New College Alumna in Multinational Policy Program

The international studies graduate is writing a policy brief with counterparts from South Korea and Japan on improving opportunities for women. They will gather to present the results in Washington, D.C., in August.

Sammy Segeda ’23 graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in international studies, and this summer she is putting much of what she learned in her four years at Washington College into use as part of a pilot program designed to empower young women from the United States, South Korea and Japan to improve public policy.

Segeda’s participation in the Trilateral Youth Empowerment Program is both a culmination and a continuation of the work she did throughout her time at the College and resonates across both her education and her exploration of her personal identity.

Born in Seoul, Segeda was adopted by a white American couple and grew up in the Poconos in a county with an Asian population of just 2.7% (and a white population of 76.2%). Through Washington College, she was able to learn Korean while studying at Yonsei University in Seoul, where she also studied modern Korean history, Korean food and culture, and a course on reconciliation and justice in East Asia.

Being in South Korea, in the city where she was born, affected Segeda in a number of ways personally: experiencing the ease of being in the racial majority, but also the discomfort of communication challenges in Korean with older residents of the city, discovering things about the country and culture in which she was born, while learning about the ways her upbringing had made her American.

That class on reconciliation and justice affected Segeda academically, as she wrestled with topics that would drive her research for both her senior capstone experience and a Libby & Douglass Cater Society of Junior Fellows research grant, which allowed her to return to Seoul this January to conduct research at the War and Women’s Human Rights Museum.

That museum and Segeda’s Cater Society research focused on “comfort women,” the euphemism commonly used to describe the women, mostly Koreans, who were forced to be sexual slaves to Japanese soldiers during World War II. Segeda’s capstone project, for which she earned honors, explored the ways women are disproportionately and negatively affected by the South Korean concept of “han,” which Segeda describes as somewhat untranslatable but encompassing “deep grief and sorrow and rage and shame.”

“I argue that the concept of han was derived from a colonial construct. Because of the cultural annihilation put forth by Japan, the Korean people had nothing else to identify themselves as Korean, so they continue to take on this word, no matter how burdening it can be. It is particularly burdensome for Korean women, who face a double offense of patriarchal nationalism from Korea and (inherently patriarchal) colonialism from Japan. Han that is imposed onto Korean women is hierarchical (due to government and male power) and contains gender bias,” Segeda explained. Her ultimate interest is in “deconstructing the concept and discovering how to heal from it, by women taking power and not confining themselves to the patriarchal standards, by speaking out against the colonizing nation that inflicted such harm, and by showing resistance in the things that they do.”

Andrew Oros, director of the international studies major, characterized Segeda’s capstone as “unusually high-level [and] impressive,” and noted that her academic preparation made her a good fit for the Trilateral Youth Empowerment Program, which was created by The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, which “promotes understanding and cooperation among the nations and peoples of Asia and the United States.”

“She is part of this elite group that is just getting started,” Oros said. “It is a pilot project. The idea is to nurture more women into leadership in international policy.”

The program grouped college students or recent graduates into teams including one woman from each of the United States, South Korea and Japan. Oros pointed out that, in addition to providing the participants with training in affecting international policy, the program is meant to improve relations between South Korea and Japan, two important U.S. allies with poor relations with each other due to Japan’s colonial past. 

Each team of three young women has a topic and a mentor, and over the course of about five months they all engage in three different ways. The whole Trilateral Youth Empowerment Program meets virtually for trainings on how U.S. federal policy can be affected, along with workshops where the participants practice what they have learned. They meet separately in their small teams of three with their mentors, also virtually. And then from August 6 to 11, everyone will gather in Washington, D.C., to present the policy briefs they created to federal decision makers.

Segeda and her teammates—Yesol Lee from South Korea and Yui Okamura from Japan—are focused on women’s empowerment and marginalized groups, which was a rather direct assignment for Segeda given her interest and research into gender-based violence, but it was a little more unusual for her partners, who study security and foreign relations, and STEM and education, respectively. With the goal of providing a policy brief that includes suggested changes to create positive change in their area, each group had to begin by defining the problem they wanted to address within their topic and then start researching possible solutions.

“Our interests were very different for this topic, and so we went around and just asked, how do we relate? How did we learn about things related to women's empowerment and marginalized groups? And everybody's answer was different,” Segeda said of their first meeting. To identify a specific problem and brainstorm possible solutions to research, they then looked for where their answers overlapped and built from there. “A really large part of working in this unique dynamic of a group and in the program is incorporating different viewpoints from each of our countries.”

Segeda, Lee and Okamura decided that all three countries lack women in high-level positions in their careers because of inequitable opportunities and influences from their educational systems. As they discussed the topic, they realized there are differences in some of the details, such as a strong anti-feminist attitude in South Korea that isn’t as pronounced in Japan or LGBTQ+ rights being much further advanced in the United States than in the more conservative Asian countries. But all three see a systemic lack of women in leadership positions.

As they work on their policy brief, they are researching potential solutions like changes to curricula, implementing leadership classes and student-mentor programs in male-dominated fields, and potential enhancements to maternity leave and childcare. 

Although the program and Segeda’s own next steps are both still unfolding, she said it is all moving her in the direction she wants to go through the trainings, hands-on experience and networking opportunities. Segeda also highlighted the value of working with their mentor, Eileen Pennington, associate director for the women’s empowerment program at the Asia Foundation.

“My involvement in the program is a complement to the knowledge I have gained through doing my research through Cater and through doing my senior thesis, even though they are on different things,” Segeda said. “I am very happy with the program, and I would say that is largely due to the leadership.”