APPROACHES OF JAPANESE AND SOUTH KOREAN TO OVERCOMING GENDER INEQUALITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Back to Page Authors: Anastasiia Andreeva

---

Keywords: comfort women, womenomics, gender hierarchy, social movement

---

Abstract: The Asian economic crisis triggered processes that reshape the current power structure and gender hierarchy in Japanese and South Korean societies. Being originally implemented to overcome economic stagnation, wide usage of women’s resources and potential has become a tool for solving gender inequality. Despite common historical background and similarities in cultural values, movement for gender equality is occurring differently in Japan and The Republic of Korea: it is being treated as a side effect of Abe’s womenomics in the first case and has a solid base of social initiative that fills in the gaps of the governmental policy in the second one. This paper aims to investigate the difference in mechanisms for achieving gender equality, the processes’ stimuli and possible consequences. Reflecting on texts which express both insider’s (Japanese and South Korean) and outsider’s (international researchers) points of view using critical analysis method, this paper creates a multi-dimensional understanding of the issue. The paper suggests that aside from the civil activity level, there is another key reason for the difference in approaches which is the attitude to the “comfort women” problem. A matter of foreign policy has a major impact on domestic policy: while becoming an impulse for gender hierarchy revision discussion in Korea, it has secured Japan’s conservative position on the issue. The paper’s findings can be used to interpret current socioeconomic and cultural transformations that challenge traditional gender inequality and define the future face of Japan and The Republic of Korea as well as to predict the way the situation will evolve.

---