Backlash Against Gender Quotas to Enhance Women’s Political Representation in South Korea

South Korea is a mature democracy that has undergone regime changes through the medium of peaceful elections since its democratization in the late 1980s. However, as evidenced by the Global Gender Gap Index, the Glass Ceiling Index, and the #MeToo movement, South Korea's democracy has been unable to overcome its patriarchal political culture and male-dominated power structure. To illustrate, the proportion of women in the National Assembly is 20%, which places South Korea in 117th position globally. This significant gender imbalance has resulted in women lawmakers failing to address gender issues and political parties disregarding the quota laws that were introduced with the aim of achieving women's political representation. This presentation examines the implementation of gender quotas and their impact on women's political representation in South Korea over the past two decades. Furthermore, the presentation addresses the challenges and controversies surrounding the implementation of gender quotas as a policy to enhance gender equality in politics. It also presents the findings from the original survey of members of the National Assembly regarding women's political representation.

Professor Ki-young Shin holds a dual appointment as Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences and the Institute for Gender Studies at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo. She is also a visiting scholar at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies in George Washington University. Her research interests include the gender quotas, women’s political representation and gender policies in East Asia, as well as the comparative analysis of women's movements, including the #MeToo movement. She has been the recipient of two Best Paper Awards from the International Political Science Association and the Western Political Science Association. In 2018, she co-founded the Academy for Gender Parity, through which she has trained a considerable number of young women to run for political office. Her academic works have been published widely in international journals, including International Political Science Review, Politics & Gender, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, Pacific Affairs, and others. She has also contributed to numerous books, such as the Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory. She is currently working on the forthcoming co-authored book, which will examine the construction of gendered labor in life insurance.