South Korea wants to eliminate the Ministry of Equality to better "protect" women

The president of South Korea, the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, defended this Friday his plan to dismantle the Ministry of Equality, a measure that, he maintains, will help "strengthen the protection of women" and other vulnerable groups.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
07 October 2022 Friday 05:30
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South Korea wants to eliminate the Ministry of Equality to better "protect" women

The president of South Korea, the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, defended this Friday his plan to dismantle the Ministry of Equality, a measure that, he maintains, will help "strengthen the protection of women" and other vulnerable groups. The measure provokes strong rejection among South Korean feminist groups and the political opposition, for whom it would put a brake on efforts to reduce one of the largest gender gaps among developed economies.

Yoon, who has accused the body in the past of treating all men as "potential sexual criminals," tried to play down fears that the removal of the ministry will slow the progress of women's rights in the country. "Its abolition tries to strengthen the protection of women, families, children and the most vulnerable in society," she said.

A day earlier, the Minister of the Interior, Lee Sang Min, explained that the new plan contemplates transferring the functions of the current body to the Ministry of Health, where they would create a department in charge of family and equality matters.

"It is time to change the focus to achieve gender equality for both men and women and move away from the current focus, more focused on solving the inequalities that women face," she said during a briefing.

The elimination of the Ministry of Equality is one of the star electoral promises of the new Government. During her campaign, Yoon defended that South Korean women do not suffer "systematic discrimination" and promised to end this organization. Her calls found a great echo among the growing group of "anti-feminist" men, mostly young people who say they feel discriminated against and who oppose gender equality policies because they believe they harm them in a highly competitive labor market. .

Despite some recent improvements such as the decriminalization of abortion in 2021, gender inequality is a scourge marked by fire in a deeply patriarchal and sexist system like the South Korean one.

Seoul boasts the highest gender pay gap of any Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country: on average, a South Korean woman's salary is a third less than her male counterpart. Her presence in boards of directors and command post is testimonial. This year, the World Economic Forum ranked the country at number 99 out of 146 listed in a report that examines the gender gap in education, health, employment or political representation.

In addition, in their day to day, South Korean women suffer violence and harassment in public and private spaces. In recent years, the epidemic of crimes that occur with spy cameras, known as molka, which try to capture intimate images of women on public transport, escalators, bathrooms or in their workplaces, has gained special relevance.

There have also been cases of extreme violence. Last September, calls grew to aggravate punishments against harassers after a 28-year-old woman was stabbed in a bathroom by a former co-worker who had harassed her since 2019 to get her to agree to go out with him. Although the woman had requested protection measures, the authorities had not issued a restraining order or arrested the suspect.

The decision to eliminate the ministry, created 20 years ago by then President Kim Dae Jung, is opposed by members of the Democratic Party, which has a majority in Parliament and could block, at least for now, its abolition. "It is time to strengthen the roles and functions of the ministry, not to weaken them," some of its parliamentarians said in a statement.

Along these same lines, more than a hundred groups in defense of women's rights issued a statement this Friday in which they promised a campaign against government plans, which they describe as contrary to equality and democracy.

For its part, the popular newspaper The Korea Times accused Yoon and her party of taking advantage of social divisions on gender issues "for political gain." They also asked them to reconsider their "ill-conceived plan" as it could "do more harm than good" and goes "against the global trend of advocating women's empowerment."