Sunset for the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family
(Photo of Gwanganli Bridge, Busan, by CatBrook)
As expected, today Lee Myung-bak announced that after only two and half years, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) will be merged into the Ministry of Health and Welfare. As both the Korea Times and Hankyoreh report, the “prospects for parliamentary approval of Lee’s organizational reform bill are uncertain, as the 138-seat pro-government United New Democratic Party (UNDP), which is capable of mustering a majority of 150 seats in the National Assembly in conjunction with minor liberal parties, opposes the closure of the Unification Ministry,” but this is the only reason for it’s opposition, and from what I’ve read as I’ve covered the issue over the last week, few save politically marginal womens’ groups will mourn MOGEF’s passing.
Regardless of what readers think of his plans to downsize government into the “smallest since 1960,” but at the same time re-orientate it back along the lines of its 1970s developmental statism (an interesting contradiction that I’ll be covering on the blog soon), it is certainly ominous that the scrapping of MOGEF is occurring despite his pre-election pledge to strengthen it. At the moment I only have that one source on that and so I will try to find others to confirm it, but in the meantime it would certainly sour my image of him if true, and only 4 weeks since he was elected no less. Sure, I already don’t think too highly of his devoting Seoul to God as mayor, or of his persistence in wanting to build a cross-country canal either, but at least in the latter case he is fulfilling his pre-election promises.
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Who’s to Blame for Gender Inequality in Korea and Japan?
Over at Japundit, Peter Payne briefly discusses the phenomenon of kekkon taishoku in Japan, or leaving work to get married (I assume it’s exclusively used for women). My wife tells me there’s no equivalent exotic-sounding phrase in Korean (the real reason why Japanese culture is more popular than Korean) but the examples he gives of intelligent, sophisticated and (previously) career-orientated women quite happily…no, yearning to give it all up upon marriage will be familiar to anyone who’s taught Korean adults also. In my own experience, a good 10% or so of the women in their 30s that I’ve taught were already fluent, but happily confessed that they came to class more for social reasons and as a hobby than for learning English per se.
(Photo by comatosed)
Spending most of my undergraduate days either writing essays on the fallacy of the notion of “Asian Values,” or trying to pick up women at Amnesty International by joining their protests about them, then I completely disagree with Peter’s culturally-relativist sentiments that it’s inapproprite to judge this from his own US world-view. I do think that being a housewife is a waste of an intelligent woman’s abilities, particularly after 10+ years of career in a field that they enjoy, but notice that I didn’t say “raising children,” because yes, despite what I just said, my own wife is also a housewife and mother.
Why the contradiction? Well, we’ve decided that with the expense and widespread concerns over standards of childcare in Korea that this is best for our daughter (and our next child), but from what we’ve learned about childcare availability in Australia or New Zealand, then she would definitely work again if we lived there (which is…ahem…all I can really say about that online). Despite the boredom of being at home all day, she loves raising Alice of course (although it certainly helps that I’m doing much of it until I go to work at 1pm every day), and I’m reminded of a decade-old column I read in the New Zealand Herald about childless, soon-to-be (then) prime minister Helen Clark’s visions for childcare, which according to the columnist were based on an assumption that more women wanted to work but inadequate childcare facilities were the only reason preventing them from doing so, which the columnist, who was a mother, argued wasn’t quite the case. Somewhere in my possession I also have an Economist magazine article from 2000 or so that argued that the concept of going off to work and handing your children to complete strangers for the day was a recent anthropological oddity and hardly natural, and that thus, however cliched it sounds, “reconciling women’s roles as mothers and workers is one of the prime concerns of our age.”
I will try to find both articles if anyone wants to know more. In the meantime, I recommend you read this and then this article on the related subject of evolutionary psychology from Time magazine, both of which had a great influence on me at the time, and which briefly discuss the “naturalness” of modern-day childcare arrangements in passing (on pages 2 and 4 respectively). And if you haven’t seen it, then Mona Lisa Smile is a great movie dealing with all the themes above. It’s set in 1953, and if accurate, shows an environment clearly ripe for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that it discusses “Housewives Syndrome,” a term used by family doctors in the 1950s and 1960s to describe the physchological and physiological problems many women were developing because all they were expected to do with their university educations was cook, look after children, and clean the house for the remainder of their lives.
