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| Lim Soon-young talks about her role as special adviser for gender equality to Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon at her office at Seoul City Hall, Wednesday. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
By Lee Suh-yoon
Lim Soon-young, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon's special adviser for gender equality, likens her role of ensuring gender sensitivity in city policy to providing oxygen.
"Without gender sensitivity, policies lack life and balance," Lim said in an interview at her City Hall office, Wednesday.
Lim defines gender sensitivity as "the ability to recognize and keep out gender-based discrimination from daily situations and policies." Her most recent mark as the gender equality adviser can be found in the city government's projects to celebrate the centennial of the March 1 Independence Movement.
"Compared to male independence fighters, there is little record remaining of female fighters," said Lim, who had a calendar commemorating female independence fighters on one wall of her small office. "I advised the mayor it was important to find these lost names and mention them in the mayor's public messages commemorating the event. It's only recently that Yu Gwan-sun came to be called 'martyr' rather than 'nuna' (sister), you know, even though she fought as fiercely as any of her male comrades."
Lim is regularly updated on the city's ongoing projects and policy direction in her meetings with other special advisers to the mayor. She keeps in close contact with the mayor, too, giving policy suggestions and making sure his social media messages are up-to-date with the gender-related debate and gender sensitivity. Her schedule has been hectic over the past few weeks, sitting in on the 2019 roadmap presentations given by different project divisions at the Seoul Metropolitan Government.
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| Lim Soon-young / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul |
Lim, a sociology and gender studies major, met Mayor Park while participating in a response committee for a sexual harassment case involving a Seoul National University professor in 1993. Lim was then a member of the Korea Sexual Violence Response Center and Park was a human rights lawyer with a liberal watchdog group called People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy. Under Park's term, the city government has implemented various policies related to hidden-camera crimes and physical safety.
Gender sensitivity can also improve policies that are already women-specific, Lim says, taking the example of the city's recent plan to create 400 new afterschool childcare facilities for elementary school students ― a gap still unaccounted for in the current welfare system for children with working parents.
"When the care problem is solved, women can better participate in economic activities, allowing for a more prosperous society where children are raised not just by parents or single moms or dads, but by the entire community," Lim said. "While drawing up such a master plan, we had to avoid gender-biased assumptions like considering childcare as primarily women's, or mother's work, or thinking of it only within the frame of a 'normal' family with two heterosexual parents."
Lim admits there is still room for better gender sensitivity in other government policies, for example in the countless "multiculturalism" programs carried out by the central and city governments.
"Multiculturalism policies here still typically recognize only families comprised of a Korean father and a foreign mother," Lim said. "The policies also tend to impose the traditional image of a good wife, mother and daughter-in-law on marriage immigrants."
In commemoration of International Women's Day on Friday, Lim has been taking part in creating the city government's blueprint for a pay transparency scheme at city government-affiliated organizations.
"Korea currently ranks last among OECD nations in terms of the gender pay gap," Lim explained with a sigh, adding that women receive about 65 percent of men's salary on average. "We hope that after we implement these measures in our own organizational structures, the private sector will also follow suit."
