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Women of Japan and Korea: Continuity and Change, edited by Joyce Gelb and Marian Lief Palley. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1994. 308 pp. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 1-56639-223-3. $22.95 paper. ISBN: 1-56639-224-1.
The "globalization" of the world market in the last decades, as well as the historical, cultural, and regional closeness of Japan and Korea, has produced a variety of research on international trade, economic structure, and culture in those two countries. Little of this research, however, has focused on women. A comparison of women's status in the two countries is the ambitious aim of this book, a project that should have been accomplished long ago. From a comparative perspective, the question raised by writers in this book is in line with the current feminist inquiry: "Women's integration to 'developmental process' does not equate with their liberation. The question we should ask is in what ways women have been incorporated to the process."
To understand the changes and constraints in women's lives, the contributors to this volume cover aspects of family, work, education, health care and reproduction, sexuality, political participation, and feminist...