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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">2005.01.20<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Hi Don and other colleagues,<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">I have been reluctant to jump in this discussion, which does not particularly interest me. However, I feel I should defend my own fields, language and literature, as I often do.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">I am not sure whether people actually have reflected or checked the facts a little before making some casual (and irritating to some) remarks such as the ones made in recent exchanges in regard with the fields of language and literature as well as on women in general (even if unintended), ¡°¡¦ on the possibility of women being relegated to the fields of language and literature by putting the word 'relegated' in quotation marks¡¦¡± <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">If there were fewer women Ph.D.¡¯s in any field earlier, it was because of the general social attitude about women¡¯s competence or place, including that by women themselves. And this phenomenon was not particularly limited to <?xml:namespace prefix = u1 /><u1:country-region u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</u1:place></u1:country-region></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face="Times New Roman">. Linguistics and literature were no exception. In the 1960s, when I was a student at <u1:City u2:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Berkeley</u1:City></FONT></st1:City><FONT face="Times New Roman">, there were 70 male students and 3 female students from <u1:country-region u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</u1:place></u1:country-region></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face="Times New Roman">, one of whom was an immigrant. Contrary to what people may think, the three women majored in Mathematics, Sociology, and Linguistics respectively. If there are more women Ph.D.¡¯s in linguistics and literature today, it might be just part of the general trend of more women being in all fields now, including linguistics and literature. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">I may point out that in the early days of Korean studies abroad, there probably were fewer women Ph.D.¡¯s proportionally in Korean linguistics and Korean literature than most of the other Korean-studies fields. For example, Soon Ham Park Kim and I were the only two women Ph.D.¡¯s in Korean linguistics for a long time, although there were many more male Ph.D.¡¯s.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Of some 25 founding members of the International Circle of Korean Linguistics, which started in 1975, I was the only female, Korean or non-Korean, as far as I can remember. Foreign scholars in Korean linguistics were rare because of the incredible investment required for language learning and for analyzing this interesting but complex language, not to ignore the poor job prospect, but all the ¡°older¡± foreign linguists who did research on Korean I could think of even today are all male—Samuel Martin, Fred Lukoff, Bob Ramsey, Michael Rogers, John Whitman, Ross King, Kanno Hiroomi, Hiroyuki Umeda, Kaoru Horie, Andre Fabre, Werner Sasse, Vladimir Pucek, </SPAN><SPAN lang=DE style="mso-ansi-language: DE">Lev Kontsevich, Ertan Gokmen... (There are other linguists, who have collaborated with Korean colleagues on Korean linguistic research without knowing the language, and most of them are also male.) Some of these also did literature, but I am not aware of any men, let alone women, who earned Ph.D.¡¯s in Korean literature from American or other Western universities in early days, apart from Peter Lee, David McCann, and Marshall Pihl—again, all male. </SPAN><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">When I first came to study in the U.S., my initial goal was to get an MA and go back to teach at my Alma Mater in Korea, for most of my own teachers had gotten only MAs in (most of them in excellent schools of) the U.S. or England. There were very few Ph.D¡¯s, male or female, among the faculty even at the university level in those days. I changed my mind following the advice of my teachers, many of whom were already open-minded. Still, as I recall, all my professors at <u1:City u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berkeley</u1:place></u1:City></FONT></st1:place></st1:City><FONT face="Times New Roman"> at that time were male (I remember only one exception, the eminent scholar Mary Haas), and so were most of my classmates. The average time for a student to get an MA in linguistics at <u1:City u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berkeley</u1:place></u1:City></FONT></st1:place></st1:City><FONT face="Times New Roman"> was two to three years of very hard work. We had to pass one comprehensive written exam, which lasted three days, one public oral exam, one foreign language exam (One¡¯s native language or English did not count as foreign languages for foreign students), and submit two scholarly papers. It was expected that we had some knowledge of a classical Indo-European language, Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit, as well as Old English—if possible all of them, because the infamous Indo-European Linguistics course was one of the required ones even for an MA. The standard was, of course, much stricter for a Ph.D. degree, with five days of written exam, three scholarly papers, and two foreign languages. If one failed the Ph.D. exam, there was no free MA to send the student away with.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Even in the field of music, in which so many women excel today, it was not that long ago that American orchestras did not admit women players. Recall, when Philadelphia Philharmonic finally decided to do an audition for both sexes with the players behind a curtain, three judged the best were women. There should be no field for any particular gender, although some fields still have fewer women surely due to their socialization process. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">It is in a way natural for every Ph.D. to believe that his/her own field is among the toughest, but to assume any other field is somehow inferior and especially that is the reason why women study it, is irresponsible to say the least. I, a female Korean-born scholar in Korean language and literature, am currently the Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at a major university in the <u1:country-region u2:st="on"><u1:place u2:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</u1:place></u1:country-region></FONT></st1:place></st1:country-region><FONT face="Times New Roman"> I have indeed come a long way as many other women have, many may think, but for me the important thing is not to think about whether I have or not.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Sorry for the long-windedness of this message.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">All best, <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Young-Key Kim-Renaud<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><FONT face="Times New Roman">----- From: Don Baker </FONT><A href="mailto:dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca,"><FONT face="Times New Roman">dbaker@interchange.ubc.ca,</FONT></A><FONT face="Times New Roman"> Thursday, January 20, 2005 0:29 am</FONT></P>
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<P>> If we were talking about a very large number of Korean history <BR>> Ph.D.s (say, 500 or more), then a gender imbalance would indicate <BR>> some sort of systematic discrimination. However, the limited <BR>> number we are talking about does not allow us to draw any <BR>> inferences from the numbers alone. We would need to know of <BR>> specific cases of qualified women applicants being passed over in <BR>> favor of equally qualifed male applicants before we would be <BR>> justified in talking about discrimination. If nothing more than <BR>> gender imbalance in such a small pool is enough to prove that <BR>> qualified women are being unfairly denied a chance to earn a Ph.D <BR>> in Korean history, then couldn't we also claim that a similar <BR>> gender imbalance would prove that qualified men are being unfairly <BR>> denied a chance to earn a Ph.D in Korean literature? <BR>> <BR>> Don Baker <BR>> Director, Centre for Korean Research <BR>> Associate Professor <BR>> Department of Asian Studies <BR>> University of British Columbia <BR>> Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 CANADA </P></BODY>