From study cafes to ride-sharing, Koreans seem to prefer same-sex environments. Why?
“BOYS and girls shouldn’t sit together past the age of seven.”
This old saying from the Confucianism dominated Joseon era seems to hold true to an extent even in present-day South Korea.
From study rooms to gosiwon (tiny housing cubicles available for rent), separating people by sex is widely accepted as a norm. Seoul’s latest move to allow taxi ride-sharing also attests to the popular custom of separating people by gender, making the service available only among same-sex users.
An advocate of this segregation policy, at least at study cafés (places where a cafe and library is combined), is Kim Si-song, a 28-year-old woman preparing for a staterun teacher employment exam.
“I used to go to a study cafe where men and women study in the same place, and there was one time when a female customer accused some men of secretly taking pictures of young female students,” said the resident of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
It is not that all men are potential peeping toms, but she now prefers to go to study cafés that have separate spaces for women only, to be free of any unnecessary worries, Kim said.
Sex crime prevention?
Often, worries about voyeurism, harassment and other sexually-motivated crimes are the reasons behind gender segregation in public spaces or business establishments.
Korean-style public bathhouses, known as jjimjilbang, have gender-segregated wet sauna zones and a resting area where groups, often families, of different genders can gather wearing simple clothes like T-shirts and shorts provided by the establishments. This mixed-gender area consists of dry saunas of various themes and temperatures, sleeping rooms, eating areas and leisure facilities. But after repeated reports of sexual harassment in sleeping zones, many jjimjilbang now have separate sleeping rooms, or offer women-only areas.
Gosiwon is another example of gender segregation primarily for crime prevention. Most of these dormitory-style lodging houses have separate floors for male and female tenants.
“Except for (the shared) kitchen and resting area, we have placed units for men and women on different floors to reduce the risk of conflicts among males and females amid growing public concerns over sex crimes,” said a 52-year-old owner of a gosiwon near Hankuk University who only wanted be known as Jeon.
“To minimise exposure to sex crime risks” was the reason cited by the Seoul metropolitan government, when it introduced on Jan 28 the gender-segregated “Banban (half-and-half ) Taxi”, a ride sharing platform that matches passengers whose routes overlap at least 70%.
Taxi ride sharing was commonplace in the 1970s, until it was banned in 1982 due to problems such as drivers making too many frequent stops to take on additional passengers as well as sex crimes.
The gender segregation policy, however, is not without controversy.
Separating men and women may be an easy way to address concerns about sex crimes, but it runs the risk of being an excessive restriction that removes any benefits of a gender mix, some say.
A recent Korean Supreme Court ruling has found a legal mandate on separation of men and women at private reading room facilities to be an excessive measure that infringes upon people’s right of self-determination.
Its judgement was in favour of a local operator of a private reading room facility who was slapped with a 10-day business suspension from a local educational authority for breaking a gender segregation rule set by the North Jeolla Province’s education office.
The rule in question is the article three of the “Ordinance on the Establishment and Operation of Private Educational Institutes”, which stipulates that seats in studying spaces at private educational facilities should be divided by gender. It was introduced in 2009 largely to deter sex crimes and ensure a better study environment, officials say.
Unlike study cafés, which are categorised as space leasing businesses or a restaurant/ rest area business, reading rooms are regarded as private academies and thus are subject to the ordinance.
“The ordinance violates the operator’s freedom of occupation as well as users’ right to self-determination,” the top court said in the ruling.
It also questioned the underlying notion that the possibility of sex crimes would increase if males and females are seated together, adding it is hard to find convincing scientific evidence supportive of that.
Lee Mi-jeong, a senior official at the staterun Women’s Human Rights Institute of Korea, pointed out that sex crime prevention takes a more funda-mental approach, with digital sex crime on the rise.
“While the nation has failed to implement measures to tackle sex crimes, including tougher legal punishments, various entities and people resorted to a temporary method of blocking contact between males and females in public spaces,” the expert says.
A choice for comfort
Crime prevention is not always the chief reason for single-sex rules. Female seclusion is often a business strategy, catering to women who want to feel comfortable without the presence of men.
A search on Korean search engine Naver for women-only gyms, spas or message shops returns a host of businesses across the nation.
Some Internet cafés, commonly known as PC rooms, offer zones allotted only for women, close to female restrooms.
Park Ye-seul, a 25-year-old college student in Seoul, says, “I’m not trying to sound like a misandrist but some men speak much louder than women do, which really gets on my nerves. Also, their larger body motions make small but annoying noises especially in winter, when many wear padded jackets,” she says.
As for the Suneung college entrance exam’s sex segregation practice, the reasons are practical, explains the Education Ministry, because it makes the post-exam process easier when compiling test scores by gender. Exam takers, too, tend to prefer the same-sex environment to minimise distraction, it says. – The Korea Herald/asia News Network