South Korea’s National Assembly voted today to impeach the nation’s first female president Park Geun-hye over the bizarre influence-peddling scandal involving her close advisor Choi Soon-sil that prompted weeks of mass protests. The nation’s Constitutional Court now has six months to decide whether the charges in the impeachment proceeding are true and merit her ouster. If the vote is upheld, Park will get the dubious honor of being the first South Korean president elected democratically to not serve a full five-year term.
Fortune‘s Laura Cohn reports that—more broadly—the impeachment vote is bad news for women in the nation, who are already vastly underrepresented in politics. In terms of female representation, the National Assembly is 17% female, ranking it 111th out of 193 countries tracked by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It’s no surprise then that Park secured office not as part of a larger push for gender equality, but because of her unique familial ties. She’s the daughter of military dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled in the 1960s and 1970s before being assassinated in 1979.
That’s not to say Park couldn’t have moved the needle for gender equality. “Had Park been more successful, it would have helped to confirm women’s competence and capability, but it still would not have turned the tide,” says Yun Sun, senior associate at the Stimson Center, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. Now women in South Korea won’t get even that pathetic bit of progress.