Women Representing Women: The Case of South Korea

Abstract

This study investigates the question of whether the increased descriptive representation of women in the Korean National Assembly (KNA) is making for a substantial difference in the women s actual legislative success. Employing the National Assembly Bill Information System data this study examines the extent to which women legislators introduced and passed gender-related bills in the KNA over one and a half decades between 2000 and 2016. Our results indicate that being a female and/or being elected on the PR tier increases the likelihood of the passage of gender-related bills. Equally important is that neither ruling/opposition party membership nor the conservative/ progressive party affiliation has a significant effect on the gender-related bills passage. We also found that being a senior in the KNA turns out to produce a statistically insignificant effect. While our findings, in general, corroborate past research on the relationship between women s descriptive and substantive representation (i.e. legislative sessions with the lowest percentage of women passed the lowest number of gender-related bills), our results are also different in that they suggest that partisan loyalty did not make any difference in the gender-related legislation.