Seeking a Sense of Belonging: The Exclusion of Female Doctorate Holders in South Korea and the US

Abstract

Despite the vast literature on East Asian international students in higher education during the current era of globalization, few studies examine how the international migration of doctorate holders is gendered. The migration and career choices of Korean women who hold doctorates from American universities, we argue, are shaped by geographical imaginations based on the political connections between South Korea and the US and their personal experiences from their home and host countries. The notion of the US as an ally of South Korea and the hegemony of US higher education in Korean academia have led Korean women to pursue doctorates in the United States. Yet, the Korean women who participated in this study revealed that earning a doctorate from a world-class university did not necessarily bring them greater mobility. Whether the interviewees returned to Korea or not, they found themselves situated within the hierarchy of gendered power relations and excluded from everyday practices such as decision-making both at home and at work. Consequently, they attempted to build a sense of belonging at various geographic scales. This study found that Korean women scholars’ migration and career choices were the multi-layered outcome of gendered power relations within the family, political connections between the two countries, and cultural values of their home and host countries.

Keywords:

• Belonging
• exclusion
• female scholars
• geographical imagination
• migration
• South Korea

Acknowledgements

We thank 14 Korean women scholars who participated in our research. We are also grateful to Anna Mansson McGinty and Kristin Sziarto for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper and their encouragement. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor Katherine Brickell for their insightful comments. All mistakes are our own.

Notes on contributors

Hyejin Yoon is an assistant professor at the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her degree in Geography from the Ohio State University. Her research interests are the mobility of highly-skilled female workers under globalization and how their identities have changed across space. Her current research project is how female workers are excluded in the project-based production system in the animation industry.

Hyosun Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Education and a director of Institute for Happy Education for Youth at Sangmyung University in Seoul, South Korea. She obtained her doctoral degree in Workforce Development and Education from the Ohio State University and currently her research focuses on how organizational settings influence women’s learning and career development. She published several valuable journal articles about highly educated women’s leadership, career development, and professional development.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2015S1A5A8017283).