KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

2017 KWDI Abstract

 

Research on Women Friendly City Development Plan by Implementation Stage

 

Sun-joo Cho

Sun-Min Lee

Dong-sun Lee

Do-Yeon Kwon

 

There was a growing demand in the late 2000s for regional policies that promote safety in everyday life and the development of women, which led some local governments, including that of Iksan (city) in 2009, to announce their intentions to create women friendly cities. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) expanded the number of designated women friendly cities from two cities in 2009 to 76 in 2017, while the legal basis for these cities was established once a provision related to women friendly cities was inserted in 'The Framework Act on Gender Equality' on July 1st, 2015. Due to the fact that the legal basis for this project was formed much later than its implementation, the reality is that related infrastructure needed for this project has yet to be established.

 

Therefore, this paper aims to map out the implementation stages starting from the stage of preparing to be designated as a women friendly city, the designation stage, and after designation, and furthermore present a development plan for the creation of more durable women friendly cities. The main findings are as follows.

 

First, women friendly cities is a term that first appeared in North America in the 1970s and are cities which for women are safe, accessible, convenient and pleasant. Initially, it started from a feminist approach, but shifted to a gender sensitive approach in the 90s that emphasized making city spaces safe and convenient for women, which was a new perspective of viewing cities. The majority of earlier studies in this field are about the process of shaping women friendly cities, which includes research on the concept and their values, and in the case of Korea, regional case studies are most prevalent. Women friendly cities are created based on an agreement between the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and basic local governments, and in 2017, the objective of these cities was set as the following: to pursue regional policies based on the interests and demands of women and to improve the quality of life for women and local residents.

 

The following explains the current operation status of women friendly cities and issues they face.

Excluding the 76 designated cities mentioned above, 17 cities are preparing to be designated as women friendly cities. Therefore, we could say that there are 135 potential women friendly cities (38 cities or si, 68 districts or gun, 29 boroughs or gu). In order to prepare, these 135 cities must take into consideration the ratio of women in the total population/registered foreigners/aging population/single person households and total fertility rate in making previous projects more women-friendly and develop new projects based on regional characteristics. Meanwhile, there were 16 first year designated cities in December of 2016 and 23 out of 29 designated cities in the first stage enacted an ordinance related to women friendly cities. 6 out of 9 fifth year designated cities enacted a women friendly city ordinance. Additionally, 22 cities that were re-designated as women friendly cities, two in ’14, 6 in ’15, 14 in ’16, have entered into the second stage.

 

Next are the mid-to-long term cases of women friendly cities in other countries. The main cases are Women Friendly Cities UNJP, Canada’s gender mainstreaming project in the development of its cities, Austria’s mainstreaming plan in its urban planning and development, and Japan’s project in which equal participation of men and women in cities was announced. Based on the analysis above, we define the implementation stages in the following <Table> and present a plan of operation.

 

We suggest a comprehensive plan that could improve the effectiveness of the policy, which includes developing a Gender City Index and establishing a national level mid-to-long term plan for women friendly cities, modifying related legislation, restructuring the system (one-stop service, integrated system), incorporating content related to women friendly cities in the Korea National Spatial Data Infrastructure Portal, running a Women Friendly City Portal (tentative name), increasing the number of public officials who have experience with women friendly city projects and creating guidelines for local governments specific to each stage, and presenting outstanding case studies, etc.