Asian Center for Women’s Studies Hosts 2025 Korea-Japan International Joint Conference on Race and Gender
- Date2025.09.17
- 18406
The Asian Center for Women’s Studies at Ewha Womans University hosted the 2025 Korea-Japan International Joint Conference on Race and Gender on Friday, September 12, at the Humanities Building.
The Asian Center for Women’s Studies has been organizing an invited lecture series on the theme of Race and Gender and holds international academic conferences as venues for exchange and solidarity among researchers and practitioners. This year’s international conference, titled “Rethinking ‘Family’ in East Asia: Intersections of Gender, Citizenship, and Race in Care and Reproduction,” was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea and jointly organized by the Asian Center for Women’s Studies Race and Gender Project Group (Principal Investigator: Professor Sunhye Kim) at Ewha Womans University and the project “Why Has East Asia Become a Low Fertility Society? A Comparative Historical Sociology of Reproduction that Questions ‘Familism’” (Principal Investigator: Professor Masako Kohama, College of Humanities and Sciences, Nihon University) in Japan.
In the wake of the pandemic and the climate crisis, humanity has been confronted with fundamental questions regarding social institutions and modes of human life surrounding production and reproduction. In East Asian societies, where labor, welfare policies, and population policies have long been organized around the family, “familism” has been identified as a key cause of crises such as low fertility, aging, and care gaps. Yet, discourses and policies formulated in response to these crises have rarely expanded beyond preserving and reinforcing the family itself. This Korea-Japan joint international conference was designed to provide a multifaceted examination of the meaning of family in Japanese and Korean societies, and to critically explore the ways in which familism has functioned as a mechanism of social control and the reinforcement of inequality.
Professor Sunhye Kim, Director of the Asian Center for Women’s Studies, stated, “The crises of social reproduction, including low fertility, aging, and care gaps, are both effects and symptoms of familism. I expect that the wide range of presentations and discussions at this conference will help deconstruct and reconstruct family norms within the East Asian context, while seeking theoretical and practical tasks that can point toward fundamental directions for building a sustainable society.”
The conference program consisted of three sessions: Part I, “The Intersections of Class, Race, and Gender in the History of Korean Familism”; Part II, “The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of East Asian Familism I: Japan”; and Part III, “The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of East Asian Familism II: Korea.” Presenters examined issues such as care and adoption systems, reproductive technology norms, migration, and population policies in both countries, engaging in discussions on the injustices of social control and state intervention in childrearing and care. In particular, by highlighting injustices and oppressions at the intersections of race, gender, and class in relation to family structures and population reproduction, the conference comprehensively illuminated how the family in East Asian societies has functioned historically, politically, and socially as a core arena inscribed with power relations, from a comparative sociological perspective. Discussions also addressed possible alternatives.
This international conference was significant in that it critically examined East Asian family ideologies, scrutinized the historical formation of familism, and identified theoretical and practical tasks for deconstructing and reconstructing family norms. Furthermore, it served as a venue for feminist exchange and solidarity between Korea and Japan, aimed at seeking a more relational and sustainable society beyond the isolated individual and family within the East Asian context.