Seoul YMCA says ’no’ to female vote

A rally in front of the place where a general conference of Seoul YMCA is being held, demanding that female members be granted the right to vote.

Prominent female board members resign

Controversy has erupted at the Seoul branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which bans female members from voting at general board meetings.

The women’s committee of the Korea YMCA announced a resolution on December 14, saying that all 23 of its women would resign from their posts.

The committee includes Lee Young-ja, a Catholic University professor, and Choi Yeong-cheol, director of the Korea YMCA. It was set up by the organization two years ago to resolve the charges of gender discrimination faced by the Seoul YMCA board.

The Korea YMCA, the head organization of the 60 YMCAs in the nation, initially decided this June to drive out the Seoul branch within five months if it continued to deny voting rights to its female members. But the Korea YMCA has not yet carried out its threatened action.

The women’s committee has strongly protested against the head organization for not carrying out its decision. The group said they have no other choice except to resign en masse due to the Korea YMCA’s lukewarm attitude toward the Seoul YMCA’s actions, saying that the former’s lackadaisical attitude has allowed the Seoul YMCA to maintain its practice of sexual discrimination.

In response, the Korea YMCA has maintained the position that it will take time to resolve the Seoul YMCA issue. According to Song Jin-ho, a director of the Korea YMCA, to acknowledge women’s voting rights is the Korea YMCA’s consistent principle, but to not drive the Seoul YMCA out is also part of the organization’s mission.

The Seoul YMCA was originally a men’s organization, but it rewrote its charter in 1967 to accept female members. The Seoul branch, however, does not grant female members the right to vote at general meetings. The Seoul unit claims that for the past 100 years, men have exclusively taken part in the general meeting and that there is a separate similar organization in Seoul for women, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA).

An executive at the Seoul YMCA said, "A bill to give the women members voting rights has been repeatedly rejected at the general meeting, so we are not able to give them the right, according to membership democracy. Even the World YMCA did not grant female members the right to vote until 1926, well over 70 years after the issue was first brought to the agenda, and taking into consideration the fact that the YMCA was originally a men’s-only association." The executive underscored the existence of the YWCA as an institution "for women."

Regarding this, an official of the women’s committee said, "More than half of the Seoul YMCA’s members are women. In such a situation, to deny female members voting rights is sexual discrimination that violates human rights, no matter what logic they set forth."

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