Which direction should ambition take for women in Asia?

Through the pandemic, women in the US are realizing there’s more to living a fulfilling life than money, titles and professional recognitions. Elle magazine’s What Comes After Ambition? intricately depicts the collective and complex changes that women in the US are going through, redefining success and work’s role in our lives. I too, am living through this change, as shared in my first blog article I Choose to Live Life Ordinary. Surely, this must be a global phenomena that women all around the world are experiencing?

I couldn’t help but reflect on my home country, South Korea. I’m always amazed by the resilience and persistence of Korean professional women who keep going amidst the brutal work culture. Thanks to the Covid pandemic and booming tech industry, work culture has gotten a little better. Yet, in 2022, women CEOs account for just 2.4% of 1,350 companies in South Korea (vs. 8.8% of Fortune 500 in the US). South Korea ranked the rock bottom in Economist’s 2022 glass-ceiling index, for the TENTH year in a row. Japan, the only other Asian country in the list, is only one rank above South Korea. Plus, South Korea now has the lowest fertility rate of 0.81 in 2021, far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population. As though these are not enough, 40% more young women are reported to have committed suicide during pandemic. These are some alarming statistics.

Should South Korean women keep climbing the steep, rocky mountain as they always have done, or should they pause and take a more scenic route for a completely different experience? The scenic route will not give the top view, but will give time, energy, and mental capacity for women to stop to smell the flowers along the way, catch up with old friends, make new friends, and give back. No doubt some will make to the top by climbing. The truth is that is not enough to break the staunch glass-ceiling. Both the individual and societal sacrifices that are being made for the few scratches on the ceiling are too big. Well, shouldn’t we sacrifice so that the next generation of women can enjoy gender equality? We have sacrificed and we learned that individual success is not enough to make a real change. We can’t keep doing the same thing that we know is clearly not working. It is time for all of us women in Asia to think differently and adjust our approach.

Let’s redefine success. Let’s do this while being true to our own core. Who said success has to be about how much money we make, where we live, and what title we have? Nurturing, empathetic, kind, and affectionate characteristics are what make us uniquely female, and when we are exactly who we are meant to be, we feel happy and at peace. How many times, especially us as Asian women, did we hear that we are not assertive enough and not speaking up enough? If we just let ourselves to define success beyond the traditional sense, we’ll feel much less stressed and burnt out. Furthermore, we’ll begin to see a healthier, kinder and more caring society that we would all agree is what we want to give to our kids.

Let’s do what we love doing. If we love what we do, we’re more than willing to put in extra hours without feeling stressed out. We will only be competing against ourselves to get better. There’s no one who can win against someone who’s doing it because she genuinely enjoys it. I understand that not everyone is in the fortunate situation to pursue what she likes. For those who do, hustle to pursue passion and make a living out of it. There’s never been a better time to hustle with today’s interconnectedness and free flowing of information. We only have one chance at life. Let’s start living a fearless one.

Let’s bring Asian men along to be our biggest advocates. HeForShe, the global solidarity movement for gender equality that is initiated by the UN in 2014 is exactly what we need to see more in Asia. For a Confucius society like South Korea, this will be a long battle, but worth it. Unless we bring along our dads, brothers, uncles, cousins, and male colleagues to advocate for women’s equality, there will be no progress, as we saw from our painfully stagnant glass-ceiling index. We need more men in the leadership positions to advocate for more flexible work hours, part time works, maternity/paternity leave benefits, and access to affordable child/elderly care, together with women. We are both in the same team with the same mission, which is to leave a better place for our next generation to thrive and it’s possible only if we have men fully on board.

I decided to take a scenic route and I feel just as ambitious as ever. I’m still hustling, this time for the causes that I deeply care most about. I feel practically balanced and energized. I hope more women in Asia can experience this too.

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