Abstract

This paper studies feminism achieved by women’s literature in the 1990s after post-romanticization and considers the gender equality of care for family. Feminism discourse in the 2010s has consisted mainly of identity politics, misogyny, and political correctness. However, the excessive discussion of ‘femininity’ and ‘political politics of difference’ are concentrated on the struggle of recognition of women among the two-dimensional problems of gender inequality, and have overlooked the problem of economic distribution relatively. This article focuses on the problems of women’s work, housework and caring, focusing on economic inequality. Jo Nam-Ju’s Kim Ji-young, who was born in 1982 represented a contempt of women and ‘Mom worm’, showing the reality of the capitalism that has invaded the realm of the family and mother, and the objection to the serious gender negation of ‘housework and care’. Nancy Fraser criticizes the Neo-liberal regime for withdrawing social welfare investment and forcing women to work under paid labor, resulting in serious care gaps. Nancy Fraser has mentioned three alternatives to this. Universal livelihood support model, equal care provider model, and universal care provider model. The first one is universalizing male, the second is still limited in that it reproduces the difference, and positively suggests a third method of assuming everyone as the subject of ‘care’, that is, women. In Kim Hye-jin’s novel About Daughter, a female speaker who cares for an elderly person with dementia with daughter’s homosexual lover can be a meaningful realization of Nancy Fraser’s third alternative. ‘I’ and daughter’s lover, while cooperating in caring community, cross the family ideology, homophobia and embody the universal caring provider model. Since the 2010s, the feminism discourse must contemplate how feminism can coexist harmoniously with men, taking into account both struggle for recognition and that of distribution.