• Journal of Korean Women's Studies
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.203-231
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• 2014

Political space, the area where politics takes place, is generally treated as a male-centric space. The number of female politicians is increasing, but the core of political space is still dominated by male politicians. Therefore, on the one side, female politicians use masculine rhetoric in order to show that they are equal to male politicians, and on the other side, they use feminine rhetoric like the rhetoric of the First Lady or the rhetoric of motherhood in order to emphasize the differences with male politicians and stress their novelty as female politicians. In this situation, female politicians are confronted with the difficulty that they have to keep a balance between masculine and feminine rhetoric. In this context, this study, in chapter II, analyzes the monopoly of male politicians on political space and the dominance of masculine rhetoric and emphasizes that the political space is strongly gendered. Chapter III examines the possibilities and limits of the rhetoric of the First Lady and of the rhetoric of motherhood which female politicians use in the political space to draw attention to their messages. Chapter IV suggests two strategies to change the situation of the dominance of masculine rhetoric in the political space: the strategy of mainstreaming of women and the strategy of mainstreaming of gender agendas. Lastly, this study emphasizes that we need to develop an alternative feminine rhetoric by paying attention to the diversity of women.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.31-50
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• 2005

The perspectives on the gender equality are various. Therefore the relationship between social policy and gender equality must be thought in the sense of the following question: What kind of gender equality pursue social policy? In spite of the mentioned question the mainstreaming discussion about the relationship between social policy and gender equality focuses on how a social policy leads to gender inequality. The debate about the perspective with which social policy pursues to conglomerate or abolish gender inequality is not popular. In this study the Korean National Pension System is analysed according to the gender neutral approach, the gender recognition approach, the gender reconstruction approach and the gender reinforcement approach. As a result, the Korean National Pension System has a character as a gender neutral approach. Therefore the critics on the National Pension System should focus on this perspective. In the future, when the pension credit system, the guarantee of right to pension in the case of divorce and the basic pension guarantee would be introduced, the Korean National Pension System could be featured as a field of social policy that has a gender recognition approach.