Gender and politics scholars have demonstrated that the women's movement plays a pivotal role in the adoption of gender quotas and in improving women's political representation (Bauer and Britton Reference Bauer and Evelyn Britton2006; Dahlerup Reference Dahlerup2006; Krook Reference Krook2009). They typically argue that domestic political transformations and international pressure help to mobilize the women's movement and demands for more women in elected offices (Huang, this volume; Krook, O'Brian, and Swip Reference Krook, O'Brian and Swip2010). The South Korean case affirms these studies, as women's organizations often take advantage of the local political transformations to push for the gender quota adoption. However, we contend that without political parties' full commitment to implementing gender quotas and supplementing quotas with non-quota measures, efforts that prioritize the descriptive representation of women and formal quota legislation have brought only limited effects on enhancing women's political representation.
WOMEN'S MOVEMENT AND THE ADOPTION OF GENDER QUOTAS IN SOUTH KOREA
South Korea underwent dramatic political changes in the late 1980s. The military authoritarian regime gave way to a competitive party system and democratic elections, for which multiple parties competed to assume political power. In the decades following democratization in 1987, boisterous civil society pushed for political reforms (e.g., the replacement of old corrupt candidates and revisions of election laws)Footnote 1 and the institutionalization of party systems. Women's organizations on the left and right ideological spectrum were at the forefront of this grassroots movement for political reform.
The revival of local elections in 1991 and the Beijing Conference in 1995 inspired feminist activists to demand more women's political representation (Yi Reference Yi1998; Yoon Reference Yoon2002). Women's groups saw the local councils as a political space for women citizens to become a part of grassroots democracy, which was directly responsible for addressing local residents' needs in their everyday lives. In the early 1990s, women's groups experimented with different strategies to support women to stand in the local council elections to run as independents with no party affiliation. Specific strategies include developing voter education programs for women as well as recruiting and training women aspirants and campaign volunteers. Despite these efforts, these independent women candidates still faced difficulties in breaking the male dominance in local politics and had a hard time mobilizing support against the local notables (who were typically men) with greater visibility and stronger connections to the community.Footnote 2 Hence, in the early and mid-1990s, the percentage of women in national and subnational assemblies was still an extremely low 2%.
What was significant in South Korea was that a wide range of women's organizations with different ideological backgrounds and varying goals united to demand an increase in women's representation in the legislature. In 1994, women's groups came together to form an ad hoc solidarity network, the first of its kind in the country that included two leading women's organizations from both the conservative and progressive ends (Yi Reference Yi1998). The common goal of this coalition in the 1990s was to pressure parties to adopt party quotas to ensure that women appeared in the candidate lists, to which parties reluctantly agreed. However, most of the parties failed to comply with this pledge in their candidate selection. The fact that parties said one thing and acted in another way showed the women's movement that a more forceful measure was necessary to attain women's descriptive representation in politics.
Women's organizations formed several more solidarity networks to advocate for the adoption and subsequent revisions of gender quota laws. In 2000, the solidarity network achieved its demand for gender quotas through the revision of the Political Party Act, which was applied to the 2000 national election. This law recommended that political parties nominate at least 30% women in their proportional representation (PR) lists at both the national and subnational elections.Footnote 3 However, this attempt at legislating candidate quotas did not specify enforcement measures. The implementation of quotas was thus left to the voluntary commitment of parties, and, as expected, most parties failed to comply with the law.
The women's network rekindled their lobbying efforts to strengthen the legal enforcement of gender quotas. Since legal reforms require the support of the National Assembly majority, which includes members from both the right and the left parties, the women's network once again took a nonpartisan strategy and brought together many women's groups. As such, the South Korean women's movement was able to overcome their ideological and partisan differences. The alliance was at its peak in 2003 when the network grew to include as many as 321 organizations from all over the country. Together, these groups advocated for political reforms to improve women's political representation.
The women's network also gained support from other civil society organizations, which demanded larger-scale political reforms, including electoral reforms to strengthen representative functions of political institutions.Footnote 4 Specifically, the network was successful in lobbying the political parties to expand on existing quota provisions. For instance, the “zipper placement” of women candidates appearing in odd numbers on the party proportionate representative list was adopted in 2002 in subnational elections. Similarly, the level of quotas enforced in the PR tier was adjusted upward from 30% to 50%. A separate quota provision was added to encourage parties to nominate women as 30% of their candidates running in single-member districts.Footnote 5 Additionally, as incentive, the Political Fund Act was revised to allow parties that successfully implemented quotas in single-member districts to have access to political funds from the state budget.Footnote 6
The new quota provisions that were applied in the 2004 national election vastly improved women's representation from 5.9% to 13%. Recently, the women's network has focused on pushing the parties to be more gender balanced in their selection of candidates. For instance, a solidarity network was formed in the run-up to the 2010 local election and lobbied for parties to include an equal number of men and women on their candidate list for the single-member districts. However, candidate gender parity has not been achieved.
