The Korean Women's Movement and the State

Recent feminist scholarship has emphasized the need not only to recognize the accomplishments of women’s movements through political participation, but also to analyze the process through which feminist organizations interact with formal politics. This book takes up theoretical debates on the relationship between gender and the state through an analysis of the relationship between the women’s movement organizations and state-oriented gender politics during the ten year period of South Korea’s progressive presidencies. It questions whether the institutionalization of the women’s movement inevitably results in demobilization and deradicalization, and goes on to examine the relationship between the women’s movement and the government over the two most women-friendly administrations in South Korean history, a period marked by flourishing civil society activism and participatory democracy.