Waving indicators and carrying white sashes emblazoned with the phrases “Vote for Women,” they accused presidential candidate Yoon Suk Yeol of making an attempt to attraction to anti-feminists to garner assist forward of the election.
“You do not need to be a presidential candidate, Yoon,” the primarily feminine crowd chanted. “Go away.”
The protest highlighted how heated South Korea’s gender warfare has turn into forward of the nation’s March 9 presidential vote, with each main candidates wading into the problem to win over younger voters who’re more and more cut up alongside gender strains.
Facing a hypercompetitive job market and skyrocketing housing costs, anti-feminists declare the nation’s bid to handle gender inequality has tipped too far in girls’s favor. Feminists, in the meantime, level to the nation’s widespread sexual violence, entrenched gender expectations, and low feminine illustration in boardrooms and in politics as examples of how discrimination in opposition to girls continues to be rife.
Surveys present a rising proportion of younger males are against feminism — and conservative candidate and political novice Yoon is making an attempt to win their assist. He’s promising to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which he claims is unfair to males, and lift the penalty for falsely reporting intercourse crimes. CNN approached Yoon’s workplace for touch upon his gender insurance policies however didn’t obtain a response.
Meanwhile, liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung of the incumbent Democratic Party has tried to strike a extra balanced tone. He says discrimination in opposition to males is flawed — an obvious nod to the views of anti-feminist males — however has additionally promised to shut the gender wage hole.
He says he’ll maintain the gender ministry — however change its Korean identify in order that it now not consists of the phrase “girls.” But in the previous few days of the election, he seems to have accepted that he will not win the younger male votes and is proactively courting on-line feminist communities.
In a press release to CNN, Lee’s workplace mentioned he had created “many gender-related insurance policies” for ladies and men, together with a quota system for ladies to carry not less than 30% for high-ranking public roles, advantages for brand spanking new moms and expanded assist for paternity depart.
The heated election marketing campaign has left girls feeling as if the true points dealing with them are getting used for political point-scoring. And some fear that if Yoon wins the March 9 election, divisions between genders might widen even additional.
The rise of anti-feminists
Since the brutal 2016 homicide in Seoul’s stylish Gangnam neighborhood of a younger lady focused for her gender, South Korea has confronted a reckoning over its attitudes towards girls.
Activists pushed to handle sexual harassment and widespread discrimination and located an ally in outgoing President Moon Jae-In, who vowed to “turn into a feminist president” earlier than he was elected in 2017.
But within the years since, some males say the needle has moved too far. Anti-feminists level to statistics displaying girls are actually going to school at the next charge than males and say that obligatory army service for males provides girls a bonus within the jobs market. Some place South Korea’s demographic disaster, brought on by slipping beginning charges, squarely on the toes of feminists.
While in different international locations, anti-feminists is perhaps discounted by politicians, in South Korea, these males have made themselves a robust voter bloc.
Last April, Moon’s Democratic Party misplaced mayoral elections in each Seoul and its second largest metropolis Busan, with exit polls displaying younger males of their 20s had overwhelmingly shifted their vote to the conservative People Power Party.
And in May the Korean advertising and marketing and analysis agency Hankook Research mentioned a survey of three,000 adults discovered that greater than 77% of males of their 20s and greater than 73% of males of their 30s have been “repulsed by feminists or feminism.”
“There is a way of exclusion amongst males,” mentioned the 36-year-old author Park Se-hwan, who identifies as anti-feminist. “It’s now time for us to debate males in South Korea who compared have been largely ignored.” Park says he agrees with gender equality however says this sense of neglect has garnered “a common objection to feminism” amongst younger males.
According to Youngmi Kim, a senior lecturer in Korean Studies on the University of Edinburgh, social polarization and a scarcity of employment alternatives for younger individuals has led to males of their 20s and 30s turning into extra conservative.
Or, as Yun Ji-yeong, an affiliate professor in philosophy at Changwon National University, places it: “Many individuals are realizing that the (nation’s) scarce sources are being distributed very unequally.”
“When they’re searching for the trigger, they level the finger on the girls who’re in entrance of them.”
The wrestle dealing with feminists
To girls, the fraught debate over gender is not simply leaving them feeling like a political punching bag — they are saying it is also plastering over the true points they’re dealing with.
Just 15.6% of senior and managerial positions are held by girls — considerably lower than the US’s 42%. Less than 20% of legislators are girls, once more effectively beneath most OECD international locations. Digital intercourse crimes are so pervasive that they impacts the standard of life for ladies and ladies, in line with Human Rights Watch (HRW), and girls proceed to face sexism and strain to satisfy unrealistic magnificence requirements.
Yang Ji-hye, a youth rights activist, says lots of the anti-feminist motion’s claims usually are not supported by statistics — and he or she thinks the best way gender is being talked about within the election is “absurd.”
“I’m sick of those anti-feminist politics — it makes me overwhelmed simply to say how a lot girls are being discriminated in opposition to, when on the identical time they are saying there may be reverse discrimination (in opposition to males),” she mentioned.
Writer Park Won-ik says individuals with excessive views on each side are engaged in a “cultural warfare.” He says it is tough for others to specific their opinions with out being threatened. “There’s no effort of protecting sure guidelines nearly as good residents or as civilized individuals, whether or not you are feminists or not,” he mentioned.
According to the University of Edinburgh’s Kim, Korea nonetheless has a “lengthy journey forward” by way of gender equality.
Kim Ju-hee, who was on the protests, has felt discriminated in opposition to for her gender — she’s been instructed her seems to be have been a part of her job of being a nurse, and at residence her feminine family members are nonetheless anticipated eat at a small desk in the back of the home after ancestral rituals. She additionally feels annoyed about the best way feminism has been used within the election.
“In this election, feminism just isn’t seen as a problem, however fairly a token,” mentioned Kim, 27. “I used to be very indignant that it was used as if it was going to get discarded afterward.”
Yun, from Changwon National University, says if Yoon turns into president she expects feminists to face a fair higher problem for equality.
“Since the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is without doubt one of the most essential guarantees, I feel that it’s going to in all probability be applied as a tangible motion first,” Yun mentioned.
“In that case, I’ve a priority that gender battle and girls’s human rights might go additional backward.”
CNN’s Pallabi Munsi and Saeeun Park contributed to this report.