Somedays you feel like everything is rolling backwards, the medieval mind once again ascendant. From the Podhoretz/Bolton/Wolfowitz crew to the 200-lash mullahs to the theocrats in the presidential race the worst seem often to be in the first ranks of admiration and power. So it’s good to know that authoritarianism, patriarchy and cruelty do diminish even where it is little expected. Progress happens. It happens, it is imagined, it is codified in law. It is lived in women’s lives. Hurrah!

In South Korea, once one of Asia’s most rigidly patriarchal societies, a centuries-old preference for baby boys is fast receding. And that has led to what seems to be a decrease in the number of abortions performed after ultrasounds that reveal the sex of a fetus.

According to a study released by the World Bank in October, South Korea is the first of several Asian countries with large sex imbalances at birth to reverse the trend, moving toward greater parity between the sexes. Last year, the ratio was 107.4 boys born for every 100 girls, still above what is considered normal, but down from a peak of 116.5 boys born for every 100 girls in 1990.

The most important factor in changing attitudes toward girls was the radical shift in the country’s economy that opened the doors to women in the work force as never before and dismantled long-held traditions, which so devalued daughters that mothers would often apologize for giving birth to a girl.

Korean Girls

I’d like to see a follow up by Choe Sang-Hun with more about the effect of such attitudes on the girls of Korea and whether the male-as-victim response to the growing equality is appearing in Korea as it has in the United States.

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