Currently, in South Korea, 86% of the residents living in shared housing are women, among whom the young ones in their 20s take the majority. This study explores the reasons why young women choose shared houses as their first independent spaces in con...
Currently, in South Korea, 86% of the residents living in shared housing are women, among whom the young ones in their 20s take the majority. This study explores the reasons why young women choose shared houses as their first independent spaces in contemporary urban context in South Korea. Young women in their 20s are located in a distinctive stage in their life cycle between adolescence and adulthood called ‘Emerging Adulthood’ first introduced by Arnett(2000). This study analyzes their experience in shared housing to examine the conflict and compromise between the paternalistic control and the desire of the youth for escaping the control, who ultimately attempt to achieve spatial independence from their parents. The in-depth interviews were conducted using a snowball sampling technique with young people in their 20s who are currently living or have experience of living in shared housing. The results are as follows.
The experiences of a home vary depending on gender, class and age, especially between adolescence and adulthood. The experience of family home for men and women is very different due to Korea’s normative paternalism. Usually, young women are regarded as vulnerable and incomplete subjects who need the protection of adult men, and thereby, tend to be faced with stricter surveillance and control under Confucius patriarchy. Gendered experiences of home produce different meanings of home for men and women, and the desire for spatial independence, therefore, becomes constructed differently. The experience at home before a woman becomes independent from her family can be summarized as two words; interference and control.
For young adults who have failed to leave their parents’ house, home is a place where parental domination operates. However, strict rules tend to be more weighted on women. The young women were perceived to have a lack of privacy for parents intruding their own space. Women put into violent pressures and daily surveillance to keep their bodies and sexuality according to patriarchal and heterosexual normativity. As a result, women tend to feel the absence of their private space at home.
Parental control and interference with their children operate not only within home but also outside the home. Under the patriarchal family system, the control over their daughters is further tightened. Due to Confucian norms, young women suffer from gendered restrictions such as the limit on sleepover and curfews. In addition, the identity of "daughter" appears to lead to another obsession and control in her relationship with her mother.
This gendered experience is the reason why young women vent their desire to separate from their parents’ houses. In order to achieve spatial independence, young women need to create ‘convincing excuses’ for their parents. After parents’ consent to live outside, however, women face a limited choice of the dwelling due to their gender. First, they face safety issues and fears of crime in urban spaces. Second, constructing a single woman household, women feel their choice being constrained by objectified views on women who live alone, which are created by the male and older generations.
In addition to external factors that constrain the choice of housing, women face a situation in which they are required to obtain parental permission for the housing of their choice. As a result, women end up choosing women only shared houses. Parents allow shared housing for the following reasons: First, it is believed safer to live with people with the same sex. Second, shared housing is a small communal space where conventional surveillance and control are working by the eyes of cohabitants. Third, because there are managers who take care of the house, selected by shared house companies, their children are less likely to be exposed to unsanitary conditions. Fourth, because it is a co-residential home exclusively for women, the sexuality of their daughters can be modestly controlled.
For young women, however, shared housing is considered as an unstable and incomplete independent space. First, it is difficult to form an alternative community among shared house cohabitants, thereby, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ often takes place. In addition, due to the nature of co-living, the divide between public and private spaces occurs within the house, leaving the space of complete privacy much more limited. For these reasons, women living in shared houses still feel incompleteness in their apparently independent lives.
In conclusion, the shared housing has a similar nature within young people in their emerging adulthood stage: a temporary type of dwelling that serves as a stepping stone from lower to upper dwelling, providing an incomplete space rather than the fully independent space.
The implication of this study is as follows. First, this study investigated the meaning of the gendered choice of shared houses. It suggests that the gendered choice of dwelling should not be understood merely by personal matters but by structural phenomena which resulted from paternalistic normativity and, therefore, spatial limitations imposed on women in their use and appropriation of urban spaces. Second, this study points out the limitations and possibilities of shared housing as alternative communal housing. Much of previous literature on alternative housing has rarely investigated the gendered nature and its cultural meanings.