The Making of ‘Undeserving’ Homeless Women: A Gendered Analysis of Homeless Policy in South Korea from 1997 to 2001

Abstract

The Asian Debt Crisis of 1997–2001 led to drastically higher levels of unemployment, resulting in enormous social anxiety and shock. For the first time in its history, South Korea's attention was forcibly drawn to homeless people. Both the new government of the first civilian president, Kim Dae Jung, and an emerging civil society began to pay unprecedented attention to homeless issues. In this new context, homelessness was constructed as a product of the economic crisis. However, although certain homeless men who fit the category of employability and rehabilitation were considered ‘deserving’, long-term street living people and homeless women were disregarded and further marginalized through specific gendered processes. In particular, homeless women were rendered invisible and considered ‘undeserving’ because they fell outside of normative gender expectations, including the idea that a woman's place was in the home, regardless of their ability or desire to work. Building upon ‘needs-talk’ analysis created by Nancy Fraser, this paper exposes the important role of gender norms in the making of a neoliberal welfare citizenship in South Korea, by arguing that the narratives of homeless policy administrators and shelter managers designated homeless women as ‘undeserving’ welfare citizens.