Women This Week: Female Voters Propel Liberal Presidential Candidate to Victory in South Korea
Gender Equality to be Priority for New Administration
On Tuesday, South Korea elected a new liberal President, Lee Jae-myung. Exit polls show the majority of women voters supported the president-elect, including 58 percent of women in their twenties and 57 percent of women in their thirties. In comparison, male voters in the country voted in higher numbers for more conservative People Power Party candidates, led by Kim Moon-soo, who was running to replace ousted President Yoon Suk Yeol. The two parties have differed in their approach to gender issues. Throughout his presidency, Yoon found support in young male voters through anti-feminist sentiments and a promise to abolish the gender equality ministry. President-elect Lee has promised to expand the ministry and focus on violence against women. This was the first election in eighteen years with no female candidate running for office.
Guatemala Paramilitaries Found Guilty of Rape of Indigenous Women
A Guatemalan court ruled in favor of six indigenous women who were raped by three former paramilitaries during the bloodiest period of the country’s thirty-six-year civil war. The all-female, three-panel court sentenced the three officers to forty-year prison sentences. “The women the perpetrators, they the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,” said Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos. “This decision is a “historic” recognition of the crimes against humanity experienced by the Maya Achi Indigenous women during a period that left as many as 200,000 killed or missing. Indigenous Mayans were found to have accounted for 83 percent of the victims between 1981 and 1983, with the Guatemalan military responsible for 93 percent of the crimes. In 2022, five other paramilitaries were found guilty of similar crimes. There are nearly thirty surviving Indigenous women who have come forward to share their experiences to seek justice.
Demonstrators Demand Progress Against Gender-Based Violence in Romania
Protests erupted in Bucharest following the femicide of Teodora Marcu, a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman and mother. On May 31 Marcu—who was twenty-six weeks pregnant—was shot by her ex-boyfriend while on a walk with her toddler. Thousands of protestors rallied in support of legislative reform to address gender-based violence and argued for stronger support from authorities to respond to early signs of domestic violence cases. “We came because there has been a lot of frustration,” said protest participant Avin Arabo to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). “Too many women are suffering from domestic violence, we want the institutions to do their jobs and act as they should in every case.” Protest organizers added, “We are tired of living in a culture of tolerance for violence when it is directed against women from poor backgrounds, Roma or have experiences that do not make them ‘worthy’ in the eyes of society, to be protected.” There have been 25 instances of femicide in Romania since the start of the year.
