South Korea has the chance Wednesday to elect a woman to its top office, an unprecedented step in a nation long dominated by boardrooms of men and ranked only slightly ahead of most Islamic countries when it comes to gender equality.
The outcome of the presidential election is hardly clinched: Conservative Park Geun Hye — known to her supporters as "Madame Park" — must hold off liberal Moon Jae In, who in recent weeks has slashed Park's lead in polls from several percentage points to nearly zero.
But a Park victory would represent a major symbolic breakthrough in a region underpinned by Confucianism, a Chinese-born philosophy that says women should be obedient to their husbands. Until seven years ago, South Korean women did not have equal inheritance rights. The South's wage gap between men and women is the widest among fully industrialized countries.