[Gender and Health] Interview with Yonsei University Graduate School of Public Health Research Professor Kim In-a (Part 2)
By Park Eun-ji
Published: Nov. 8, 2012
Translated by Marilyn Hook
Editor’s note: For the sake of
women’s right to be healthy and to work in a safe environment, a feminist
perspective on health is necessary. Ilda meets and interviews activists,
researchers, and medical practitioners who are pioneering the field of “gender
and health,” in order to hear about their lives and stories. Article author
Park Eun-ji is a researcher at the Institute for Society and Health.
Kim
In-a fights for workers who were injured while working
When she went to medical school though she
“didn’t have an aptitude for it and went on the spur of the moment,” Dr. Kim
In-a (research professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of Public Health)
thought it was not the path for her and was more absorbed in other studies. In
her third year there, when she was very involved in socio-political activism,
however, she had a life-changing experience involving the death of a laborer.
Yonsei U. Graduate School of Public Health research professor Kim In-a © Park Eun-ji
On June 22, 1999, a man named Lee
Sang-gwan, who had received worker’s compensation for four months after badly
injuring his back while working, committed suicide by poisoning himself. Though
he was too weak to walk, the Korean Worker’s Compensation and Welfare Service
notified him that they would only cover outpatient treatment, and he was so
disheartened that he took his own life. The “Late Lee Sang-gwan Joint Policy
Committee” was created to argue that the 27-year-old’s suicide made his family
eligible for worker’s compensation, and to demand reforms in the KWCWS.
Professor Kim In-a participated.
“At that time, the people in Changwon all
came up to Seoul. Together, we held a sit-in demonstration in front of the
KWCWS from the end of July until December. I thought, ‘Since I’m already in
medical school, I should study industrial medicine.’ Also, among the people I
was demonstrating with, I met some who were studying industrial medicine.”
The field of industrial medicine studies
diseases related to jobs and work environments. Its name was recently changed
to “occupational and environment medicine.” When people hear “specialist in
occupational and environmental medicine,” many think that it means treating
victims of industrial accidents, but treatment is not the goal; preventing
health problems caused by an occupation or [working] environment is the goal.
Professor Kim said she decided to listen to
and document the stories of laborers. “No one tells the stories of laborers who
have been injured while working, are in pain, and are having difficulties. We’re
not used to listening to the stories of the people involved. And we think they
ask for too much. We think of them as uneducated people, and doubt them because
they’re laborers. I’ve somehow gotten highly educated, and so I started to
think that I should play the role of reporting accurately the stories they tell
and documenting that these kinds of incidents happened.”
“When I wrote the paper about the health of
Samsung Semiconductor workers, too, it was with the thought that this problem
should be recorded in an official document or in something recognized by
academia so that at some point people could find it and could prevent it from
happening again. Academics also make policy, so it is necessary to make and
keep documentation that they can look at.”
Activities
to protect health of female laborers in small businesses
 |
| Professor Kim counsels a patient at the Incheon Workers’ Health Center. © Incheon Workers’ Health Center |
Professor Kim currently operates the
Incheon Workers’ Health Center. The center is similar to a free clinic, but its
main aim is to provide health care for those who work at small-scale businesses
whose employees number 50 people or fewer.
“As I’ve been operating the center, I’ve
noticed that women come in more than men. I looked into why, and because male
laborers are regular employees, it’s hard for them to take time off, while
women, of course, mostly do work that lacks stability. There are many that work
as care laborers, service workers, and part-timers, and so it’s actually easier
for them to come here. Of course, out of all users, there are many men, but
what I’m saying is that considering men’s absolute majority in the KWCWS, many
female laborers who’ve been doing what the KWCWS calls ‘ancillary’ work come to
the center.”
“Because of this [female laborers having
time to come to the center], I started to think that we could play an important
role in looking after the health of these female laborers who go back and forth
between unemployment and semi-unemployment.”
Professor Kim also helps develop women’s
health indexes in Gangdong-gu as part of the Seoul Women’s Health Pilot Project.
“There’s a team that takes statistical data
and develops indexes that can describe women’s health well. For example, there
is making indexes that can compare the standard of women’s health in Seoul and
Busan, or in Seoul and the US. For Canada, there are [state-run] women health
centers, so this kind of information is well-organized. We need that kind of
community-based, gender-sensitive system. Because first of all, women need to
be among other women to feel comfortable, it’s important to make social systems
that they can access easily.”
When I pointed out that suggesting creating
this kind of system might—not for the first time—cause talk of “reverse
discrimination,” Professor Kim said, “Maybe it will,” and continued.
“There might be a lot of talk of reverse
discrimination, but can’t we just say, ‘Yes, it is reverse discrimination! So
what?’” She laughed. “It’s not taking anything away from men. There are so few
female doctors at large hospitals. Truthfully, women like having female doctors.”
As I’ve been seeing them, female laborers
talk quite a lot. They start with their health problem but then it goes on to
their children, husband, and even mother-in-law… in this way, a person’s health
isn’t just about a broken bone or a heart problem. There is whether they
themselves feel healthy, or environmental factors that allow them to think, ‘I
am living well.’”
Both
labor and health should be approached differently according to gender
Professor Kim counted the fact that
workplace duties differ between the genders as another reason why women’s
health centers are necessary. This is an important fact that not enough people
keep in mind.
“People think that if you work at the same
place, you do the same work, but usually the work is totally different. For
example, I’ve been to a tofu factory. The process of making tofu is quite
simple. If you put the soy beans and bittern into the automated machine, the
tofu is packaged and comes out automatically. At first glance, that doesn’t
seem like much work. But men at this place carry 20-kilogram bags of beans and
pour them into the machines. They also pour in the bittern. This looks like
really hard, heavy work.”
“Meanwhile, women are at the end of the
line inspecting the tofu and putting it into containers. Of course, tofu doesn’t weigh that much. This
work doesn’t look very hard. But all the injuries happen to women.”
“At first I didn’t know why this was, but
after thinking about it I figured it out. Say that men carry a 20-kilo bag 10
times a day—if you add that up, it’s 200 kilos. But women turn over 300-grams
of tofu plus the weight of bittern several hundred times a day. By itself, the
tofu weighs about 300 grams, but if you put together the weight of all that
they handle in a day, it’s huge! That’s why these people are in more pain.”
“If you didn’t know this, you’d just be
like, ‘You just package tofu, what pain are you complaining about? The guys who
carry 20 kilos are fine.’” Not many people readily accept that work differs
according to gender, and that’s a pity. That’s why it’s really important to
look after women’s health at an institution that has gathered people who are
well aware of these things.”
Women’s
health care isn’t solely maternal health care
Professor Kim said that she wished that
more people knew that there was such thing as a “female laborer.”
“I feel like people have a certain narrow
concept of what a woman is. They don’t know that someone called a ‘female
laborer’ exists. Women also work and earn a living. That work can be full-time,
it can be part time, or it could be as a housewife, but women aren’t just
things that sit around doing nothing, they are people who contribute to
economic production, whether directly or indirectly.”
“But there’s too little interest in what
kind of work they are doing, how they earn money, and how they make a living.
That’s why ‘women’s health’ is nothing but maternal care related to pregnancy
and childbirth. Of course, that field also has problems that still have not
been solved, but what I’m saying is that giving birth is not women’s only
role.”
“I hope that interest in working women
grows. The most important thing is society paying a little more attention to
neglected workers and the kind of problems they can have. I want to let people
know that women’s health isn’t only maternal health, it encompasses women’s
mental and physical health and quality of life.”
＊Orignal
article: http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=6191
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