Lim Myung-sook (at left) participating in a protest against a school closure.
|
As a woman, I have no country.
As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.
Virginia
Woolf,
British writer (1882-1941)
|
|
Prejudice and cronyism traditionally
bar Korean women from politics but a non-profit training centre offers keys to success
– from fashion tips to campaign strategies
 In the industrial city of Ulsan,
Lim Myung-sook represents a rare coup in Korean society, a woman in a position of
public power. In this traditionally male-dominated nation, the 45-year-old local
assemblywoman is one of the success stories of the non-profit Center for Korean Women
and Politics (CKWP).
Historically, the public visage of Korea has been a male one, while a woman’s role
has been confined largely to the private world of the home, a fact reinforced by
the still strongly persistent values of Confucianism and a male-run corporate world.
“Korea is not really feminized at all,” says Sohn Bong-Scuk, a political scientist
and the founder of the CKWP. “The value system has prohibited women from getting
involved in politics,” says Sohn, pointing to the fact that municipalities and the
National Assembly have seen just a handful of female representatives.
Sohn established the CKWP in 1990 to help bridge the gap between the ideal of equal
representation and reality. Funded largely by foundation grants, the center employs
a staff of eight and operates on an annual budget of $180,000. For Sohn, there are
three major obstacles to greater female representation: the powerful male-oriented
political culture, a deep-rooted old-boys network and economics.
“Korean political parties are very much private, person-centered parties with many
medium-level bosses. If you want to be an important person in the party you must
belong to someone else in the family tree, so it’s not easy for a woman to enter
that kind of informal inner-circle,” says Sohn.
Most women also don’t have the large sums of money needed to run for office. By law,
national assembly candidates must have a minimum of $210,000 for their campaigns.
However Sohn says some candidates will spend up to two million dollars.
Backing
with strings attached
Furthermore,
corporations have proved unwilling to back female candidates. “When business or industrial
sectors support a candidate, there is a kind of string attached. In the case of a
woman candidate, they don’t feel they’ll get anything back,” says Sohn. “As a minority
in politics, women are very cautious and tend to be less involved in any dirty business.
They are also usually first-year congresswomen so they are not in positions of power
yet to help them.”
Lim Myung-sook struggled to raise the $9,000 minimum to run for office in her local
assembly. But with the financial support of the CKWP and another local non-profit
group, she managed to raise the minimum but far less than most candidates. However,
more than money and the expected prejudices stood between her and office: Lim was
sorely lacking in political experience. In 1994, she was working as an environmental
campaign activist when friends suggested she run in the upcoming local assembly election.
While preparing her bid, she received a call from Sohn who invited her to attend
the center’s “Campaign School.”
Lim attended a three-day session with about 40 other women, five of whom were also
candidates in other local assembly races. At the theoretical level, the women learned
to see female political participation as a means to the ultimate goals of equality
and true democratic representation. At the practical level, they focused on speech-making
skills, political and campaign strategy as well as making voter contact. In Korean
election campaigns, image is all-important. So the women were advised on fashion
and hair styles, while those who used regional dialects were coached in standard
Korean. Finally, participants were assigned roles as candidates, electoral officers
and campaign managers and a model election was held.
Different
policy preferences
Lim was among
three women from her session who went on to electoral success. In 1995, she became
the first woman to be elected to the Ulsan Local Assembly, and she was re-elected
in 1998. Since then, another two women have attained office in Ulsan.
Last April, CKWP also had reason to celebrate. A candidate who they had trained in
Seoul and also sent abroad to Germany and the United States for further preparation
was elected to the national assembly. In most cases though, the center focuses on
the grassroots, urging housewives to run for local rather than national office, whose
candidates tend to already be savvy politicians.
In addition to the campaign school, the center holds annual training sessions for
women interested in political issues. For three days, university students, housewives
and established businesswomen gather to discuss a chosen theme, such as sexual harassment
or affirmative action. After seminars and discussion on the topic, they are assigned
roles, such as minister of labour or minister of foreign affairs, and they are divided
into two camps: pro-feminist and anti-feminist. They then hold a mock congress to
hone their debating skills and get a taste for politics. “I like to give them motivation
from a young age to be a leader in the future,” says Sohn.
Another major activity is research on political gender issues like female voting
and governing patterns. Perhaps most importantly, the CKWP has found that “women
have different policy preferences than men,” says Sohn. “They are more concerned
about minorities, the marginal, the aged and children.” For example, in the blue-collar
city of Ulsan, assemblywoman Lim has concentrated on factory pollution and recycling,
social welfare issues, the rights and needs of the disabled, and women’s rights.
Despite the progress, Korea is still far from the day when politicians like Lim will
comprise a healthy chunk of the political base. In the previous national assembly
there were 11 women among 299 representatives. Recent elections in April placed a
record 16 women into office (11 of whom were elected through affirmative action legislation
implemented in 1995 after extensive lobbying by CKWP and other groups). Progress
indeed, but in its 273-seat national assembly, Korean society is still represented
overwhelmingly by men. Sohn says the slow rate of change has been discouraging but
feels the CKWP has contributed to an important shift in thinking. “The political
consciousness has been raised,”says Sohn. “Now even men can accept the words, women
and politics.”
|
