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While South Korea is a deeply paternalist and sexist society and there are many disadvantages women face in Korean society, men in Korea do have compelling reas
by Manuel_D 3y ago
While South Korea is a deeply paternalist and sexist society and there are many disadvantages women face in Korean society, men in Korea do have compelling reasons to oppose Korean feminist movements. In particular, the government has instituted gender quotas in some industries:
> The flustered “angry young men” believe that government policies aimed at ensuring gender parity are in fact giving women an unfair advantage.
Enforcing gender parity when the workforce is majority male is indeed giving one gender an advantage. They don't "believe" these practices are unfair any more than they "believe" the sky is blue. If you want to eliminate discrimination, anonymize applications and take steps to eliminate the ability to determine the gender of applicants. Forcing outcomes is indeed putting your finger on the scale.
While there's definitely a lot of sexism and paternalism in South Korea, it was very unfortunate that explicit gender discrimination was path that feminist movements decided to take. It's very bad for feminism to create situations when anti-discrimination is a form of "anti-feminism". This severely curtails good will and willingness to work on issues like the one described in the linked article.