{"product_id":"women-in-the-sky-gender-and-labor-in-the-making-of-modern-korea-9781501758263","title":"Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2023 John K. Fairbank Prize and the 2023 James B. Palais Prize.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWomen in the Sky \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eexamines Korean women factory workers' century-long activism, from the 1920s to the present, with a focus on gender politics both in the labor movement and in the larger society.\u003c\/b\u003e It highlights several key moments in colonial and postcolonial Korean history when factory women commanded the attention of the wider public, including the early-1930s rubber shoe workers' general strike in Pyongyang, the early-1950s textile workers' struggle in South Korea, the 1970s democratic union movement led by female factory workers, and women workers' activism against neoliberal restructuring in recent decades. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHwasook Nam asks why women workers in South Korea have been relegated to the periphery in activist and mainstream narratives despite a century of persistent militant struggle and indisputable contributions to the labor movement and successful democracy movement.\u003ci\u003e Women in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e opens and closes with stories of high-altitude sit-ins--a phenomenon unique to South Korea--beginning with the rubber shoe worker Kang Churyong's sit-in in 1931 and ending with numerous others in today's South Korean labor movement, including that of Kim Jin-Sook.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eWomen in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e, Nam seeks to understand and rectify the vast gap between the crucial roles women industrial workers played in the process of Korea's modernization and their relative invisibility as key players in social and historical narratives. By using gender and class as analytical categories, Nam presents a comprehensive study and rethinking of the twentieth-century nation-building history of Korea through the lens of female industrial worker activism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eHwasook Nam is Emeritus Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington. In addition to authoring numerous articles and book chapters, she is the author of \u003ci\u003eBuilding Ships, Building a Nation\u003c\/i\u003e and the coeditor of \u003ci\u003eBeyond Death\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"ILR Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50380533956882,"sku":"9781501758263","price":59.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_752a3115-1898-45c0-91d2-9319334c732b.jpg?v=1728683790","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/women-in-the-sky-gender-and-labor-in-the-making-of-modern-korea-9781501758263","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}