KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

2017 KWDI Abstract

 

Study on Methods to Enhance Effectiveness of GIAA and Strengthen PPP(III): In the Area of Regional Development

 

Kyung-Hee Kim

Yoo-Jin Choi

Yun-Young Nam-Gung

Yu-Mi Im

Mi-Hyun Jang

Kyeong-Min Kang

 

In South Korea, the number of programmes which has undertaken Gender Impact Analysis and Assessment(GIAA) has been increasing and the areas in which GIAA has been implemented expanding, since GIAA was enacted in 2012. In the area of regional development, the outcome of policy improvement through GIAA has been particularly noticeable to the general population as well as women. This study is to identify what policy needs the general citizen have in the area of regional development with regard to gender issues, and to suggest the ways to enhance the cooperative system between policy actors of GIAA. As for the research methods, it includes the domestic and overseas literature analysis of GIAA about regional development, the content analysis of GIAA reports on regional development, interviews with experts and civil servants, and questionnaires of a thousand citizens.

 

As a result of the questionnaire, policy needs for regional development have been identified as follows. Firstly, citizens expect to have economic activity infrastructure through city regeneration programmes and a better environment for crime prevention. Secondly, interests in safety are considerably high, and particularly, women are more sensitive to safety issues than men. Thirdly, as for the public facilities that citizens want to use, unless there are any problems, women have replied in following orders: culture(14.7%), life-long education(10.7%), and library(10.7%), whereas men library(13.6%), culture(13.0%), community health centre(10.1%). This suggests that it needs to improve facilities for better use. Lastly, more than half of respondents show their willingness to participate in the problem-solving activities concerning the use or safety of the public facilities: 51.4% and 70.7% respectively.

 

This study has identified the methods to enhance the effectiveness of GIAA and regenerate the cooperative system as follows. Firstly, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport needs to revise the legislations concerning regional development in a way to enhance gender equality and the committee of regional development needs to increase the rate of women in order to encourage women to take part in decision-making process. Secondly, it needs to find out gender issues in broader areas by undertaking specific GIAA in mid- and long-term regional development plans based on laws. To do so, gender experts must participate in this process to find out gender issues and reflect the findings for policy improvements into legislations, improvement of guidelines and gender budget reports. Thirdly, there needs to develop guidelines about GIAA for regional development. The checklist to be used to select programmes for GIAA should be made to notify whether programmes for regional development has items to improve gender equal use and arrangement of local spaces. Lastly, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family needs to make a suggestion of the systemic operation of gender governance in the 2018 GIAA Guideline. Each public body needs to form GIAA Committee or Division Committee and include the support of monitoring and also the employment of gender officer in the Guideline. In order to do so, it needs to strengthen the regulation to support cooperation between private and public partnership, which is stipulated in the GIAA Act.