensuring safe campuses for women. The panel will reflect on these educational disparities and the social, cultural, and economic forces shaping Korean women's lives during and after higher education. It will also place Korea's experience in a comparative context by discussing global trends in gender and higher education.

Speakers:

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Namhee Kim has a 20-year research and teaching career in higher education in South Korea and the U.S. She is currently an Associate Professor of Education at Ewha Womans University in South Korea. She has previously worked for Korean Education Development Institute and Korean Women’s Development Institute in the areas of education policy development and conducting research on women workforce issues. Her earlier teaching career includes many graduate classes at Texas A & M and Northcentral University in the US. Kim holds a PhD in Education majoring in Adult Education and Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and MEd and BA from Ewha Womans University. Her research interests include women’s career development, critical human resource development, and international education.  

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Christine Min Wotipka is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Education and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. Her research centers around two main themes examined from cross-national and longitudinal approaches. One line of work seeks to understand how marginalized groups and topics have been incorporated into school textbooks. Another contributes to the comparative scholarship in gender, diversity, leadership, and higher education. Her articles have appeared in Social Forces, Sociology of Education, Gender & Society, American Journal of Education, AERA Open, Journal of LGBT Youth, Comparative Education Review, Compare, Comparative Education, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Wotipka earned her BA in International Relations and French at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and MA in Sociology and PhD in International Comparative Education at Stanford University. Between her undergraduate and graduate studies, she proudly served as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in rural northeast Thailand and worked in South Korea at an economic research firm. Among her professional activities, Dr. Wotipka has consulted on girls education policies for the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan.

Moderator: Dafna Zur, associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University