Paradigms of Women Policies and Measures for Improving their Powers of Persuasion
Soo-Yeon Lee
Hye-Kyung Chang
Kyung-Hee Kim
In this study, we aim at delineating the paradigms of women policies over the time and at analyzing individual cases of Korean women policies with the theoretical tool of the paradigms and at assessing their contributions and limits. We also attempt to investigate how the people have received these policies and to figure out measures to improve the policies’ reception. This study is constituted of a historical account of women policies, a discussion of relationship between paradigms and philosophies of gender equality, a discussion of Korean women policies’ reception, and suggestions for measures to improve it. First, the historical account includes a discussion of social thoughts that led women’s policies at each stage and interlocking development of feminist thoughts. Second, the relationship between paradigm and gender equality is discussed with gender equality as both sharing certain characteristics with the discourse of equality between other groups and being marked as a special case of equality. Third, each major women policy is discussed in its relationship to paradigm, which would yield the distinctive characteristics of Korean women policies’ paradigms and their relationship to policies’ reception. The paradigms of Korean women policies have two major goals of giving women equal opportunity to participate and recognizing women and their human rights. To accomplish these goals, there are strategies and methods of redistribution, positive actions, recognition and transformation of structure. The redistribution policy started with equal pay for work of equal value stipulated in equal employment act in 1989. The first positive policy was the employment quota for female civil workers in 1996. The recognition policy includes the prevention act of sexual violence, illegalization of sexual traffic and abrogation of family head system. The transformation of structure includes socialization of care works such as long-term care insurance system and provision of child support allowance and family and work balance policies. This study proposes three measures for improving approval of women policies: first, we need to choose areas of concentration; second, cross-redressing of paradigms is necessary; and promotion of transformation of structure such as family and work balance is required.
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