The Grand Narrative

Unusually for me, I checked out the Korean English-language dailies today (it’s been a rainy day here in Auckland), and I was rewarded with a spate of interesting articles. The first, about young Koreans wanting to live away from home, I’ll cover as soon as I practically can (I’m coming back to &%$#ing freezing-cold Korea in 2 days), but in the meantime thanks to daeguowl for passing it on. The second, yesterday’s editorial from the English Chosun Ilbo,was prompted by the incoming Lee Myung-bak Administration’s plans to downsize and streamline government bureacracy. As anyone who has dealt with Korean bureaucrats can attest, this sentiment is to be applauded, but some of the details are attracting a great deal of controversy, specifically the plans to merge the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family into the Ministry of Health and Welfare. I’ll discuss that article below, and I’ll discuss this article from the Korea Times with an alternate viewpoint tomorrow.

A Stronger Ministry of Gender Equality is a Stronger Korea

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, the government agency in charge of eliminating discrimination against women and taking care of families and children, is facing a possible life or death scenario with the coming of the Lee Myung-bak administration. But while some are discussing merging the ministry with another government agency, women’s rights organizations are calling for its expansion.

South Korean women have far less social status than women in advanced countries, as shown by the UN Development Program’s Gender Empowerment Measure, which ranked the opportunities available to South Korean women at 64th place in a survey of 93 countries. But over the past few years a social atmosphere has emerged in which women’s rights have improved in our nation. This has been possible as women have advanced in various social sectors and tangible changes have removed many causes of the gender power imbalance — including the decline of the male household head system, the enforcement of the special law against prostitution, and the expansion of childcare leave for women.

All well and good, but this understates the extent of women’s low social status in Korea, and exaggerates the progress. First, although that figure of 64th place is either a typo, or outdated, or both (it was 63rd in 2002; in 2006, it improved to 53rd), the figures belie the huge discrepancy between Korea’s level of development and the position of women in society (the same is true of Japan). As Michael Hurt says, from whom the above stats and links come:

Funny thing was, Korea was one of the countries that had a higher standard of living, but whose GEM was waaaaay off from that ranking. You see, most developed countries in that study had numbers that kind of made intuitive sense, with GEM rankings that kind of matched – not in a direct correlation, but generally – the overall economic and political development of the country.

Or in other words, Korea has the 11th biggest economy in the world but its women are no more empowered than some countries where domestic violence isn’t even a crime, or where men can have four wives.

As for the decline of the “male household system”, in other words a registration system known as 호주제/Hojuje, which in practical terms meant that full custody of children was almost always automatically granted to the father in divorce cases, that only legally stopped 7 days ago, and the 4-week crackdown “enforcement of the special law against prostitution” has merely pushed it more underground and/or overseas and worsenened conditions for the women in it (no great surprise to me - these are some of the reasons I’m all for complete legalisation myself). Finally, maternity leave does seem to have been increased recently (see “M” in “Social Changes in 2008“), but as a third of this blog is directly or indirectly related to childcare issues (see here, here, here and here for starters, and many posts under the “sexism and sexuality” category if you’re interested), then I think I can confidently say that I’m not expecting any great changes as a result of new legislation, given that Korea would already be a feminist paradise if the existing legislation was actually enforced.

To continue:

Despite this, many netizens are calling for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Now even president-elect Lee Myung-bak’s Transition Committee is considering disbanding the ministry, according to its government reorganization plan. A wide difference of opinions clearly exists between those who face the reality of sexual discrimination and those who view reality from their own standpoint. This is the key point of the debate over whether to maintain or abolish the ministry. It is high time that we had a thorough discussion of the issue.It has been exactly 20 years since the ministry was established in 1988 by the president who was elected the previous year (1987). Its founding was actually the fruition of the democratization movement. The ministry attracted the world’s attention because it succeeded in outlawing deep-rooted sources of sexual discrimination in a short period, and achieving serious progress such as the legislation of equal employment opportunity and the campaign against prostitution, and abolishing the male household head system.

What ” world attention” is she referring to? It’s news to me. And as I’ve just explained, in 20 years it’s made little progress on any of those issues…so is it indeed cited in a number of feminism journals, alebit as a model to avoid or something?

(And while I’m here, after 30 or so translations up on the blog so far, please allow me this rant: What the hell is it with Korean journalists repeating the same things word-for-word in an article, whether in English or Korean? Do they think we missed it the first time?)

It is both a paradox and a natural consequence that the debate over the ministry’s identity began as its focus expanded to include families and childcare. Above all, the Ministry of Health and Welfare complained about having to hand over a portion of its purview to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Feminists criticized the government for having established a separate agency in charge of women’s affairs. They argued that the establishment of the ministry, contrary to expectations, contributed to reinforcing discriminatory trends by fixing the idea that childcare is a woman’s job. Other people were concerned that the ministry was becoming less focused on eliminating sexual discrimination and other actions because it was distracted by administration issues.

Now is the time when we should think hard about the identity of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Some people argue in favor of disbanding it now that the status of South Korean women has improved. But that makes no sense when Finland, Norway and Sweden — the countries that rank first, second and third in the UNDP’s Gender Empowerment Measure and where women are very strong — still maintain ministries devoted to eliminating sexual discrimination. Last year I visited these countries to gather information for a story on women’s rights. I was impressed by their sense of universal human rights which would eliminate sexual discrimination.

Sweden has a Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality and Norway maintains a Ministry of Children and Equality. Both have struck the word “women” from their ministry names. Nevertheless, the elimination of discrimination against women is the most important job for these ministries. They operate their ministries wisely by advocating human rights, and women from ethnic minority groups have been appointed as ministers. But from their standpoint discrimination against women has a deeper meaning in the bigger context of sexual discrimination.

Gender-based studies, a gender-sensitive budget, and gender equality in education are very important components of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s anti-sexual discrimination program. But we need to discuss why we call this program “women’s policy.” Women account for 35 percent of those who pass the annual state bar examination. Under these circumstances, we need to discuss why a 10-percent quota — the same quota as 10 years ago — is still in effect for female candidates at each of Korea’s three military academies.

(Photo by VonMurr)

We also should discuss why the Armed Forces Nursing Academy recruits only female candidates — is nursing a job only for women? The government allocates a budget for unmarried moms. Why doesn’t it do so for unmarried dads? Why are only mothers responsible for extra-marital pregnancies? By asking these questions we can expand our understanding of sexual discrimination and widen support for removing all discrimination in our society. If the voters’ selection of a new president in 2007 was their expression of a desire to seek values far advanced than those of 1987, then the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, a government agency in charge of eliminating sexual discrimination, should be upgraded and strengthened rather than abolished or weakened.

This column was contributed by Pak Sunny, the Chosun Ilbo’s senior reporter for gender affairs

When I skimmed over this article the first time, my immediate reaction was that the merging of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family into the Ministry of Health and Welfare was a bad thing, primarily as a reflex because Korean woman’s groups were against it, but “women’s groups” is a bit of a wide sweep, for I’m sure that they’re just as ideologically diverse as any other NGOs, and so my opinions wouldn’t match all Korean organisations describing themselves as “feminist” (particularly the ones in favor of the law on prostitution). Then there’s also the fact that its achievements are somewhat inadequate for a 20 year history, and surely that of Health and Welfare would find it difficult to do worse? But then the Korea Times says that the Ministry is only three years old! Given the incorrect statistics and poor journalistic quality of Pak Sunny’s article, I’m more inclined to believe the Korea Times, but clearly a third opinion is needed. I’ll try to get one, and cover the Times article, in my post tomorrow.

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