From taboo to triumph, Jiwon Park turned her uncomfortable experiences as a professor in the US and an entrepreneur in South Korea into a force for change and is on a mission to drive women’s sexual health awareness
At the age of 28, Jiwon Park had just become a professor in the US. It was the South Korean academic’s first semester at the University of Texas and she had challenged her students to pick a social problem and come up with design interventions. Homelessness, food poverty and saving energy were among the topics that had been covered. Then, one of Park’s students chose an issue that the professor found particularly uncomfortable to discuss—unprotected sex and contraception.
In South Korea, sex was not a subject discussed at home, and sex education at school taught abstinence to girls. Park recalls standing up in class and pledging chastity out loud.
In the US, Park was sexually active but had never touched a condom. “I was taught to stay naive about contraceptives and sexual health,” said Park, when telling her story at an event organised by UN Women and The Moth, a non-profit dedicated to storytelling, last year. “I realised that it is this patriarchal culture that is putting women’s health in danger. This hit me so deeply, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What can I do to change this?”
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She started looking into the issue and found that sex education in South Korea hadn’t changed much since she was growing up, and condom usage was low with men refusing to use them and women being judged or slut shamed when they asked them to. Park’s solution? To create a condom for women—one that was made from natural and non-toxic ingredients, and free from chemical irritants and harmful or unnecessary additives. It was the beginning of her sexual wellness brand SAIB, which is a reverse spelling of ‘bias’.
But challenging patriarchal bias has been no easy feat. While teaching by day, Park worked as a startup founder by night, facing all the challenges of an entrepreneur and more. When trying to raise funding, investors she met with called her business “unethical” and believed it would fail because “women don’t buy condoms”. And then there was abuse, particularly online where she was met with misogyny and online gender-based violence (OGBV). “Every day I faced criticism, rejection, slut shaming, and sexual harassment,” she said. “People looked at me as if I was doing something immoral. I thought I was committed to this fight, but it was so much harder than I expected.”
