Government and Politics in Northeast Asia
(by Jaemin Shim)
 Gender Roles: past vs. present
◦ Past
 Men did all the work outside the house
 Men attained high positions
 Political leaders were all men
 Women cannot vote
 Women basically cook, clean, and raise kids
 Some women worked in silk factor (labour intensive)
 Women were not able to be educated thoroughly
◦ Present:
 Men more involved in child raising
 Women can vote
 Women can work outside the house
 Women can attain high ranks
 Women can enter the political world
 Gender Roles: past vs. present
◦ Related YouTube
 Working hours in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y-
YJEtxHeo
 Rise of Women in Taiwan: https://youtu.be/2kBsWPIYFhM
◦ The key take-away point…
 Women often have the triple responsibility of doing paid work,
providing childcare, and caring for parents or parents-in-law.
 Other Statistics…
 Other Statistics…
 Other Statistics…
 Culture and gender: the Confucian legacy influences women’s
position in society by emphasizing the virtue in obeying one’s
father, husband, and son
◦ Some previous/current family Laws reflect this and has long protected
male dominance and interests
 Korea: the ho-ju system (a civil law) protects the right of men to be the “head of
family” (which appears in any family-related official documents).
 Taiwan: Taiwan men have decision-making power over the domicile, surnames,
parental rights, and property rights
 Japan: the koseki system (a civil law) does not allow women to use a separate
family name after marriage
 Developmental state legacy:
◦ The working culture in Japan (and Korea) can be characterized by long
working hours (often followed by late-night informal drinking), peer
pressure to not take parental leave.
◦ These practices are generally not favorable to female employees—many of
whom experience more career interruptions, such as pregnancy and childraising
periods, than their male counterparts
◦ Evidence: Japanese corporate culture values male employees who can bear
“long-working hours”, while at the same time dismissing work-life balance
as an idealistic notion (Nemoto, 2013)
Proportion of Female Legislators
in the National Parliament (1992-2016)
Page 9
Proportion of Total Bills Sponsored
by Female Legislators (1987-2016)
Substantial
Representation
Reasons behind this linkage?
1) Women are more likely to trust other women to understand their needs; and present
their substantive interests
2) Even male legislators hold the expectation that female legislators have more
expertise in the area of women issues
3) More likely to discuss politics with others (Atkeson 2003), express interests
(Koch 1997), be aware of substantive policy positions, and make legislators more
accountable
Descriptive
Representation
Mediating factors: political conditions,
threshold, individual attributes
Gender and Background…
 Dalton’s (2015) work shows how Japanese female legislators promote a
conservative understanding of femininity based on stereotypes of
motherhood and housewifery, while Lovenduski (1986) points out that
European socialist men once opposed female representation in the
legislature based on the reason that female legislators mostly come from
white, middle-class, and elite backgrounds
 Impeached Korean president, Park Geun-hye, whose presidency
greatly hindered feminist activists’ attempts to pushing for greater
female political representation
 An interesting comparative work conducted since there are many female
politicians in Asia are from powerful family, e.g. Philippine’s Corazon Aquino
and Gloria Arroyo or Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia.
Page 11
Seat Share and women’s influence
Female legislators should reach a specific percentage to improve the
representation of women’s interests (Daherlup, 1988)
Only when female legislators reach a 30 percent threshold can they be
strong enough to alter the institutional culture
Male legislator?
Makes women’s issues mainstream, which would influence men’s legislative
behavior by making them focus more on women’s issues which, in turn, would
minimize gender difference
Can cause a backlash—male legislators will not hesitate to use a range of
strategies to halt policy initiatives concerning women
Page 12
 Korea-Taiwan > Japan
 Proportion of Female Legislators in the Legislature (left) and
election success rate (right)…. Why?
 Debunks the myth that strong economic
development leads to the advancement of
women’s rights….. (Japan is still the most
developed economy)
 Reason 1: Civil Society Movement: Riding on the momentum
created by the democratization in the late 1980s, women’s
organizations have been a powerful force behind gender
politics in Korea and Taiwan (Clark and Lee 2000).
 Women’s movements in Japan can be characterized as
fragmented, decentralized, and single-issue focused. In other
words, lacked large-scale nation-wide umbrella organizations
with encompassing feminist goals
 And women’s organization was not interested in securing
equal rights and opportunities for working women, but with
protecting consumer rights or environment for unemployed
married women
 Female Legislators with Civil Society/Trade Union Background
(Left) and Women’s Civil Society Participation Index (Right)
 Reason 2: Clear partisan bias
 Neither the centre-left DPJ nor the centre-right LDP comes
near the proportion of women bills sponsored by left-wing
SDP members
Gender Issue Priority by Legislator’s Party Affiliation
 Reason 2: Clear partisan bias
 “Gender mainstreaming” efforts have met resistance in Japan
(Gelb 2008; Kimura 2005; Kano 2011): “gender backlash” by
conservative forces
◦ Gender quota on the ground that it can be a form of “reversed
discrimination
◦ Gender equality” as a communist idea challenge to traditional
family values
◦ Female academics such as Hasegawa Michiko, who advocated the
traditional male-breadwinner model
◦ Conservative women’s groups campaigns to defend women’s roles
as wife and against feminists