Women representing women the case of south korea

This study investigates the question of whether the increased descriptive representation of women in the Korean National Assembly (KNA) is making for a substantial difference in the women's actual legislative success. Employing the National Assembly Bill Information System data this study examines the extent to which women legislators introduced and passed gender-related bills in the KNA over one and a half decades between 2000 and 2016. Our results indicate that being a female and/or being elected on the PR tier increases the likelihood of the passage of gender-related bills. Equally important is that neither ruling/opposition party membership nor the conservative/ progressive party affiliation has a significant effect on the gender-related bills passage. We also found that being a 'senior' in the KNA turns out to produce a statistically insignificant effect. While our findings, in general, corroborate past research on the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation (i.e. legislative sessions with the lowest percentage of women passed the lowest number of gender-related bills), our results are also different in that they suggest that partisan loyalty did not make any difference in the gender-related legislation.