Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling: Women's Representation in India and South Korea

The political representation of women is widely accepted as one of the key benchmarks for democraticrepresentativeness and gender equality. Despite significant progress in education, economic participation and legal rights, women are still underrepresented quantitatively in political institutions in many democratic societies. Utilising a comparative approach on the institutional mechanisms, policy frameworks, and socio-cultural context ofIndia and South Korea, this paper will examine women’s political representation in both countries. India has beenfollowing a reservation-based strategy, especially with the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment, where it hasinked reserved seats for women in local governance bodies. Through these reforms, women’s grassroots level representation has increased manifold, with more than 1 million elected women representatives at the local bodies. The main dif erence is that South Korea has a quota system applied to specific cases, and this system gives apolitical party an incentive to nominate females as candidates. Although these quotas have helped with the gradualincrease of women in the National Assembly, their overall percentage remains relatively low. The study alsounderscores socio-cultural constraints like patriarchal attitudes and fewer political networks and party structuresthat continue to restrict women’s participation in the politics of both countries. The account of the comparativeanalysis indicates that stronger institutional mechanism as well as social change at a broader level is necessary forimproved democratic governance of gender equality.