Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan

Ruth Barraclough teaches modern Korean history and literature at the Australian National University. She is currently working on her book: Korean Factory Girls: Capitalism and the Seductions of Literature. Elyssa Faison is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and the author of Managing Women: Disciplining Labour in Modern Japan. Her current research interests include issues of citizenship and national belonging in imperial and postwar Japan.

• 1. Introduction: The Entanglement of Sexual and Industrial Labour 2. Sexing Class: "The Prostitute" in Japanese Proletarian Literature 3. Gender and Korean Labour in Wartime Japan 4. Military Prostitution and Women’s Sexual Labour in Japan and Korea 5. Slum Romance in Korean Factory Girl Literature 6. Shipyard Women and the Politics of Gender: A Case Study of the KSEC Yard in South Korea 7. The Frailty of Men: The Redemption of Masculinity in the Korean Labour Movement 8. Gender and Ethnicity at Work: Korean "Hostess" Club Rose in Japan

"This edited volume is a marvelous text in terms of understanding gendered labour in Japan and South Korea." - Jesook Song, Pacific Affairs: Volume 83, No. 4 – December 2010"Women are often divided by their gender roles in traditional societies. They must choose to either erase their gender or maintain their femininity; and between their reproductive role and being objects of male sexual pleasure, cast as either mothers and wives or as prostitutes. Women’s role as industrial workers hangs in the balance between the two. In closely examining this divide and the experiences of the women who exist within it, this book makes a significant contribution to both gender studies and studies of labour history." Maho Toyoda, Kansai University, Asian Studies Review