Humble white apron, shameful blue uniform and empowering red union vest: Women janitors in South Korea

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper attempts to understand the process whereby female janitorial workers in South Korea became workers and their ensuing struggles in dealing with varied social changes. In this paper, I explore the diverse meanings implied by the adaptations they made in their lives and by the multiple identities they undertook as workers, women, housewives, and daughters-in-law. Based on extensive participant observation and interviews with women janitors in University A, I collected life histories and sought to locate workers’ micro-level personal experiences within larger social events that may have served as turning points in their social lives. I also investigated the ways in which their identities combined with their lived experiences of urban migration, neo-liberalization and unionization. Belonging to a lower class in South Korean society, women janitorial workers live with multiple identities as they are also members of their families and have several related duties and obligations.