Democratic progress and women’s issue representation: evidence from the South Korean National Assembly, 1948–2022

How does democratic progress affect the evolution of women’s issues? Although previous studies showed the significance of democratic transition in mainstreaming women’s issues, little is known about how women’s issues change along with the deepening of democracy. To fill the gap, this article revisits and tests the effects of democratization in three steps: democratization, democratic progress, and saturation. Focusing on South Korea, we analyse the patterns of legislative speeches on women out of the entire corpus of the plenary session meeting speeches (462,568 in total) from 1948 to 2022. We report three findings: First, democratization served as a key structural breakthrough, especially with regard to institutionalizing women’s rights. Second, democratic progress has a positive association with women’s issue representation in the legislature. Finally, the positive effect of democratic progress diminished once women’s policies were legislated and implemented in government. All in all, these findings suggest a nuanced and dynamic relationship between democratic progress and women’s issue representation.