Liberated from pajeon
(Courtesy of Maya Zankowski)
14-year-old student Maya Zankowski writes about gender equality and her great-grandmother in this award-winning article from Write the World’s op-ed competition.
This is a winning article from the 2022 Gender Equality Op-Ed Competition hosted by Write the World, the global community for young writers ages 13–19.
She perched over the stovetop, carefully flipping the pajeon, making sure the top was perfectly crisped to her husband’s taste. She made a point to use seafood instead of beef because he refused to eat it last time.
After preparing dinner, she retrieved a clean plate from the cabinet. She stacked the flat Korean dish of scallions and various veggies on top of one another, making sure each was meticulously spaced half an inch apart. Gathering five small metal containers, she filled each with an assortment of kimchi, bean sprouts, cucumbers, hobak bokkeum and spinach, and laid the dishes on the two-foot tall rice paper table.
Announcing his arrival, her husband yelled, “Soo-Nyu, is dinner ready?”
Frantic with worry, she dropped her head and briskly shuffled her feet to the front door. Removing his jacket and hanging it onto the wall, she was careful to not look into his eyes. She was too scared to look at him anyways — even though they married six weeks ago and she is pregnant with his child, she still did not know what he looked like. It was a sign of disrespect and a display of defiance to look your elders in the eyes, especially as a 17-year-old girl.
The years flew by, and 19 years later, pregnant with her seventh child, her husband passed away in the still of the night, leaving as swiftly as he came. He left her with seven children to feed, little skills, no education and little money. Her husband’s passing was a mixed blessing, however. With seven mouths to feed, there was no luxury of mourning. Soo-Nyu gathered the strength she had accumulated from her slumbers and scattered it over seven, until each uneventful day, all seven children as independent and competent adults left their matriarch.
“This is the story of my great-grandmother who lived in Korea at a time when women had no autonomy over their lives.”
This is the story of my great-grandmother who lived in Korea at a time when women had no autonomy over their lives. Women were regarded as property to men, first their fathers’, then their husbands’. Even though my great-grandmother’s life occurred decades before I was born, the lack of autonomy over one’s body and life still exists today in many parts of the globe. According to the UN Population Fund, approximately half of the women in the world do not have autonomy over decisions regarding sex with their husbands, contraception, their bodies and health care. As long as there are girls and women in any part of the world who are not able to exercise all decisions that govern their bodies, gender inequality exists, and I am not free.
Gender equality includes a person’s right to choose freely, unhindered by prohibitive laws. When I am required to argue, convince or make a case for any decision that affects my body, this is gender inequality. Gender inequality does not only include a person’s right to choose but also the right to not have those choices barred. The recent overturn of Roe v. Wade is a prime example of men being the principal participants of decisions that govern a woman’s body. Women should be the key players in the legal arena that creates laws to protect a woman’s right to reproductive procedures. Five of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade were men. What if women were to vote on a man’s access to procedures for vasectomies?
Gender equality also includes perception and a person’s right to feel comfortable in one’s body. As a woman, I am objectified and sexually harassed, even at 14, by men. I have been on the receiving end of whistles, sexual remarks and gestures, uncomfortably so. My father, on the other hand, is 52 years old and has never experienced feeling sexually objectified for his body parts. I should be able to wear what I want to wear without having to check that an appropriate amount of my thighs are covered to minimize demeaning comments, that a man may feel were designed for his sexual amusement. A man is able to walk outside without a shirt but if a woman followed suit, she would be arrested. Since when were breasts, designed to feed a baby, of entertainment value to a man? Why is my 14-year-old body regarded as sexual entertainment?
“As a woman, I am objectified and sexually harassed, even at 14, by men. I have been on the receiving end of whistles, sexual remarks and gestures, uncomfortably so.”
My genitals belong to me and are mine to keep. This is not the case in some parts of the world. A girl is taken away from her village and forcibly has all or most of her genitals removed, oftentimes with household kitchen accessories. Girls are traumatized, die from infections and experience excruciating pain when having their period or giving birth. The first time I read Waris Dirie write of her experience undergoing genital mutilation, I cried, my soul raw, for all the girls who should be playing with dolls instead of having their innocence forcibly sliced off, to appease a man’s sexual urges and need to control a girl sexually. Gender equality means every girl in this world has autonomy over all her body parts.
I have plans to graduate high school and attend college. The agency to plan my life is a basic right not afforded to girls in many parts of the world. Child marriage is even legal in the U.S! Like my great-grandmother who was married off to a man to be his servant and a vessel for his offspring, there are many girls married, to be property and without a basic education. By any other definition, this would be considered statutory rape and a crime, but the lack of legislation allows sexual predators a loophole to rape a girl without legal consequences. There have been many positive strides since my great-grandmother’s era and I have been on the receiving end of this progress. It is therefore imperative that I take her torch and pass it on for generations that come after me.
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