Cho Nam-Joo

That’s how it is with everyone. All mothers live like this these days.”
Her life choices, being Kim Jiyoung’s mother—Oh Misook was regretting them.

Let me tell you something I’ve known for a while that you haven’t noticed: he likes you.

Teachers were in the habit of saying that girls are smarter. Students also thought that girls were smarter, more mature, and better with detailed work, but they somehow always elected boys to be class monitors. It wasn’t just Jiyoung’s class.

In a world where doctors can cure cancer and do heart transplants, there isn’t a single pill to treat menstrual cramps.” Her sister pointed at her own stomach. “The world wants our uterus to be drug-free. Like sacred grounds in a virgin forest.”

That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.

She hardly ever saw her brothers—a sacrifice made without truly understanding the consequences, or even having the choice to refuse, created regret and resentment that was as deep as it was slow to heal, and the bitterness broke up the family.

Even the usually reasonable, sane ones verbally degrade women—even the women they have feelings for. That’s what I am: gum someone spat out.

survey by a job search website found that only 29.6 percent of new employees at 100 companies were women, and it was even mentioned as a big improvement.9 Another survey conducted in the same year showed that, among recruiting managers of fifty large corporations, 44 percent of respondents chose that they “would rather hire male to female candidates with equivalent qualifications,” and none chose “would hire women over men.”1

“This is why we don’t hire women.” She replied, “Women don’t stay because you make it impossible for us to stay.”
The percentage of female employees who use maternity leave has increased from 20 percent in 2003 to more than half in 2009, and four out of ten still work without maternity leave.

That was the dream: walking with a group of people also wearing lanyard IDs, holding their purse and phone in the same hand, chatting about the lunch menu