[Actually] "There are only 10 countries like 'Ministry of Gender Equality and Family' in Korea"... in fact?

The Presidential Transition Committee has decided to postpone government reorganization, including the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, until the inauguration of the new government.

The new government's cabinet appointments are based on the existing government organization.

On the 10th, Kim Hyun-sook, who served as the Blue House chief of employment and welfare under the Park Geun-hye administration, was appointed as the first Minister of Gender Equality and Family under the Yun Seok-yeol administration.

Yesterday, People's Power floor leader Kwon Seong-dong said, "The abolition of the leisure ministry is the spirit of the times and a key promise that the elected president has made many times.

Although it was designated as the Minister of Leisure, the abolition will continue to be pursued.

The controversy is bound to continue.

However, Lee Su-jeong, a professor at Kyonggi University, who was the co-chair of the People's Power joint election during the last presidential election, recently said this.

It means that there are not many leisure ministries like ours compared to the global trend.

Which countries have female ministries?

The SBS 'Actually' team analyzed the exact situation.

The 'Directory of National Mechanisms for Gender Equality' report published in May of last year by UN Women was used as the basic data.

Here, the names of women's work government organizations by country, as well as the person in charge, the position of the person in charge, and the person with authority to appoint are introduced.

The 'Directory of National Mechanisms for Gender Equality' report published in May last year by UN Women.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family of the Republic of Korea is introduced on page 40 of the report.

In fact, as a result of the team analysis, 160 of the 194 countries analyzed could be classified as ministries.

Several media outlets have also fact-checked that this number is not true.

However, if you look more closely, there may be an optical illusion.

For example, according to the United Nations People's Data, in Iceland, organizations that work for women are classified as ministries, but the ministry is the Ministry of Justice.

It means that the department in charge of women's affairs is the Ministry of Justice.

It is difficult to see it in the form of our leisure department.

After all, like us, we need to include 'women' in the name of the organization to represent that women are doing business, so we can make comparisons.

We looked at countries in the form of ministries and including women in the name of the ministries.

A total of 56 countries came out.

If you expand it to include the word gender, it will increase to 84 countries.

In any case, even removing the optical illusions, you get quite a few countries.

Judging from this standard, Professor Lee Su-jeong's statement is not true.

I asked Professor Lee how he came up with that calculation.

There are many countries in which women's status is low in cases where women ministries were created and named after women.

In the 1980s, it was said that the Ministry of Gender Equality was needed because of the poor human rights of women in Korea. At that time, countries with poor women's human rights like ours are creating ministries named 'women' to improve women's human rights.

We cannot compare ourselves to such countries.

Comparisons should be made against OECD countries.

- Prof. Lee Su-jeong, SBS Truth-Eun Team Phone Interview

In the end, it means that the 10 countries that Professor Sujeong Lee spoke of were counted based on the OECD.

In fact, the team again selected only OECD countries.

The result was something like this:

I have something to add to my explanation.

There may be some confusion in the name due to differences in the political system between countries.

For example, in Japan, the website for women's ministries is 'gender equality bureau cabinet office'.

However, externally, it is often used as 'Ministry of Women's Empowerment and for Gender Equality'.

In Korean terms, the Minister of Leisure Seiko Noda also introduces herself as the Minister in Charge of Women's Empowerment (Minister of State for Gender Equality).

The data of UN Women, which is the basis of analysis, also uses this name.

In Canada, Ministry is missing as 'Women and Gender Equality Canada', but it seems to be a difference in the political system.

No other ministries use the name Ministry.

However, the person in charge is called 'Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth'.

Anyway, as Professor Sujeong Lee said, it is true that there are no more than 10 countries based on the OECD.

The English name of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is 'Ministry of Gender Equality', and does not include the keyword "Women".

However, in the table above, Korea, where there has been a lot of controversy, is omitted.

We are translating the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family into English as 'Ministry of Gender Equality'.

In a nutshell, it is closer to the 'Gender Equality Ministry'.

Among OECD countries, Korea, France, Greece, and Sweden are countries that do not use the word 'Women' as the English name for organizations but use 'Gender'.

Professor Lee Su-jeong said that it was wrong to use 'gender' as the English name for the leisure club.

The English name of the leisure club does not match its meaning.

In English, it is 'Ministry of Women and Family affair', but in English it is 'Ministry of Gender Equality'.

If the name of the ministry is 'Gender Equality', it should also represent the interests of LGBT people (in the scope of gender), but it did not.

- Prof. Lee Su-jeong, SBS Truth-Eun Team Phone Interview

Based on work?

In fact, the team found out what government organizations that do women's work do through keyword analysis.

The purpose is to take a look at what kind of work we do in detail.

'Work' is probably more important than 'form' when considering the internality of an organization.

As the Presidential Transition Committee is currently reviewing business transfer based on the abolition of the Ministry of Leisure, overseas cases are a good reference.

'All' of 194 countries were covered.

The result was something like this:

In the name of government organizations that work for women, the word “Women” is the number 78 most often used.

It was followed by Family and Gender 37 times, Development, Promotion 31 times, and Equality, Equal 30 times.

In addition, there are Children, Labor, and Youth.

In other words, government organizations that do women's work around the world do a lot of family work, advocacy work, children's work, labor work, and youth work.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family's budget for this year is KRW 1.465 trillion, of which 61.9% of the total budget is spent on family policies, 18.5% on youth policies, 9.2% on the promotion of rights and interests, and 7.2% on women's policies.

Although it is a mechanical name analysis, it cannot be seen that the work currently performed by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is largely deviating from the international trend.

The SBS Fact-Eun team verified Professor Lee Su-jeong's words, "There are only 10 countries in the world that operate as separate ministries like our leisure department."

As a result of analyzing data from UN Women, 84 countries were operated in the form of ministries like ours and included the keywords “Women” or “gender” in their names.

Based on this, what Professor Lee said is not true.

On the other hand, if you look at the 'OECD country standard' that came out in the process of asking Professor Lee's position, nine countries came out.

In this case, it can be generally regarded as true.

Since judgments are inevitably different depending on the criteria, the fact-eun team judges Professor Lee's remarks as 'half the truth'.

However, the fact is that the team conducted additional analysis, judging that it is more important to look at the work rather than the organizational form or whether or not the name 'woman' is included.

The results show that world government organizations that work for women often do family, youth, and advocacy work similar to ours.

The SBS Fact-Eun team is pursuing fact-checking that goes beyond simply determining facts and lies, and unraveling the various layers of the world we live in.

You can request a fact check verification by typing SBS facts on the Internet.

If you request it, we will fact-check it to the best of our ability.