- This event has passed.
How Women’s Political Visibility in South Korea Shapes Legislators’ Behavior and Public Attitudes — Soosun You
Korea Institute SBS Seminar
Soosun You
Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania
Soosun You is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in comparative politics, gender and politics, and political behavior, with a regional focus on South Korea. Her research appears or is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Political Science and Journal of Law and Economics. She is also the founder of the Gender in Korea Reading Group, which brings together scholars from diverse disciplines working on gender issues related to Korea.
Soosun’s current book project explores how demographic shifts and changes in the marriage market have shaped the trajectory of women’s rights in South Korea. Drawing on a wide range of methods including archival work, survey experiments, and in-depth interviews, the book examines the rise of anti-natalist and pro-natalist government policies and their consequences for women’s economic and political rights.
She earned her PhD and MA in political science from UC Berkeley. She also has a master’s in public policy from Seoul National University.
Chaired by Hojung Joo, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government, Harvard University
Abstract:
In this talk, I explore how women’s presence in South Korean politics—both within legislatures and protest movements—shapes elite behavior and public attitudes. I argue that descriptive representation can foster substantive representation when everyday peer environments expose legislators and the public to women in politics. First, I show that working alongside more women colleagues affects the policy-making process by increasing legislators’ engagement with gender equality issues, drawing on data from legislative speeches, plenary sessions, and campaign manifestos. Second, using a novel survey experiment conducted in South Korea, I demonstrate that the salience of women’s participation in protest movements strengthens women’s political agency and shapes public perceptions of government legitimacy and democratic values.