Women's Clothing and Social Participation

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine the relationships between women's social status, social participation, freedom, and clothing, and the manner in which women's clothing affected women's freedom and social participation through the centuries. The stimuli for the study were six images that were used to ask about women's perception of clothing and their social participation. The analysis of the study was used to provide descriptive statistics, frequencies, and Independent sample t-test. The study participants were 268 female college students from a central university in Korea. The participants' ages ranged from 18 to 33 years, with a mean age of 20.93. Ninety-seven percent of the participants said they usually or always were influenced emotionally, psychologically and in terms of external factors by what they wear. Approximately 60% of the women answered that women were limited to social participation by what they wear. These study results indicated that clothing for women did not just function to cover the body, but was also used as a tool to restrict women's behavior, social role, gender discrimination, and social participation.