Feminist institutions and implications for gender equality in East Asia

The Fourth UN World Conference on Women identified national women’s machineries as one of the crucial areas of concern, inspiring women’s rights activists in Japan and South Korea to mobilise successfully to establish feminist institutions. Nevertheless, significant gender gaps still remain, placing the two countries close to the bottom of the list on the global gender equality index. These limited accomplishments can be attributed to the low status, and the lack of institutional resources of newly established feminist institutions. Women's policy machineries have also become the very target of backlash movements, further limiting their ability to implement gender equality policies. At the same time, gender equality policy achievements, particularly in the areas of representation in the decision-making process, equal opportunities in the labor market, and elimination of violence against women, as well as strategies to build gender-equal societies, provide important lessons for other emerging democracies in the region.