THE RISE OF WOMENS EDUCATION IN THE UNITED-STATES AND KOREA - A STRUGGLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OCCUPATIONAL EQUALITY

When, why, and how did women in the United States and Korea become edu cated? Although independent studies have documented the rise of educat ion for women in each country, no analysis has yet compared hen: in th ese seemingly dissimilar cultures education became not an oddity for w omen but a modern necessity. Although the revolution in women's educat ion resulted from and gave rise to profound ideological shifts in both countries, it tool; its roots as well in radical political and econom ic changes that accompanied industrialization. In the United States wo men's education began in the post-Revolutionary period (1780-1835) wit h the growth of public town schools and private seminaries devoted pri marily to inculcating domestic ideals, morality, and civic virtue. Mar y Lyon's founding of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837 marked the advent of higher education for women, which then accelerated the p ush for other women's colleges, co-education, and the opening of teach ing as a ''feminized'' profession during the mid-to late-nineteenth ce ntury. Excluded from formal education under the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910) , Korean women were modestly educated in feminine morality and virtue based upon Confucian doctrines that strictly limited their roles to th e domestic household. When Methodist missionary Mary Scranton founded Ewha Hakdang in 1886 for one student, it became Korea's first formal e ducational institution for women, subsequently offering the first coll ege-level program in 1910, providing almost the exclusive access to hi gher education under Japanese colonial rule until 1945, and awarding 9 7% of its degrees between 1948 and 1985. Although deriving from fundam entally different backgrounds, Puritanism or evangelical Protestantism in the United States and the Confucian philosophy in Korea, the early rationales for women's education involved a similar blend of religiou s prescriptions, democratic and domestic imperatives, sind eventually arguments for socioeconomic utility. But within the overt agendas arti culated by educational leaders or prescribed by the state lay hidden t he seeds of what would become the twentieth-century goals for women: t he right to an education, the demand for equal education for women, th e pursuit of independence and personal autonomy, and the push for econ omic security through occupational opportunity and mobility. How the w omen's movement has changed the destiny and mission of women's college s, without denying the heritage that shaped these institutions from th eir founding, provides a textbook example of the shifts in women's edu cation that have occurred over nearly 200 years in the United States a nd 100 years in Korea. This comparative analysis, therefore, begins by examining the historical and ideological roots of women's education, then focuses specifically on the rise of Mount Holyoke and of Ewha Wom ans University as the first women's colleges in the United States and Korea respectively. By examining career and employment patterns of wom en graduates, we begin to see how education altered women's lives and occupational choices and how women's aspirations have been met or frus trated by labor force trends, entrenched economic structures, and soci o-cultural mores. Although differences;surely emerge, what is more str iking is the similarity in patterns of development and in the spirit o f the pioneering women and men who opened the doors to education for w omen - doors to minds that can never be closed.