Korean Women Political Participation Constraints

Democracy is an important part of the modern democratic society. The number of seats females occupied in the parliament is one of the very significant indexes to measure a country's democracy and females'political participation level. As a neighbor of China, Korea tries to get rid of the situation that males exclude females after being a developed country. The government and various circles of society have made great efforts. The index of Korean females gaining power raised from the 78th, 1997, to the 53rd,2006. The government has made a series of policies to ensure females participating in politics such as the proportion representative system. Under this protection policy, the number of female member representatives had a great increase in the 17th and the 18th parliaments. Compared with 0.5% proportion of the female member representatives in the 1st parliament, the proportion has been increased to 13.1% and 13.7% in the recent two parliaments that are the only twice with over 10 percentage female members. Through the report of South Korean media, we can find many active images of women in politics such as Han Myeong-sook, the first female Prime Minister of South Korea, and Park Geun-hye of the Grand National Party as the party leader. Some media even propaganda that this is the time of "She Politics" in South Korea now.But can the increasing number reflect the fact that females have high participation in politics? Have the level and the circumstance of females participating in politics been substantively improved and changed? Answers to these questions are negative. The analysis of the data from South Korea's Central Election Commission on the 17th,18th Congress Election tells that there were more female candidates in 18th election but the rate of females'election was far lower than 17th. In addition, the female candidates as representatives of vulnerable groups did not receive the full support of female voters. A lot of female voters were even more inclined to vote for male candidates. Most of the female members in parliament could not do well enough to be re-elected because of various factors.All of the factors above tells that South Korean females still have to face many constraints in political participation.At this moment females participate in politics actively, however, the political system and voting system have not been changed greatly. Patriarchy is still the major part. Meanwhile, the conventional idea that man is superior to woman is still prevailing in the society, and women still suffers from the disadvantage on economy, the heavy burden in the gender division and the stress brought by the masculinization opinions to the female candidates and voters. To make things even worse, the Korean women's consciousness of participating in politics is not completely waked up under the impacts of the above unfavourable factors, and they lack positivity and willingness to participate in politics". All these show that the foreground for Korean females to participate in politics is far from satisfaction. This paper focuses on females joining the parliaments. It tries to find out the difficulties and the hindrances that Korean females are facing when getting into the parliament by looking into the history of females joining the parliaments and analyzing the parliaments voting system, particularly the parliaments voting and female members in recent two elections. It explains the necessary factors that can help women to win the parliaments'election and tries to find the ways to encourage females to participate in politics, to enhance women's consciousness and to guarantee the gender equality.The first chapter of this paper defines the concepts of the political participation and females'participation in politics and explains the necessities of females' participation in politics. The second chapter introduces the history, revolutions, structure, voting system and voting culture of Korean Parliament. Meanwhile, females'participations including the history of Korean females taking part in the parliaments, the current situation and the forms of voting and election are also introduced in the second chapter. The third chapter summarizes the four limitation factors Korean females encounter when taking part in political affairs. The four factors include election system, political system, political environment and females' self-awareness or ability of political participation. Finally, the fourth chapter reflects on the several factors and tries to put forward some corresponding approaches to improve the environment of female's political participation.Although there are many articles about female participation in politics in China, there are few articles focusing on Korean females and Korean parliament election. As a developed country, South Korean females' political participation can be thought as the process from limited democracy to general democracy. As a developing country, China has to realize democracy and complete limited democracy to general democracy simultaneously. This paper focuses on the limitation factors under the background of the characteristic Confucian Culture and patriarchal governing system in Korea. It offers the view of rational observation of Korea females as a spectator with a hope that this paper may have some reference value to Chinese females participating in political affairs.