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Lee, S. (2022, March-April). How Could the “#MeToo” Movements Spread Worldwide In 2017? Supplemental Analysis on the Conditions under Which Transnational Advocacy Networks Become Influential. Paper presented at the 63rd Annual Convention, International Studies Association, Nashville, The U.S.

In 2015, there was a so-called “child care crisis” in Korea. This happened when the government demanded that the budget for the “Nuri program,” which was previously shared by the Ministry of Child Care and Welfare and the Office of Education, be covered within the Local Finance Grant, which was paid to the Office of Education by the government. In particular, the “Nuri program” denotes a system that unifies childcare and education from the ages of 3 to 5, and parents with children of that age are provided with child support regardless of their income level. However, in 2015, the Office of Education did not set the budget for the “Nuri program,” arguing that it would be impossible to spend additional money within the local financial grants fixed at 20.27% of the total budget. Therefore, parents with infants and children were in trouble of not receiving child care fees, called the “childcare crisis.”

Meanwhile, as a result of the 20th general election in 2016, the “Divided Government” came out in 16 years. In addition, voter turnout among female voters rose compared to the 19th general elections, and the “childcare crisis” in 2015 emerged as an issue in the general elections. In response, I set up the research question: “Did female voters in their 20s and 30s vote to hold the government responsible for the 2015 ‘childcare crisis’?”

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Since the appearance of the hashtag “#MeToo” in 2017 to accuse sexual violence in Hollywood, the movement has expanded to expose sexual violence against women in various fields around the world. However, the “#MeToo” movement was first launched a decade ago in 2007 with the aim of promoting and protecting sexual rights for young black girls. Therefore, I tried to articulate a hypothesis (Keck and Sikkink, 1998) that the 2017 Twitter movement, not the early “Me Too” movement, successfully induced the emergence of transnational advocacy networks, comparing the two examples.

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In the era of Neo-liberalism, there is so-called “crises of reproduction” in today’s Eastern Asian countries. Especially, in South Korea, the birth rate is rapidly decreasing, and this becomes the national problem. I explained the “crises of reproduction” by relating it to neo-liberalism, and point out the government’s policy trying to overcome the crises. Also, I focused on the specific condition of the countryside in which East-Northern Asian countries’ women immigrates, for the marriage. Therefore, I criticized the immigration of marriage would not be the perfect method to solve the “crises of reproduction” in South Korea by analyzing the mechanism of Capitalism which blinds the labor of women fundamentally. In addition, I pointed out that this kind of makeshift would induce the sexual harassment and trafficking problems. Finally, I suggested the way to solve the problem of reproduction instead of the marriage immigration.

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