The Power Of The Ideology Of Gender Equality And The Limitations Of State Bureaucracy PDF Download

This research seeks to explain the paradoxes of policy efforts made by Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (MOGEF) in Korea. Korea established a Ministry to redress gender inequality and succeeded in passing numerous legislation guaranteeing formal equal rights for women, which won Korea a UN designation as an exemplary case. However, the paradox of the institutionalization of gender equality within a special unit for the promotion of women was that the more powerful the institution became, the less ideological freedom it enjoyed. Thus, even with the progressive feminist activism's support and the institution's improved status, they failed to reach many of their gender equality goals and to change gender norms and practices through which the labor market and the modern family operate. Specifically, employment policies created more employment for women in order to improve women's economic independence, but they also channeled them into female-typed low-paid occupations such as care workers. MOGEF's endeavors to bring greater equality among families through abolishing the concept of the family failed. MOGEF's efforts to increase men's responsibility within the family produced policy programs that did not go beyond a minimal change in the way men and women live. I distinguish five mechanisms that are responsible for the paradoxical policy outcomes- 1) competing state goals and MOGEF's pursuit of gender equality within the context of state-wide goals, 2) MOGEF's relationships with civil society as a democratic polity, 3) MOGEF as a ministry operating within the logic of bureaucracy in its search for power, 4) the strategic actions of the actors taking advantage of political and discursive opportunities, and 5) the co-existence of multiple versions of gender equality norms. These mechanisms resulted in MOGEF's dilemma. The endeavor to institutionalize gender equality within the state bureaucracy could result in crippling disadvantages in pursuing more fundamental changes to core gender equality norms. My account highlights the interaction between international and domestic conditions; non-linear development into gender equal society; and mechanisms of stage gender policy making, something which has been ignored in previous research on gender policies.