[클리핑] The women students groups

What do you know about Women Students Associations(WSA)? Sunshinians may feel awkward about that word since there are no women’s groups in our school. Now most of the co-ed universities have a WSA aside the General Student Association(GSA). There are also Women’s Committees and Acting Committees. They are women-oriented organizations in the view of making an independent voice for the female student body. As shown in the names, in these groups, female students are the main actors.

At school, female students face many difficulties. College is supposed to be the place for intellectuals who are progressive and must lead the way for the equality of men and women, but female students speak of hardships in this reduction of society. Experiencing sexual violence on the campus, the high barrier against employment etc., female students have difficulty finding a female senior to consult with. It is the female students’ autonomous organizations such as the WSA that offer employment information, advice on sexual violence and bring the female students together to help them form an identity as women.

When WSAs began to be created, it was about 15 years ago, in the middle of the ’80s. At that time, democratization was more important than studying, and the WSA’s main role was to guide the relatively passive female students into the student movement. In those days, the WSAs mainly discussed female labor movement issues agreeing with the condition of that time. Today, the National Women Students Representative Conference(NWRC) has been organized so that respective WSAs may connect more systematically. It has not been 10 years since WSAs have concentrated on actual welfare problems such as now.

WSAs are composed of female students, naturally. The chairperson and vice-chairperson of a WSA are selected through election campaigns in a voting process as in the representative elections of Joint Club Federations or each college. During vacation, the WSAs of some universities hold a “Women School” for general students for 6-7 days. Useful lectures are offered like Women? Studies which can help establish identity and gain self-confidence. For example, the “’99 Summer School for Women at the University of Seoul,” gave computer classes for female students. Because female students lack the opportunity to handle computers, they often have difficulty in class. Compensating for this lack of experience, so that they may again competitive power was the purpose of those classes.

Activities of WSAs

Activities of WSAs are largely divided into Welfare, Employment, and Sexual Culture.

Welfare: Standing out among welfare measures is the women’s exclusive lounge. This is surely a space for female students. On campus, there is no other proper place for women to change stockings or to smoke freely. If a female student felt fatigued and took a nap in the department room or a club room, she might be called “slovenly.” In this case, the women’s exclusive lounge is the place to go to. Beds and shower facilities are arranged and smoking without being an eyesore is permitted. The women’s welfare activities of WSAs are more varied. Setting up vending machines for sanitary items, repairing women’s bathrooms, etc. seem to be trivial but they are essential for the well-being of female students, a point shared by WSAs.

Employment: The gate of employment for women is still narrow. Since the “Equal Employment Law” was enacted, some enterprises have been accused of discriminating against women. But indirect and covert discrimination is becoming more serious. For example, a woman who has passed both the examining paper and written examination, and finished the training course may find herself omitted from the finalists with no distinct reason. However capable a woman may be, she can’t compete with other men fairly. In addition, employment information for women is comparatively small. To solve this kind of problem, WSAs have been holding seminars for female students’ employment and making employment handbooks with useful information.

Sexual Culture: Sexual violence in co-ed universities might be more serious than we think. Often, in M.T.s and drinking parties with senior and junior students, and in their relationship with male professors, female students have the agonizing experience of sexual violence or harrassment. As was made known through the case of sexual harrassment of Research Assistant Woo by her professor at Seoul National University, sexual violence in universities is a grave problem. To solve this problem, WSAs and Female Committees of 8 universities including Korea Univ. have made the “Joint Congress for Stopping Sexual Violence and Guaranteeing Women’s Rights.” Through this congress, “The Campaign for Enacting School Regulations on Sexual Violence” has been carried out. And in some schools, sexual violence consulting bureaus are being run.

A WSA Office

Activities of a WSA are not limited to the above. Each year, WSAs plan various solidarity projects. They include the farmer-student activity, the activity for the poor, and the activity for the women and children of the American military bases. The most notable is the military base activity. The sexual commerce areas around U.S. military bases such as Dongduchon have been the scene of chronic problems such as the crimes committed by American soldiers and the complex issues surrounding the Korean prostitutes. In the activity, female students discuss the purity ideology inscribed on the prostitutes and take care of interracial babies born of U.S. soldiers and Korean prostitutes.