But despite all that, regular readers will not be surprised to find that I still think that the expansion and increased availability of childcare is by no means the only, but still the best route for the advancement of women in Korean society at the moment. To take a leaf from the 18th Century “Mother of Feminism” Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, where she counters arguments that women are inherently mentally inferior to men by pointing out that such comparisons couldn’t be made until women received the same education as men, I’ll accept that women instinctively want to stay home and only be mothers only once they have all options available to them. Until then, gynocentric feminists can just STFU.
But all this is not going to happen without the political will in Korea. So far on the blog, I’ve repeatedly mentioned that it is because of this lack that legislation is not enforced, but in hindsight discussions of where it is supposed to come from have been suspiciously absent. Maybe it’s because it obviously must come from Korean women themselves, whom I am not imposing my own worldview on when I say that intelligent and ambitious women happily giving their careers up upon marriage is wrong, self-defeating and basically, just, well…pisses me off.
That may sound too strong, even for a geek like me, but placed in the context of my Korean female friend that complains that Korean men refuse to wear condoms, to which I reply that I’m pretty certain that most Western guys pretended to be happy to suit up only once they were given the option of doing that or not getting laid…do Korean women really need to be told to demand the same? Then there’s the Korean female friends with great bodies who just whine that they’re fat all the time: they’ll dutifully nod at my pointing out how healthy andattractive they are, but will still starve themselves at their next meal. Naturally I just loved having my opinions so completely ignored, one reason why I’m not friends with anyone like that anymore.
(On a side note, unless the recipient is clearly anorexic, then literally telling a woman that she looks healthy in Korean “넌 건강에 좋아보여요” or “You-health-goodlook,” actually means “You look fat”. What is wrong with this place??!)
Regardless of how universally applicable the points in my rant are, a fellow blogger has pointed out to me that there is no greater indictment of a society than its members’ refusal to continue it, and I’m concerned that once my daughter starts school here then she too will indirectly learn there that it’s possible for a women to have a career, or to have children, but unreasonable to expect to have both. Needless to say, most Korean and Japanese women are choosing the former, and the results speak for themselves:
(Photo by ichico)
The number of people who reached the legal age of adulthood was only 1.35 million last year, which is the lowest number on record and 40,000 less than the previous year, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said Monday.
The announcement came on the national holiday Coming-of-Age Day, held annually on the second Monday of January, as most new adults participate in Coming-of-Age ceremonies, women traditionally in expensive “furisode” kimonos and men in suits or dark kimonos with hakama.
Of the new adults, 690,000 are men and 660,000 are women, according to a Kyodo News report. Percentage wise, the new adults constitute 1.06 percent of the total population, which is down 0.03 points since the previous year.
The legal age of adulthood is 20 in Japan.
The previous record low, 1.36 million new adults, was recorded in 1987.
Thanks to Edward Chmura, again at Japundit, for bringing that article to my attention. Finally, here is some still woefully inadequate, but rare encouraging news from the Korean Times on the Lee Myung-bak’s Administration’s measures for dealing with the low birthrate in Korea:
Home Buying to Become Easier for Newlyweds
Newlyweds may see themselves a step closer to becoming homeowners by the year’s end, as President-elect Lee Myung-bak and his transition team is actively reviewing the ins and outs of his proposed housing policy for just-married couples. The policy is to take effect in the second half of 2008.
The Ministry of Construction and Transportation said Monday that the modified housing system is set to allow married couples of less than three years, who successfully pay monthly installments of 50,000 to 100,000 won into a housing savings fund, to get long-term home financing with low interest rates. However, couples must take the benefit within a year of having their first child.
