Gender and Politics in Northeast Asia: Legislative Patterns and Substantive Representation in Korea and Taiwan

Jaemin Shim

doi:10.1080/1554477x.2021.1888677

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines the conditions under which female legislators are more likely to act on behalf of female electorates through two underexplored cases – South Korea and Taiwan. Specifically, it investigates the effect of three conditions – seat share, electoral rules, and legislator characteristics – on legislators’ sponsorship of women’s issue bills using an original bill submission dataset. The finding shows that, on the one hand, female legislators’ increasing seat proportion made legislators stress women’s issues more and, on the other hand, new legislators elected at the party tier with civil society experience became substantially more likely to advance women's issues. In light of the evidence, this article argues that women’s issues are more actively advanced when the political space allows women’s issue-promoting legislators to pursue both electoral and policy interests.

Highlights

IntroductionExamining the cases of two East Asian democracies – South Korea (Korea) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) – this article aims to shed light on the important role of individual legislators in promoting legislative measures concerning women’s interests from the gender-equality perspective (women’s issues)
In countries where key left-leaning political parties are characterized by issues more than socialdemocratic ideals, for example national security or national identity, how can the women’s issue promotion agenda move forward? Examining the cases of two East Asian democracies – South Korea (Korea) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) – this article aims to shed light on the important role of individual legislators in promoting legislative measures concerning women’s interests from the gender-equality perspective
The paper contributes to the gender politics scholarship by testing three conditions affecting female legislators’ substantive representation of female voters – seat share, electoral rules, legislator char acteristics

Summary

Introduction

Examining the cases of two East Asian democracies – South Korea (Korea) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) – this article aims to shed light on the important role of individual legislators in promoting legislative measures concerning women’s interests from the gender-equality perspective (women’s issues). Both Korea and Taiwan have seen significant increases in their proportions of female legislators between 1992 and 2016, from 1.5% to 17% in Korea and from 10% to 38% in Taiwan (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2017).. Does a higher proportion of bills concerning women’s issues reflect an increased seat share of female legislators who tend to have women-friendly preferences? Does it reflect a women’s issue-promoting trend under which both male and female legislators increasingly prioritize women’s issues along with the growing proportion of female legislators? In addition to legislators’ gender, do other individual traits facilitate legislators’ attention to women’s issues? And under which political institutional

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion