The Korean Womens Movement and the State
This book asks what strategies womens movements in Korea can employ to induce law and policy changes at the national level that will assist womens equality without sacrificing their feminist energy, movement cohesiveness and core feminist commitments. The book takes up this question in order to emphasize the need not only to recognize the accomplishments of womens movements through political participation, but also to analyze the process through which feminist organizations interact with formal politics. It examines the institutionalization of the Korean womens movement under the progressive presidencies of Kim Dae Jung (19982002) and Roh Moo Hyun (200307), focusing on three major pieces of legislation concerning womens rights that were enacted during this time, and looks at the process of gender politics and the strategic bargains that needed to be made between the womens movement and other political forces in order to advance their agenda. It questions whether the institutionalization of the womens movement inevitably results in demobilization and de-radicalization, and goes on to examine the relationship between the womens movement and the government over the two most women-friendly administrations in South Korean history, a period marked by flourishing civil society activism and participatory democracy.
Seung-kyung Kim is Professor and Chair of Womens Studies, and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Maryland, USA. She is the author of Lives of Women Factory Workers in South Korea and co-editor of Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives.
Kyounghee Kim is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Chang-Ang University, Seoul, Korea.
Asian Studies Association of Australia Women in Asia Series
Editor: Lenore Lyons (The University of Sydney)
Editorial Board:
Susan Blackburn (Monash University)
Hyaeweol Choi (The Australian National University)
Louise Edwards (University of Hong Kong)
Michele Ford (The University of Sydney)
Trude Jacobsen (Northern Illinois University)
Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong)
Anne McLaren (The University of Melbourne)
Mina Roces (University of New South Wales)
Dina Siddiqi (The City University of New York)
Andrea Whittaker (The University of Queensland)
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The Korean Womens Movement and the State
Bargaining for change
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First published 2014
by Routledge
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2014 Seung-kyung Kim
The right of Seung-kyung Kim to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kim, Seung-Kyung, 1954-
The Korean womens movement and the state : bargaining for change / Seung-kyung Kim.
