국회 속기록에 나타난 여성정책 시각 : B. 가족계획에 대하여

Perspectives on Family Planning Policy in the Korean Legislature : 1960's~1980's

In recent years, not only the interests in grasping the relationship between women and state are increasing in the social and academic contexts, but also some moves are emerging to correct the unequal structure through policies for women. When the very concept of policy for women is not well defined, the examination of the past policy on women should be carried out in the first place. This study aims to explore and analyze perspectives of decision makers specificaily in relation to the family planning policies. For doing this, stenographed records of a standing committee of the national assembly which covers questions and answers conducted by the legislative and the administrative about the family planning policies are utilized as the basic material. And the analysis was conducted from a feminist perspective, which has an 'objective' to pursue to recover women's rights and to achieve the mutual equality of both sexes, and the records were categorized by concepts of "instrumental" and "objective" policies. The total number of speeches in the records were 142, which were categorized into five sub-themes; i.e., birth control, target group for contraception, agents for family planning policy, general policy execution, and directions of the policy. The birth control problem was a focal issue in the 1960's and concentrated on the debates between the administrative and the legislative about the necessity of executing family planning policy. The target group for contraception and agents for the policy drew interests to the similar extent in the 1960's and 1970's. As for the target group, the 1960's showed the process of deciding women as the main target for the policy, while the criticism against the policy was raised by the legislative in the 1970's by those concerned with the excessive expenditure. The issue on the agents for family planning policy showed a concensus between the legislative and the administrative, i. e. employing women as the agents. But, despite hot debates in the 1960's, it shows that the family planning policy was already implemented systematically from the early 1960's. In the meantime, the ideology of son-preference emerged as an impeding factor against the family planning policy in the late 1970's. Especially in the 1980's, revision of the family law toward equality between sexes and diversification for the directions of the policy began to be discussed in connection with the improvement of women's status, health of mother-child, and so forth. Based on the content analyses of the legislation records, the family planning policy was proved to be an instrumental policy seen from a feminist perspective : First, as shown in the discussion on birth control, the policy attempted to control women's reproduction for the national economic development without considering women's interests perse. Second, women played the role as a traget and/or a deliverer of the policy in the front, not as a participant of any capacity in decision making. This means that women were used instrumentally as a target group for policy goals rather than for women's own health, satisfaction, and welfare. However, discussions on the revision of the family law and the change of direcitions of the policy raised in relation to the son-preference ideology in the 1980's suggest the possibility that the family planning policy can be changed into an "objective policy" from original "instrumental one. In this process the legislative rather than the administrative, particularly the activities of women members of the National Assembly, was noteworthy. This move should be, of course, followed by fundamental changes of overall perspectives of the policy and political support as well in order for it not to became a passing phenomenon. In sum, this study finds that in the family planning policy, the most typical one among the recent policies greatly affected women, women were no more than instrumental means, and criticizes that it did neve