On Parties’ Terms: Gender Quota Politics in South Korea’s Mixed Electoral System

ABSTRACT

South Korea is among the many democracies that have adopted a legal gender quota and seen a subsequent increase in the number of female politicians. While this increase is especially significant in the context of South Korea’s deeply patriarchal society, the quota is imposed on the dual structure of the country’s legislative politics. Limited to the murkier, patronage-driven arena of party lists, the quota does little to help women enter the arena of single-member district contests in which politicians must compete against one another and campaign for votes. In this context, the quota produces more female legislators without directly enhancing opportunities for participating in a more competitive political zone. This article documents this effect of the quota, and offers an explanation for why such a limited quota was adopted. Evidence from careers spanning both types of races indicates an indirect effect of the quota that begins to offset these limits: places allocated by the quota have emerged as a path into single-member districts. This study adds to understandings of the diversity of gender quota politics worldwide.

KEYWORDS:

• Women and representation
• gender quotas
• electoral politics
• political parties
• South Korea

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Jaewon Lee for assistance updating the research to cover the latest election, and also thanks two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Yoshinori Nishizaki’s input was crucial in developing the project’s approach. The paper also benefited from constructive feedback received following presentations at the East Asian Institute, Singapore, in September 2016, and the Nordic Association of Japanese and Korean Studies meeting in Stockholm in August 2016.

Notes

1. Existing comparative research on individual female politicians in Asia focuses on top leaders (Derichs, Fleschenberg, & Hüstebeck, 2006). While such studies are valuable, the experiences of the larger numbers of female legislators may diverge from those who have become presidents or prime ministers. In South Korea, disgraced president Park Geun-hye’s political career has little in common with those of most female politicians. First, as the daughter of former president Park Chung Hee, Park comes from a special political family. By contrast, very few other female legislators have family members in politics. Second, she had no pre-political career, but most female legislators have professions outside of politics. Third, she is the only woman to enter national politics through a by-election, which points to the special mode of political recruitment in her case.

2. Legal scholars in South Korea have drawn attention to troubling aspects of the judicialisation of electoral and party politics, which follows from making restrictive laws in these areas. See Hong (2013).

3. There are numerous examples of men also following this path from party list seat to district candidacy. Were a parallel analysis to be conducted for male legislators, it would likely show that a far smaller proportion of district representatives ever held at-large seats. A future study might make a comparison between genders of rates of nomination in SMDs for at-large representatives as well as the success rates of such candidates.

4. If only party list winners from the quota’s introduction in 2004 are included, 37 district candidates and 17 district winners come from at-large seats.

Additional information

Funding

Support for completing this work was generously provided by the Republic of Korea through the Next Generation Emerging Researcher Award. A portion of this work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under a Faculty Research Committee Tier 1 grant.