The Women's Party () is a South Korean single-issue political party founded on International Women's Day 2020 that advocates for feminism. The party calls for greater representation of women and equality in politics and an end to all forms of violence, discrimination and inequality against women in the workplace.
History
The conflict between Feminism Party
The annexation between Feminism Party (페미니즘당) which is intersectional feminism and Women's Party which is trans-exclusive radical feminism were foundered because of its characters. A column wrote on Women's Human Rights Institute of Korea (Korean) which criticized gender-exclusive feminism was the reason of the conflict.
Establishment
The Women's Party was officially established on March 8, 2020, on International Women's Day. The new electoral system which expanded the opportunities for minority parties, prompted the movement to establish a Women's party spearheaded by active young and senior feminists. In 10 days, the organizers were able to qualify the group to register as an official political party. They gathered support in five municipal and provincial level parties (Gyeonggi, South Gyeongsang, Busan, Seoul, Incheon) in addition to in total 8,200 members nationwide. On the Inauguration day, Kim Eun-joo, Yoon Seo-yeon, Lee Ji-won, Won So-yoo, Chang Ji-yoo, Kim Jin-ah, and Lee Seong Suk were selected as the first joint representatives to represent the diverse age brackets of their female constituents.
2020 South Korean general elections
The Women's Party's 10 major pledges addressed issues such as closing the gender pay gap, women's housing rights, reducing the burden of childcare, right to health etc., and prioritized curbing digital sexual crimes.
The party nominated four candidates for proportional representation: Lee Ji Won (First and second party representative), Lee Gyeong Ok (Chairperson of the South Gyeongsang Provincial Party), Park Bo Ram, Kim Ju Hee.
With 208,697 (0.74%) votes during its first election, the party came in 10th among parties who won seats in proportional representation.
Party convention 2020
Following the general elections, the Women's Party held a virtual party convention on September 5 amid COVID-19. Lee Ji-won, Chang Ji-yoo, and Kim Jin-ah were newly elected as the second representatives.
Seoul mayoral by-election 2021
Seoul mayor Park Won-soon died by suicide July 9, 2020, the day after his former secretary filed a complaint to the police alleging that Park had sexually harassed her.
Two candidates, Kim Jin-ah and Lee Ji-won, former and current co-representatives, ran in the party's primary, and Kim Jin-ah was elected. Candidate Kim Jin-ah emphasized that "the election was caused by the sexual misconduct case of the late former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon," and pledged a 50% quota of female executives at public institutions under the slogan "Seoul where women are good to live alone."
Dissolution crisis
The Women's Party did not run any candidates for the 2022 local elections or the 2022 presidential election. On 5 September 2022, The Women's Party announced on the party's website that a vote for the dissolution of the party would be held. The Women's Party has been experiencing difficulties in running the party for over a year as many members left and key positions in the Party went unfilled. There were no Party members that applied to run in local elections for the 2022 election cycle. The election of the third steering committee was also canceled in July 2022 due to no applicants.
In December 2021, internal strife grew when it was revealed that Party leader Jang Ji-yu was handling the party affairs via 'Tarot card fortune-telling' and using her job as a fortune teller to influence the choices of party members in key party elections.
On 1 October 2022, the Women's Party announced that the vote to dissolve the Party passed consensus by Party members. However, according to Korean law, a vote must obtain 50% of registered voter participation in order to be considered valid. Even though the vote to dissolve the Party resulted in a majority "yes" vote, the Women's Party did not reach the 50% participation threshold of party members, and thus the vote was invalidated.
Policies
As a single-issue party, its main policies include: