Women empowered

Park Geun-hye will take office as the first woman president of Korea on Feb. 25.

Park will join a pantheon of women leaders: Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany; Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, president of Argentina; Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil; Laura Chincilla, president of Costa Rica; Johanna Sigurdadottir, prime minister of Ireland; and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia.

At the least, her inauguration will hopefully improve the country’s reputation of being a male-dominated society.

From a larger perspective, it will open the country up to new opportunities by helping women start on the same footing as men and live up to their true potential.

Korea has a long way to go but another giant step is being taken with Park in charge.

Women who make up half of the some 50 million Korean population finally seems to have graduated from the kitchen and households to advance to almost every sector in a society dominated by men in the largely Confucian state.

However, we are still in the initial stages of women empowerment.

Just because the advance of “woman power” has been as drastic and rapid as other transformations that took place in Korea over the past six decades doesn’t mean that empowerment has fully arrived.

According to the Korean Women’s Development Institute, women’s gender equality is still an issue because their participation in decision making is still comparatively low. Women have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go; and this must be accomplished not alone but together. <The Korea Times/Kim Ji-soo>