Continuity, Change in Women’s Issues: Legislative Debate in the Korean Assembly

• In Event: Exploring the Roots of Political Gender Inequality in South Korea and Japan

Abstract

How does democracy matter for promoting gender equality? Existing literature shows that women’s issues receive greater attention in democratic systems than its authoritarian counterparts, and yet contrasting evidence also exists as to how authoritarian regimes may equally be concerned with women’s rights as democracies. Focusing on South Korea, this paper investigates the link between democratization and the representation of women’s issues. Tracing the temporal trend of gender equality discussions in legislative debates, we examine whether, and in what ways, democratization has shifted the nature and extent of gender equality debates in tandem with regime change. In so doing, we consider all speeches from the first plenary session of the Republic of Korea’s Constituent Assembly (제헌국회; 制憲國會) in 1948 to the most current session in 2022. Analyzing the entire corpus of the parliamentary speeches (462,568 in total) from every plenary session meeting (4,898 in total), we found that democratization has a nuanced influence on promoting gender equality in the legislature. Compared to other topics, women’s issues received significantly less attention throughout the legislative sessions. After the democratization in 1987, however, women’s issue evolution gained greater salience, and legislating gender-related measures was also actively discussed. Finally, such efforts were stabilized at the turn of the century as South Korea reached a stage of consolidated democracy. These findings suggest that the process of institutionalizing gender equality is not linear but dynamic, and structural changes matter for understanding the dynamics of gender debates.

Author

• Min Hee Go, Ewha Woman's University