South Korea is regularly ranked lowest in the developed world for gender equality, but for the first time a feminist party is seeking parliamentary seats at Wednesday’s election, accusing the political establishment of having failed women.

The party was founded last month on International Women’s Day on the back of a surge of anger over the country’s spycam porn epidemic and other crimes, and against a backdrop of an enduring pay gap and employment and childcare issues.

Ruth B. Mandel was an infant when she and her parents fled Germany on the eve of World War II. They were among the 937 passengers, almost all of them Jewish refugees, aboard the ocean liner St. Louis on what was often called the Voyage of the Damned.

The Nazis had allowed the ship to sail with the expectation that the Jews would never be allowed to disembark — thus, the Nazis claimed, proving Hitler’s point that Jews were unwanted and justifying his persecution of them.

Why do we still rarely see mothers, especially those with young children, represented in parliament? The rarity of scenes like the one above of women successfully balancing motherhood with a career in politics underscores an observable fact that relatively few members of parliament (MPs) are women with young children. A commonly held belief in many societies is that women who would like to serve in politics, especially those with young children, are heavily disadvantaged.

The coronavirus pandemic deepens existing inequalities in our societies. It exposes an increasing number of women to gender-based violence. It is putting an additional burden on women who are disproportionally represented in professions where the risk of getting infected is high: in hospitals, shops or care homes.