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND MIXED EFFECTS OF QUOTA LEGISLATION
Strong lobbying from women's solidarity networks led to the adoption of gender quotas in a relatively short time and improved women's legislative representation in South Korea. The proportion of women legislators in the 300-seat National Assembly (246 majoritarian/54 PR) now stands at 15.7%. This is a considerable increase from 3.0% in 1996. The spike occurred between the 16th (2000) and 17th (2004) general elections when quotas were increased from 30% to 50% in the PR list (see Figure1). By 2004, the percentage of women parliamentarians more than doubled from 5.9 in 2000 to 13.0.
Women in the Korean National Assembly.
Despite the size and range of quota provisions, the effectiveness of quotas remains limited. This is because of parties' noncompliance and abuse of the quota design in the mixed electoral system. In South Korea, candidate quotas are mandated for both the PR and the majoritarian tiers, a unique innovation among the family of the countries with mixed electoral systems. If parties fully implemented legislative gender quotas in both tiers (50% for PR and 30% for SMDs) as stipulated in the law, quotas ought to have resulted in a higher level of female parliamentarians at around 33.6%. That is, if parties complied with the quota laws, and if the proportion of women candidates corresponds with the number of women elected, women would hold around 101 seats—27 from PR (50% zipper quota) and 74 from SMDs (30% candidate quota) in the National Assembly. Yet, the reality does not match this expectation. In the 2008 and 2012 elections, the proportion of women elected for both tiers were 13.7% and 15.7%, respectively. In fact, the growth in the number of women parliamentarians has slowed since the 2004 elections. And this is mainly because parties have not complied with the quotas in the majoritarian tier.
Parties tend to comply better with the quotas in the PR tier, which mandates a zipper placement and a minimum of 50% women candidates. However, the PR component in South Korean's mixed electoral system is much smaller than Taiwan or Japan, with similar mixed electoral systems. For instance, South Korea's PR component comprises only 18% of total parliamentary seats, whereas the Japanese and Taiwanese mixed electoral systems have much bigger shares of PR seats—38% and 30%, respectively (see Huang and Gaunder in this volume). The mixed effects of gender quotas in South Korea are thus a result of the particular characteristics of its electoral system and quota design. As gender quotas are applied to both parts of the mixed electoral system, the South Korean experience shows that the majoritarian tier is less favorable to women than the PR tier, supporting the conventional wisdom (Norris Reference Norris2004). Specifically, the Korean example suggests that majoritarian systems can disadvantage women because parties hesitate to recruit and nominate women in SMDs.
The Effect of Zipper Quotas in South Korea
In South Korea, zipper quotas in the closed party lists have been effective in boosting female representation. In the 19th National Assembly (2012–2016), 9.3% out of 15.7% of female parliamentarians were elected from the PR tier. Additionally, women who won seats through quotas in the PR tier gained valuable political experiences, which were essential in helping them win party nominations and electoral campaigns in single-member districts in the subsequent elections (Chun Reference Chun2014). For example, from a total of 19 female members elected in the majoritarian tier in the 18th National Assembly, 10 (53%) had previously served as PR elected members. Thus, an important and unintended consequence of quotas is to allow female candidates to have a longer political career over the years beyond the initial entry into the parliament (Shin Reference Shin2014).
The South Korean case reveals several interesting facts about zipper quotas. Despite the absence of legal enforcement measures, parties have generally complied with gender quotas in the PR tier and have claimed credit for doing so with the voters. Unlike subnational parliamentary elections, where noncompliance with the zipper quotas could result in the rejection of party lists, parties face no legal responsibility to comply with quota provisions in the National Assembly elections. Parties tend to comply nevertheless believing they would appeal better to the voters that way. Yet, the overall effect of zipper quotas has been limited, since the proportion of seats allocated through PR is less than one-fifth of the total seats in the National Assembly. The South Korean case shows that the effect of zipper quotas depends on the size of PR seats under mixed electoral systems. Furthermore, the impact of quotas in one tier can spill over to another in the mixed electoral system—quotas can have an interactive effect over time.
Problem of Noncompliance
Despite the positive impact of zipper quotas, women have not had the same level of success in the majoritarian tier of the national parliamentary elections. Candidate quotas in the majoritarian component have been nominal. The primary reason is because of parties' noncompliance of the 30% quota of women candidates required in single-member district (SMD) candidate lists. For the last three consecutive National Assembly elections since the inception of quota laws, most parties have failed to comply with the 30% quota for SMDs. The lack of capable and winnable women candidates for SMDs is often an excuse given for noncompliance. However, evidence shows that the actual electoral success rate is typically higher for female rather than male candidates in SMDs, countering the claim that the gap in the electability of female and male candidates is what the parties should really be concerned about (Kim and Kim Reference Kim and Kim2010; Kim Reference Kim2012).