The plan, which was one of Lee’s flagship campaign pledges, has been welcomed by young couples as buying a home in Korea is widely known as a cost-burdening and time consuming, but a must-do task for married couples.
A recent Kookmin Bank survey said that the average period it took for a couple to buy their own house after marriage was around 9.4 years, up two years since 2005, as local home prices have consistently been on the rise. Therefore, the initiative of the president-in-waiting is seen as a springboard for financially weak, just-starting couples.
The ministry said that the incoming government has plans to inject 4.1 trillion won to supply homes for the low-income newlyweds. It forecasts that the fresh policy will feed about 120,000 homes, each less than 80 square meters, into the market.
It added that the transition team is considering expanding the system to those who are eligible, but are already paying into a housing savings fund, to enjoy the same benefits.
Earlier, the president-elect said the reformed policy was ultimately drawn to encourage young couples from having more kids, as many are known to refrain from giving birth to a second child due to financial instability, including not owning a house.
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An End to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family?
To recap, back on Tuesday, I discussed an editorial from the Chosun Ilbo about the Lee Myung-bak Adminisration’s plans to merge the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) with the Ministry of Health and Welfare. I refer to that post a lot here, so rather than constantly linking to it I’m going to assume that you’ve read it. (source, right: jasonkrw)
Was it as good for you as it was for me? Now, I know I have a worldwide reputation as a Korean social issues guru, but sorry, I confess that even I wasn’t familiar with the exact histories or purviews of either ministry, so I originally saw no reason to question this statement from the Chosun Ilbo:
…many netizens are calling for the abolition of [MOGEF]. 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. (italics added)
But then I read the article I give below on this proposed government reorganization from the Korea Times, which said that MOGEF was only three years old, so I finished that last post with by promising to get a third opinion. I honestly wasn’t looking forward to spending my first weekend in Korea poring over dense official ministry texts with my electronic dictionary (the things I’m prepared to do for you guys), but I needn’t have worried: a simple search on Yahoo brought numerous English hits, most notably the ministry’s own English webpage. Naturally as a ministry it does put quite the spin on all of its activities, but it has such a wealth of material and downloadable publications on it that I could easily spend the next month studying it all, and I’m very glad to have found it. It was a bit much to take in all at once though, so instead this speech by Minister Dr. Jang Hajin in New York in July last year provided a more easily digestible introduction.
And despite what the Chosun Ilbo says, I can’t find any mention of a gender-related Ministry of any form being set up in 1988. What I do know is that Korea did ratify the Convention of the the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1984, but little else seems to have happened until the establishment of the 41-member Presidential Commission on Women’s Affairs in 1998, which went on to become the Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001, further expanded into MOGEF in 2005 like the Korea Times says. Knowing this, and with all the other mistakes in the Chosun Ilbo’s editorial that I mentioned in the earlier post…is it too much to suspect that the background for the article was simply made up? After all, MOGEF has been targeted in the past because of fake news stories about it produced by its opponents, so the use of such tactics by a supporter may also be nothing new (and shocking only to newbies).
Regardless, what’s most disturbing is that it’s only by chance that I noticed the mistake at all, which makes me worry that everything else I’ve read and blogged about in the English-language press in Korea, the main source of materials for most Korean bloggers, has been equally sloppy and/or misleading. I’m again reminded of Baltimoron’s endeavors to include at least two opposing links in each post, “preferably opposing each other,” and I resolve to do the same from now on.
With that in mind, here is the Korea Times’ take on the same issue:
President-elect Lee Myung-bak’s transition team is formulating a plan for the major realignment of government organizations. A dispute has been simmering over the properness of the possible merging of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family into the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The team has maintained the ministry should be subject to restructuring as part of efforts to slim down the government with many of the ministry’s operations overlapping with those of the Welfare Ministry. The ministry has been cited as the first target whenever it comes to government reorganization. In this context, the next government is likely to refer the ministry’s affairs – about women, nurturing and family – to the Health and Welfare Ministry.
