Gender and Politics in Northeast Asia: Legislative Patterns and Substantive Representation in Korea and Taiwan

ABSTRACT The article examines the conditions under which female legislators are more likely to act on behalf of female electorates through two underexplored cases – South Korea and Taiwan. Specifically, it investigates the effect of three conditions – seat share, electoral rules, and legislator characteristics – on legislators’ sponsorship of women’s issue bills using an original bill submission dataset. The finding shows that, on the one hand, female legislators’ increasing seat proportion made legislators stress women’s issues more and, on the other hand, new legislators elected at the party tier with civil society experience became substantially more likely to advance women's issues. In light of the evidence, this article argues that women’s issues are more actively advanced when the political space allows women’s issue-promoting legislators to pursue both electoral and policy interests.