In the recent 2012 election, the proportion of women candidates fielded was far below the 30% quota in the SMDs. Women comprised only 7% in the ruling Saenuri Party's list and 10% of the major opposition Democratic United Party's candidate list in the same year. Quota compliance for the PR list is much better but still below the legislated target of the 50% legal mandate. The Saenuri Party and the Democratic United Party each allocated 46% and 47%, respectively, of the party lists to women. Evidently, parties lack the commitment to nominate women candidates, and this is much more problematic in the SMD elections. Strong resistance to quota implementation by male incumbents particularly makes it difficult for parties to enforce quotas in SMDs. This is one of the reasons why parties are instead motivated to restrict quotas to the small PR tier (Shin Reference Shin2014).Footnote 7 The fact that quotas have been more successful in the PR tier than in single-member districts has led some scholars to advocate broadening the quotas (Hwang and Seo Reference Hwang and Seo2011; Kim and Oh Reference Kim and Oh2010). Specifically, some suggestions include expanding the proportion of PR seats and strengthening the enforcement measures.Footnote 8 However, parties have resisted suggestions to reform quota laws.
LIMITED SUPPORT FOR WOMEN AT THE PARTY-LEVEL
Parties play a key role in selecting candidates and employing various strategies to make the process more inclusive to women. Studies show that parties' actions to promote women's political participation and representation have important implications. For instance, socialist and social democratic parties have adopted party quotas without the need for legislative candidate quotas (Kittilson Reference Kittilson2006; Krook Reference Krook2009). Political parties can also be important players in implementing non-quota strategies to assist women's representation such as setting soft targets and providing women with additional training and campaign funding initiatives (Krook and Norris Reference Krook and Norris2014). Thus, political parties' consistent dedication to women's political representation is central to increasing the number of women in parliament. However, political parties often send mixed signals about the degree to which they are willing to invest in rectifying women's political underrepresentation. While parties often claim credit for improving women's political representation through gender quotas, they also use quotas as an excuse to avoid implementing more fundamental reforms to improve women's long-term political participation.
Similar kinds of inconsistent party behavior have been observed in South Korea in the last decade, where parties have failed to demonstrate their long-term commitment to women's representation. For example, the Political Fund Act offers the parties financial assistance as incentives for recruiting and training women candidates and stipulates that 10% of the total financial assistance must be spent on women's political representation.Footnote 9 Failure to do so would result in funding being withdrawn.Footnote 10 Between 2004 and 2006, parties have spent only about 2% on average to promote women's political representation—far below the 10% minimum required by law. Additionally, parties such as the Grand National Party (current Saenuri Party) have misused state funds, spending more than half of the budget (52.6%) on female labor for party organization rather than recruiting, training, and supporting female party members and candidates. The Political Fund Act in its current form does not specify the items for which the budget should be used, which makes it difficult to penalize political parties for a misuse.
The South Korean case shows that quota adoption and implementation are two distinct matters. Parties may adopt legislative quotas for strategic reasons to appear proreform or prowomen. But in reality, the same parties that initially agreed to the adoption of legislative quotas may find ways to take advantage of institutional loopholes and resist compliance with the quotas. After ten years of efforts to implement candidate quotas, women's organizations have now shifted their attention to parties, particularly in the candidate recruitment process. Women's groups are now calling for party-level measures to assist women nominees and candidates. Similarly, they are also advocating for the adoption of legal sanctions to punish parties for noncompliance of gender quotas in the SMDs.
CONCLUSION
In South Korea, like in Taiwan, a strong women's movement has been successful in pushing for gender quota adoption. However, thus far, the effects of candidate quotas have been limited by political parties' noncompliance and lack of willingness to nominate women candidates. Women are still underrepresented in elected bodies of government. Out of a total of 189 states, South Korea is now ranked 91 in the proportion of women in the national parliament (IPU 2014). The number of female legislators has increased since the adoption of quotas, but its impact has been limited to the PR tier of the mixed electoral systems. While the PR quotas have positive spillover effects for some women contestants for the majoritarian SMDs, those women who fail to win party nominations to run in the SMDs usually have their political careers cut short. Similarly, those who do obtain party nominations in SMDs may sometimes lack the constituency support base—a fundamental resource that would improve their electability. More importantly, parties still do not offer training and support programs for women in their reelection campaigns.
Even with quotas, women still need to overcome tremendous institutional and noninstitutional barriers to win party nominations. Underinstitutionalized candidate selection and weak commitment to enforce quotas by party leaders continue to disadvantage women aspirants who remain outside of male-dominated party politics (Lee and Shin N.d.). In this regard, while strict implementation of gender quotas is important, it is necessary for political parties to supplement quotas with long-term non-quota measures such as maintaining a pool of female aspirants; providing financial support for female candidates to defray campaign-related costs; nominating women in winnable positions; developing programs to build leadership skills; and appointing women to decision-making bodies of the party organization.
