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Gender & Society, Vol. 20, No. 6,
697-724 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243206291111
Negotiating Patriarchy
South Korean Evangelical Women and the Politics of Gender
Kelly H. Chong
University of Kansas, Lawrence
Based on ethnographic research, this study investigates the meaning and impact of women’s involvement in South Korean evangelicalism. While recent works addressing the "paradox" of women’s participation in conservative religions have highlighted the significance of these religions as unexpected vehicles of gender empowerment and contestation, this study finds that the experiences and consequences of Korean evangelical women’s religiosity are highly contradictory; although crucial in women’s efforts to negotiate the injuries of the modern Confucian-patriarchal family, conversion, for many women, also signifies their effective redomestication to this family/gender regime, which helps maintain current gender arrangements. To address this tension, the article explores the meaning of religious submission in the Korean context, focusing on the motivations behind women’s consent to patriarchy, which are rooted in women’s contradictory desires regarding the family system and the ambivalent subjectivities that they evoke.
Key Words: religious traditionalism • patriarchy • South Korea • evangelicalism • consent • resistance
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