Gender discrimination has historically established and reinforced the theory of gender role for women. Since a woman is regarded as the one who fails to become a man, she is worthy of being regarded as inherently inferior and therefore recognized as h...
Gender discrimination has historically established and reinforced the theory of gender role for women. Since a woman is regarded as the one who fails to become a man, she is worthy of being regarded as inherently inferior and therefore recognized as having physiologic limitation with which she is difficult to pursue universal truth and inappropriate for the public sector. This prejudice has continued so far and seemed to consolidate its logical validity by Sigmund Freud and Lawrence Kohlberg.
However, Carol Gilligan and Catharine MacKinnon have raised the gender consciousness as an objection to the theory of physiologic limitation-oriented gender discrimination against women. Carol Gilligan has established the ethics of care as a feminine value. She highlights the fact that there is difference in the ethical way of thinking between men and women and this difference is women's inherent voice which is different from that of men. In this regard, the voice of women in the public circles has a different modality of power pursuits from men and has a meaning in the realization of feminine values. Therefore, femininity is recognized not as a negative gender but as a positive and necessary value.
Women have exerted every effort to realize a country of gender equality and raise their voice in the public sector. Thus, they have achieved legal equality such as anti-discriminatory laws, but the long history of female discrimination has not effectively rooted out the exclusive and unreasonable inequality, only to reproduce it. This result has revealed the limitation that women could not take part in the course of policy-making in the public sector and thus could not practically reflect their voice upon it.
In this vein, in order to realize practical gender equality, it is necessary for women to enter the public sector, namely the political sector, to which they are discriminately excluded so far. So, the main activities of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women for the eradication of female discrimination focus on the promotion of female representativeness. The declaration of gender mainstreaming in the Conference on Women in Beijing also clarifies women's participation in the policy-making as an effective means of removing female discriminatory limitations.
The United Nations Constitutional Law prohibits gender-oriented discrimination, thus firmly establishing the constitutional principle of gender equality. In addition, by prescribing that the choice or maintenance of action which regulates special benefits for the underrepresented gender must not be hindered, the Constitutional Law clearly proclaims the validity of positive action of realization of gender equality.
The European Court of Justice of which line is judicial activism has taken the lead in the active realization of female-related policies and gender equality for its member countries. However, in the decision for the Case of Kalanke in 1995, the European Court of Justice provides validity to the provision of allowing automatic and unconditional priority to women who have the same qualification with men in the underrepresented sectors by women, thus causing a lot of controversies. After this case, by means of the decision of Marschall's Case, it acknowledged the legal validity of positive realization of preferential treatment of women on condition that male and female candidates were equally qualified and objectively evaluated.
The United States Supreme Court for the first time ruled the issue of gender equality through the decision of Reed's Case on the basis of the article 14―gender equality―of the Amendment Constitutional Law and got out of the sphere-oriented female discrimination, thus consolidating the constitutional volition for gender equality. Since then, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a justice of the Supreme Court, via the ruling of Virginia's Case, claimed that if the discrimination in the past was not settled down, then the discriminatory factors could not be eliminated. This claim is meaningful in that it presents the constitutional base for the positive realization of gender equality.
The effort for the realization of gender equality has focused on the effort of settling down women's under representation in the political sector. By introducing a quota system in the political sector as the most efficient method of expanding women's representativeness, it has tried to ensure a practical equality.
IDEA classifies the quota system into a legal quota system for women which is compulsorily enforced by legal bases such as constitutional law or other laws and a voluntary quota system which has no legal bases. For the present, 162 countries have enforced the female quota system in the political sector. Thus, the quota system has been adopted worldwide as a most efficient means of ensuring the female representativeness in the political sector.
By enacting the Basic Law of Women's Development in 1995 with the admonition of the United Nations, a positive realization of gender equality for women has been domestically implemented. The Law was to advance women's entrance in the public official positions, thus realizing a country of gender equality. The Law was enacted by the competitive efforts of the ruling and opposition parties. The Law proclaims that its goal is to realize the ideology of gender equality in the domestic Constitutional Law.
With the enactment of the Basic Law of Women's Development, a quota system has been executed in the women-related diverse spheres. In particular, the target system of gender equal employment in the public sector has greatly seemed to contribute to the promotion of female representativeness.
A female quota system-related article 31 of the Political Party Law (the nomination of electoral candidates for the public sector) was revised and then prescribed in the paragraphs 3 and 4 of article 47 (political parties' nomination of candidates) of Public Official Election Law. In this vein, the articles of the Election Law which are related to the expansion of female participation in the public official positions revised the existing Political Party Law and then introduced a zipper-style quota system. In addition, the item 2 of paragraph 1 of article 52 of the Public Official Election Law prescribes that if the rate and order of female candidate nomination in the proportional representation of local assembly is violated, it can consist of invalidity of election.
However, women's representativeness in domestic public official positions presents a variety of limitations. In particular, women's political representativeness is not reached the average rate of 18% of female members of assembly in Asian countries. Women's under representativeness in the local assembly is severe in its extent and the exclusion of women is committed even in the party nomination of local assembly candidates. As it is shown in the 17th and 18th general election, the 30% quota system for women in local constituencies is not abided by. Therefore, the proportion of party nomination of women's local assembly candidates is very low.
In order to overcome the problem of women's under representativeness in the political circles and make a country of gender equality, the investigator presents following improvement strategies:
First, the existing article 52 of the Public Official Election Law which prescribes the causes of invalidity of registration is to nullify the registration of candidates when the rate and order of women's nomination of candidates are violated. However, it is applied only to the members of local assembly for the present. So, it must be revised and then applied to the members of national assembly too.
Second, the proportion of female members in the proportional representation and local constituencies must be increased to 50%. And the existing optional provision must be revised into a compulsory one.
Third, the Constitutional Law requires of the political party to establish a democratic internal order different from other political organizations. Therefore, in order to establish an internal order of gender equality, the political party must ensure women's equal participation in its internal decision-making and then provide its female members with equal right of speaking and equal right of candidate nomination.
Fourth, in order to achieve the gender mainstreaming within the political party, its structure must be reshuffled and reborn as a democratic political party of gender equality. In particular, in order for women to enter the elective positions, female members must be placed by 50% in such a main decision-making structure as the speculative committee of party nomination of assembly candidates, thus rooting out the exclusion and discrimination of women for elective positions,
As above, in order to ensure women's representativeness, laws and systems must be improved urgently. However, the most important measure seems to be political parties' voluntary efforts. In addition, the gender-based positive realization of equality is the most powerful means and tool of practical equality. It will contribute to secure a gender perspective-oriented practical representativeness for women. However, in order for the women's representativeness to be expanded and for male-oriented political culture to be improved, women must be nominated not as biological candidates but as gender perspective-oriented ones who can carry out gender perspective-oriented activities in local and national assemblies.
Female representatives who represent women must establish a feminism-based network regardless of their political parties and groups and exert every effort for the gender perspective-oriented policies and bills to be efficiently enacted and executed.
In the future, the problem of female politics must expand female representativeness and realize gender perspective-oriented female representativeness. Therefore, by securing such female representativeness which can have gender perspectives and realize alternative values in a variety of fields, gender equality can be realized in an actual sense.