Why is MOGEF always cited as the first target in any government reorganization? By whom? Since when? Surely not the socially progressive but flawed Roh Muh-hyun Administration, which expanded it only two and half years ago…so is the article referring to “conservative” Lee Myung-bak instead? (source right: unknown)
Women’s groups have been protesting the move – seven of them led by the Korean Women’s Association United issued a statement saying: “Only three years have passed since the ministry was born. It is deplorable to see attempts to abolish a nascent ministry before it takes firm root.” They called on President-elect Lee to abide by his pledge to strengthen the role of the ministry in order to further protect the human rights of women and promote gender equality. As a matter of fact, Lee said during presidential campaign that he would keep the ministry afloat as it has its own unique role. The women organizations urged the need to expand its role with the ministry converging services now separated among various ministries (emphasis added).
I give up. What I am aware of though, is that regardless of what I’ve said about the source, simple corporate interests would have meant that the Chousn Ilbo is probably correct when it points out that the Ministry of Health and Welfare would have resented losing some of its purview to MOGEF, and some (again unnamed) feminist groups certainly had reason to complain that lumping childcare with women’s affairs ultimately reinforced stereotypes (as Baltimoron pointed out in the comments).
Moreover, it may sound like mere semantics, but in Korean it is known as the Ministry of Women and Family/여성가족부 (thanks to Andy at gopkorea for pointing that out), and this has been latched onto by some male netizens who call for its abolition, even producing parody Ministry of Men and Family websites in retaliation. That reaction was a bit extreme (as arguably was the government forcing the owners of those websites to shut them down), but then this is the same ministry that is best known overseas for offering cash prizes to men for not having sex with prostitutes (see gopkorea again here and here). That sounds silly but harmless, but with a 2007 budget of 1.3 Billion US dollars, up from a mere 27.8 million US dollars in 2001, then it is not unreasonable to ask if the money is going on similarly useless and naive endeavors. (source, left: theturninggate)
The ministry said it has made a great contribution to promoting women’s rights through the abolition of the “outdated” family registration system called “hojuje,” and the introduction of a special law for prevention of the sex trade. It has been pushing new projects with the goal of helping working women.
But the ministry is facing renewed scrutiny due to the criticism that there are no similar ministries in any other countries. Additionally, some experts claim that nurturing and the protection of women can be classified as a welfare policy. They say the current government system is flawed and inefficient as similar welfare policies are dispersed among several ministries.
The transition team has yet to make a final decision over the possible closure of the ministry. It needs to take into consideration that the nation’s women still wield less authority though their rights have been greatly improved over recent years. There exists discrimination against women in the workplace and many of them still suffer difficulties in raising children and housekeeping. Regardless of the realignment, the value of gender equality and family should be respected above all.
Lest I give the wrong impression, despite pointing out MOGEF’s flaws above I’m still undecided on it’s effectiveness since 2005, whether or not it should be merged back to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and whether or not is correct to have family-related policies to exclusively fall under the rubric of a ministry devoted to women’s affairs. At this stage though, I think I’m unlikely to change my mind on MOGEF needing more than 2.5 years to fulfill its goals, and, given the centrality of childcare issues to Korean women’s abysmally low GEM measure, then I have no problems with the MOGEF’s new “family” purview, at least for the next couple of decades or so. Finally, I now have in my possession hundreds of pages of PDF files outlining MOGEF’s achievements, and despite the spin I mentioned, some of the achievements are real, and I plan to study them in more detail because they impact on my areas of interest so intimately. Given my plans for the blog till March/April, I’m tempted to say that a proper examination by me will have to wait until sometime after that, opportune timing because by then Lee Myung-bak’s final reorganization plans will be clear, but this issue is interesting and will provide a nice balance to January’s topic of “developmental states”, so I’m quite happy to keep blogging about it. (source above: unknown)
Ominous Signs of Lee Myung-bak’s Attitude to Gender Equality?
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 organizations 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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