The Korea Local Administration Review

Local election results in Korea show extremely low representation of women in local councils. Since political parties play a dominant role in electoral success, this study focuses on a party's power-oriented model to explicate party endorsements of women candidates. Parties at the national level are deeply involved in local elections in order to have activists prepared to work for them in national election campaigns. The fact that party activists as a previous occupation are preferred the most regardless of men and women in the candidate selection process reflects the importance of their party loyalty. Also, winning the election is a primary means for parties to expand their power so that women's low representation of party candidates is mainly due to the limited pool of qualified female politicians rather than gender discrimination. It implies that both efforts for an increasing pool of capable women and taking an active part in party organizations may help boost women's political representation.