Sojin Lee is a Ph.D student in Sociology and a feminist labor scholar based in Seoul, South Korea. Her research focuses on youth labor, financial practices, and neoliberal governance.

Area of Interest

Method

Women’s Labor and Youth labor based on gender perspective, Financial Practice and Neoliberal governance
and Women’s Studies.

Fieldwork, Qualitative interviews,
and Topic modeling with big data (using Python)

Educaiton

  • Sojin Lee received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Yonsei University with a dissertation titled From Gendered Ability to Assetization: Meritocracy, Financialization, and Gendered Inequality in Labor and Finance in South Korea.

  • Sojin Lee earned her M.A. in Women’s Studies from Ewha Womans University and received the Outstanding Thesis Award for her dissertation titled A Feminist Study on the Effect of Standard Working Time Reduction - Focused on Work and Life of Middle-aged Women. This research is based on her fieldwork experience working at B-Mart, where she analyzed how standard working time reduction impacts the work and personal lives of middle-aged women. The study reveals how productivity-oriented working time reduction policies fragment women’s personal time, dismantle social networks at work, and overlook the complexity of their labor experiences. While previous discussions focused primarily on wages and productivity, this study highlights the importance of working time arrangements and the formation of social subjectivity, offering a critical perspective on the limitations of existing work-life balance discourses.

  • Sojin Lee earned her bachelor's degree in Western Philosophy from Dongguk University, where she primarily focused on social philosophy.

Sojin Lee

Sojin Lee

Women's Labor

Youth

Neoliberal governance

Financial practice

Women's Labor Youth Neoliberal governance Financial practice

ARTICLE

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. Suicide Thought as an ontological Anxiety Caused by Postmodernity: Focused on Women Born after 1990. Journal of Korean Women＇s Studies 39(3). 119-154.
    ( Original title in Korean: 성별화된 위험이 야기하는 존재론적 불안: 청년여성의 자살생각 내러티브를 중심으로)

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. An Exploratory Study for the Concept of Time Sovereignty Based on Gender Equality: Focusing on Women’s Working Environment in 2040. Journal of Korean Women＇s Studies 38(4). 119-154.
    (Original title in Korean: 성평등한 시간주권 개념을 위한 탐색적 연구: 2040 여성의 노동환경을 중심으로)

  • So Jin Lee. 2022. "In the Era of Popularized Feminism, Which Women Does Feminism Invoke?" New Radical Review, Spring Issue, 98–118.
    (Original title in Korean: 페미니즘 대중화 시대, 페미니즘은 어떤 여성을 호명하는가?)

BOOK

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. Vaporized Women: A Study on Suicidal Thoughts among Young Women. May Books (Publisher)
    ( Original title in Korean: 증발하고 싶은 여자들: 청년여성들의 자살 생각에 관한 연구)

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. When experience becomes a language. Moonji Publishing.
    (Original title in Korean: 경험이 언어가 될 때)

  • So Jin Lee. 2021. Gendered Labor Time: Women's Work and Time that Cannot be Imagined or Calculated. GalapagosBooks.
    (Original title in Korean: 시간을 빼앗긴 여자들)

Presentation

  • So jin Lee. 2026. "Just-in-Time Hiring Regimes and the Gendered Expropriation of Bodies and Time", SOSO Institute for Gender-Equal Labor Studies. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2025. "Navigating Precarity through Life Investment: Gendered Dynamics of Digital Creative Labor and Financial Practices in Contemporary South Korea", SSSP2025 in Chicago.

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. "Navigating Precarity through Life Investment: Gendered Dynamics of Digital Creative Labor and Financial Practices". Marx Communale 2024. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. "The Conditions of Labor for Quality Care," Revolutionary Love: Our Care is Changing the World – A Discussion on the Experiences and Alternatives of 1,030 Care Workers, Womenlink. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. "Financial Practices and Asset Formation among Youth by Gender and Class," Summer Conference of the Korean Association of Critical Sociology. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. "Gendered Precarity and Rent-Seeking: Focusing on Young Digital Creative Workers," Spring Conference of the Korean Association of Women's Studies. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2024. "Ascending the Ladder, Encountering the Loop: Gender Disparities in Labor Market Trajectories within the Web Industry in Neoliberal Korea”, AAS2024 in Seattle.

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. "Young Women Precariat in the Infinite Job-Hopping Loop," Autumn Conference of the Korean Association of Women's Studies. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. "Suicide Thought as an ontological Anxiety Caused by Postmodernity: Focused on Women Born after 1990", XX ISA World Congress of Sociology in Melbourne.

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. "How 'Merit' Discriminates against Women: From Critiques of Meritocracy to Job-Based Pay," Spring Conference of the Korean Association of Women's Studies. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2023. "Fragmented Intimacy and Growing Life Precarity: Focusing on the Work Experiences of Young Women in the Cultural Industry," Marx Communale 2023. (in Korean)

  • So Jin Lee. 2022. "An Exploratory Study for the Concept of Time Sovereignty Based on Gender Equality: Focusing on the Working Environment of Women in 2040," Between Dependence and Autonomy: Seeking Time Sovereignty for Women Workers, Presentation by Womenlink. (in Korean)

Scholarship

  • 2022.09 – Present Research Fellow, Brain Korea 21+ (BK21+), Sociology Program, National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)

  • 2023.12 Recipient of Yonsei University Academy Research Fellowship (ARF) Scholarship

  • 2023.12 Yonsei University Gender Studies Group (YeonJenMo) Scholarship

  • 2022.09 Recipient of Yonsei University Academy Research Fellowship (ARF) Scholarship