The Association of Women Faculty Societies of Korean National Universities (AWFSKNU) held a workshop on the afternoon of May 31st, 2019, at Kangwon National University. The leadership of 10 of AWFSKNU’s member universities, including SNU, Chungnam National University, Kyungpook National University, Pusan National University, and Jeju National University, gathered again just four months after the general meeting and seminar held in January. Workshop host and current AWFSKNU chair Yang-suk Gil gave a welcoming address, and Jung Hoon Kang, deputy director of the Ministry of Education’s Gender Equality Policy Division, gave a congratulatory address. The government recently established such divisions in eight ministries and agencies, integrating gender equality policy tasks that had been scattered across organizations, and has set about to improve the effectiveness of its policy execution. SNU Diversity Council expert coordinator Yookyung Bae reported on the joint efforts of the council and AWFSKNU to pass an amendment to the Public Educational Officials Act that would encourage public universities to hire more female faculty.

In a presentation entitled “Universities’ Ignorance About Gender”, Professor Sun Young Chun of Kyungpook National University’s Department of Sociology discussed the lack of university courses that educate students about gender, the seriousness of the gap in gender awareness between generations, and other issues, based not on having a degree in gender studies herself but on having taught gender-related courses for a long time. She also emphasized the necessity of organizing a variety of opportunities for offline, small-group discussion on gender and of listening to differences in opinion. Korean Women’s Development Institute director Eun-Jin Oh, who is in charge of evaluating national universities’ gender equality action plans, analyzed the evaluation indices and trends in the results of the evaluations; she then shared stories of overseas’ universities stories of successful gender-equal hiring. In the hourlong discussion time that followed, the speakers answered questions on issues including the difficulties female faculty in their 30s and 40s face in building their career history, the possibility of taking advantage of Article 21 (Participation in the Policymaking Process) of the Framework Act on Gender Equality, and the plan of activities for the Ministry of Education’s Gender Equality Policy Division. Sowon Chang, head of the SNU Women’s Faculty Council, also introduced the role of SNU’s Gender-Equal Hiring Committee and suggested conducting a study to examine the current percentage of female faculty in departments that hired women in 2003 in accordance with orders issued by the Ministry of Education.