Korea as a Role Model of Women Policy

As the number of Korean women who entered the main stream of society increases, other countries in Asia started to have interest in women policy of Korea. Recently, there was a meaningful workshop where the other Asian countries can learn about Korean policy on women. Let’s take a look.



Gathering to Learn Korean Language




<2011 KWDI Workshop on Capacity Building for Women’s Policy of Cambodia and Indonesia> (Source: Korean Women’s Development Institute)



30 people including Cambodian and Indonesian government officials and Ngo members attended workshop on Capacity Building for Women's Policy sponsored by Korean Women's Development Institute to learn women policy from Sept. 18th to Oct.1st. They participated at lectures, discussions and site visit under the three themes on capacity building on; policy, economy, women rights and violence.

The Buddhist country, Cambodia and the Muslim country, Indonesia have different cultural background, however, since 2000s they are actively working on the policy on gender equality. But women's social status is still low due to the poverty, poor education, and conventional man chauvinism. What were the impressions that the experts from these two countries got from Korea?



(Source: Korean Women’s Development Institute)



for justice democracy are speakers today.this is the first time to korea for both of them and they were very impressed by women's liberation movement history and women's policy.mukti apprciated hospitality saying"it is the first time for me to be herebut seoul is wellknown city in indonesia.korea is emerging as an economic superpower in the world.i'm looking forward to be here".pakpahan was interested in korean women's policy and she said korea abolished the head of the family system and korean women's liberation movements are even if it is a small result.





What is the Most Important Issue in Women’s policy in Tow Countries?


Mukti: “As Malaysia and Indonesia share the same language and religion, Indonesians are very popular in Malaysian labor market. Currently, about 1.2million are working in Malaysia. However, since the exploitation and fraud got worse, Indonesian government banned the export of labor force until the Malaysian government guarantees of proper working conditions.”

Pakpahan: “The biggest issues among Indonesian women are health, finance and education. Indonesia has the highest maternal mortality rate in Southeast Asia, which is very urgent matter to be fixed. Most of women are working as maids in Indonesia or in other countries. Their working conditions and payments are very poor because the domestic law cannot protect them. It was all resulted from the gender inequality in education. While the percentage of the female students in primary school is quite high, in higher educational institutions the percentage gets pretty low.”





Bring Know-how to Their Countries




(Source: Korean Women’s Development Institute)



Mukti: “In Indonesia we also do the research on women but most of them depends on Ngos or university laboratories, so we need a professional institutes managed by the government. The most impressive thing of Korea was the statistics of adult magazines. When I go back to Indonesia I’ll strongly suggest the same one to the senate.”



Pakpahan: “I agree with the importance of the statistics and want to develop many indicators to apply to the policies for women. Also when I visited to one of the Korean Women's Hotline center, I got an idea about establishing the one-stop service centers that connects the sexual violence victims to consultants for supporting. I will suggest it when going back.”


There is an expression like this, “The women-friendly country is indeed a developed country.” Now, Korea is becoming a good model of high techniques and advanced policies. A good and comfortable society is not built by a specific person but by every single one of us. Isn't it the first step of world peace to make the weak including women happy?