Gender equality legislation in Korea

Abstract

Korea has revised the discriminative contents in its existing laws and has introduced other legislative changes to ensure gender equality since the 1980s and has succeeded in establishing various gender equality legislations in a relative short period. Despite various legislative measures, Korean women's status shows that we still have a long way to achieve gender equality. This implies that concrete public policies and legislations are required to allow legal equality to play a critical role to influence Korean men and women and to change the social system substantially. The report discusses gender mainstreaming and how it has adapted women related legislations as a way to overcome the limitations of existing Korean law and policies. Gender mainstreaming in public policies can invoke reorganization of existing policies. As the establishing, executing and evaluating processes of policies are reformed, reorganized and improved, gender segregated jobs and roles of men and women should become redundant. Through such changes various public service programs should also be accompanied to make work places become family-friendly and reorganize the gender roles of men and women.