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Social policy reforms and gender in japan and south korea
Peng, Ito
Peng, Ito
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Peng.pdf
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"Feminists are sharply divided into two camps on the issue of family and gender policies in Japan and South Korea (henceforth Korea). On the one side are those who claim that despite the remarkable developments in social, economic, and political spheres, very little has changed in terms of women’s status (Moon, 2003; Yazawa, 2004). Proponents of this “no real change” perspective point to these countries’ poor records in the UN Gender Equality and Gender Development Indexes as evidence of continuous gender inequality. Indeed, both Japan and Korea are amongst the lowest in international ranking, and worse even, Japan has fallen further behind in the recent years despite the government claims of effort in gender equality.1 Based on these figures, there is a good reason to be skeptical about these developmentalist economies’ ability to ensure gender equality. As feminist studies have shown economic growth many East Asian countries has occurred simultaneously along with gender inequality in both public and private spheres (Seguino, 1997; Hsuing, 1996). On the other hand, there are those who argue that despite their poor standings on international measures, noticeable changes have been, and can be, made in terms of gender equality in Japan and Korea (Osawa, 1998, 2003; Lee and Park, 2003). These scholars argue that closer examinations of policies and political processes reveal that a good deal of progress has being made towards gender equality. Rather than focusing solely on the outcome measures, which are time sensitive and, as well, call into question the validity of measurement tools used, more attention needs to be paid to the process of policy changes and to how gender issues are being incorporated into social policies.2 Evidence suggests that a wide range of policy measures have been introduced in both Japan and Korea since 1990 to address the issue of family and gender, and attempts have been made in the direction of gender mainstreaming. This paper examines family and gender policy reforms in Japan and Korea in the 1990s with an aim to explain why these reforms have been made, and what these reforms mean in terms of gender equality."(pg 3)
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2005-05
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With permission of the license/copyright holder