Women’s Exclusive Lounge. A space only for female students

Difficulties in the management of WSAs which perform such diverse activities is similar to the reason why the women’s movement is hard. Above all, is being under constant doubt. Having different experiences from their female counterparts, male students often feel that women’s and female students’ issues are private problems, not social problems and can’t understand why the WSA exists separate from the GSA. Male-oriented prejudice adds to the difficulty. In this patriarchal social environment, WSAs are likely to be devaluated as “a group of loud women who like to provoke quarrels about trivial things.” The second difficulty is the dual burden. Although they have many responsibilities involving only women’s special needs, WSAs must also participate in the activities which are handled by GSAs(e.g. tuition struggle) because they fall under a sub-organization of the GSA. The third difficulty is the lack of newcomer’s participation. Year by year this problem gets bigger. The reason for this is either that the newly entering students are indifferent to women’s problems or that even if they have some interest in women’s issues, they feel burdened by the WSA’s activities.

A WSA bedroom in the Women’s Exclusive Lounge

The recent trend of closing down the female students’s exclusive lounge is also a serious problem. About this, some male students argue, “It is not a productive place, just a place for the female students to smoke and talk. It is said that females are more serious, there is a thick cigarette smoke. There is no need for a women’s exclusive lounge.” But in any school, there is a definite lack of space for female students. In July, Sungshin also closed down the “Green Lounge” on the 4th floor of the Student Building, and turned it into “Na” furnished with the highest grade PCs. “Unless it is a co-ed university, an extra lounge for female students is unnecessary.” is the general view of the other school’s students. But now there is no resting place for Sungshinians where a good air-conditioning system is supplied in the hot summer. The only place Sungshin’s smokers were free from prejudiced looks was the “Green Lounge.” The judgement on the closing down of the “Green Lounge” is left to each Sungshinian.

The central merit of the WSAs is that they focus on the issues that really matter to the female students. In the early years, WSAs dealt with the same “political” issues as the GSAs. But now, WSAs are succeeding in advocating the female students’ standpoint. Rather than holding up monotonous slogans such as “change the world,” they have started to act against all sorts of sexual violence and to expand sanitary vending machines. By steadily bringing up women’s issues within the campus, WSAs are helping the female students to realize their own rights.

Female Students’ Autonomous Activities of Sungshin

Sungshin is one of the few universities which offers the Master? program in Women? Studies, but the female students’s self-governing activities are making poorer progress than in other schools. Some Sungshinians may think, “The GSA of our school is composed of female students, so a special organization like the WSA is needless.” But looking into other 4-year Women’s Universities in Seoul, we find that Dongduk Women’s Univ. has an “Acting Committee” and Ewha Women’s Univ. has a “Women’s Committee.”

The women’s movement in Ewha has a strong historical background and is carried out in a systematical way. A remarkable activity by Ewha’s Women’s Committee is the “Feminism Festival” held in March. This festival is intended to help Ewha’s students to establish a common identity as women, female students and students of Ewha. Women’s employment and sexual violence are every woman’s concern. But Ewha’s Women’s Committee addresses issues that are specific to their university, such as the Korea University students’ mass commotion at the Ewha Daedongje, the case of the anonymous story in the Yonsei Univ. bulletin(A story in which Ewha students were regarded as the sexual target of the male students of Korea’s top universities was posted in the on-line bulletin of Yonsei Univ.), and the marriage ban regulation(Ewha has stuck to this regulation since the opening of the school). Talking about the negative prejudices about Ewha Women’s Univ. (that Ewha’s students wear thick makeup, or that Ewha is a bride-training school), Ewha’s students come to the realization that the ones who are oppressed are not the students of Ewha, but every woman. A while ago, in the controversy about the employment merit for military service, Ewha got severe blame as the representative of females who were against the system. Agonizing to overcome such an “Ewha complex,” Ewha’s students ironically come to take pride in the idea that Ewha Women’s Univ. implicitly represents all women in Korea.

There was a debate in Sungshin on making a Women’s Committee in the ?9 GSA election. After the election, it seemed the committee was to manage Sungshinians’ needs as women, but it had to step down without any definite activity. To this day, there is no Women’s Committee in Sungshin.

After graduation, without any preparation for dealing with women’s problems, how will Sungshinians cope with employment and social life? Will we live our lives not merely as “an employee” or “a housekeeper,” but as a woman with high education and a Sungshin alumnae? Confirming our own identity, having self-confidence as a woman: that is the way to insure our competitive power in society. It is time to organize a Women? Committee for the good of all Sungshinians.