Gender inequality in South Korea

Gender inequality in South Korea refers to health, education, economic, and political inequalities between men and women in South Korea. In modern Korea, the social status of women has become practically equal to men’s in social sectors such as legal rights, education, and health. However, there are still major inequalities in workforce and political participation.

Gender Statistics

Low Female to Male Ratios in South Korea[1]
Indicators South Korea's Female to Male Ratio Average Female to Male Ratio
Labor force participation 0.73 0.6637
Wage equality for similar work 0.51 0.634
Estimated earned income 0.45 0.509
Legislators, senior officials and managers 0.12 0.320
Enrollment in tertiary education 0.77 0.938
Women in parliament 0.20 0.205
Women in ministerial positions 0.10 0.100
Years with female head of state (last 50) 0.10 0.104

OECD statistics for 2017 placed Korea in the last position of all OECD countries when it comes to gender pay gap, a position that has not improved since OECD begun publishing this ranking in 2000.[2][3] The gender pay gap in Korea is 34.6%, while the OECD average is 13.1%.[4] The gap has improved by 7% since 2000, though the rate of improvement has been slower than in other OECD countries.[3] The Korean gender pay gap has been called "the worst... among the industrialized countries."[5] Korea also ranked the lowest on the glass-ceiling index published by The Economist in 2014.[6] The glass-ceiling index was determined by the country's performance on nine indicators such as wage gap, labor force participation, representation in senior jobs, paid maternity leave, etc.[6]

93% of Koreans surveyed in 2010 believe women should have equal rights to men, and among them, 71% believe more changes are needed before that goal is achieved.[7]

However, according to UNDP Gender Inequality Index, Korea ranked 10th in the 2017 ranking, higher than any western European or North American country except the Netherlands.[8][9]

Global Rankings

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2017, South Korea ranks 118th out of 144 countries measured.[1]

South Korea's Subindices Rankings in the 2017 Global Gender Gap Report
Subindex Rank

(out of 144 countries)

 Score

(0 = imparity, 1 = parity)

 Average Score
Economic Participation and Opportunity 121 0.533 0.585
Educational Attainment 105 0.960 0.953
Health and Survival 84 0.973 0.956
Political Empowerment 90 0.134 0.227

The 2017 report notes that all subindices (health and survival, education, economic participation and equality, and political empowerment) show improvement compared to 2006 (the date of the first publication of this yearly report). In comparison to other countries, South Korea scores highest on Health and Survival (84th), then Political Empowerment (90th), then Educational Attainment (105th), and ranks the lowest on Economic Participation and Equality (121st).[1]

The Social Institutions and Gender Index did not rank South Korea due to missing data, but in its country profile concluded that South Korea has low or very low levels of discrimination in family code and civil liberties, but medium levels in resources and assets.[10]

History

The situation of women in Korea is seen as improving over the last few decades.[11] In particular, recent legislation has been positively received, particularly since Korea's transition to democracy (the prior military regime of South Korea was criticized for doing little to improve gender equality), and most progress on the issues of women rights and related social movements occurred after the democratization of Korea.[12][13] The Korean government started to address gender equality issues around the late 1980s, with legislative acts such as the Sex Equality in Employment Act (1987), the Employment Security and Promotion Act (1989), and the Mother-Child Welfare Act (1989).[14][12] In 1991 revisions of Korean law granted women equal rights to custody of children and material property in case of divorce; the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family was established in 2001, and in 2005 the patrilineal family register (hoju) was ruled abolished.[12]

A number of reforms and backslides have characterized gender equality development in South Korea. In particular, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was met with a backlash against greater women participation in the workforce.[15] However, the late 20th century also entailed a lot of policy changes that gave women greater social and political freedoms including: the Equality in Employment Act of 1999, the Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001, the Anti-Sexual Traffic Act, and the abolishment of the hoju system.[16] Within primary and secondary education greater emphasis has been played to promote greater female participation in STEM fields with a similar push in tertiary institutions to admit a greater number of women.[17] Public funding of greater maternal and paternal leave, and development of childcare programs has slowly gained ground in South Korea where childcare and its relevant economic sector had predominately been private.[15]

Culture

Reasons for gender inequality in South Korea include traditions and cultural practices in home and at workplaces, and insufficient support systems.[11] Korean patriarchal order (which includes patrilineality) is a major factor influencing this phenomenon.[18] Confucian family values support traditional sex roles,[19] with men expected to do "male-type" work and women expected to do "women-type" work.[20] While males are seen as the major breadwinners in families, there is a strong cultural tendency to see a woman's place at home, defining her roles as that of a wife, mother, and housekeeper.[18][21][11] In 1998, a Korean Women's Development Institute survey found that majority of South Korean women did all of the housework in their homes.[20]

Torn between family and career, Korean women are marrying later and having fewer children. A 2007 report by Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that the result of these trends "is in many ways the worst of both worlds. Korea now has a lower fertility rate than any developed country and one of the lowest rates of female labor-force participation — 60% for women aged 25 to 54 versus 75% in the USA and 76% in the EU." The percentage of Korean women who say it is “necessary” to have children declined from 90% in 1991 to 58% in 2000. In 1970, the average age of first marriage for females was 23; by 2005 it was almost 28. The report suggests that traditional Korean family and workplace cultures need to change to prevent serious economic and societal problems due to extremely low fertility rates.[19]

Professional Inequality

Employment

Employment and tertiary education opportunities for women in South Korea have steadily increased in the past few decades. In the pre-Korean War period the employment of women in Korea had been less than 30%.[16] The OECD estimates female employment rate to be around 53% and has been consistently below the average for all OECD countries.[22] Potentially, these advances have often been impeded by cultural values and economic developments. In addition to having a large gendered wage gap, men in South Korea in general have longer working hours than other developed countries.[23] This situation adds to the cultural idea of men being the financial supplier for families and is supplemented by the cultural norm of high parental involvement in children's education and rearing. Female market labour with respect to age shows an M-shaped figure when many women who worked after graduating from tertiary education fall out of the workforce at the age when they raise children.[24][25]

The level of tertiary education for women has similarly risen throughout the 20th century through the modern era but has been comparably lower than a number of developed countries, particularly those that have a higher proportion of educated women than men.[26] Primary and Secondary education levels have generally been equal throughout the latter half of the 20th century, but the prevalence of a male-dominated working force and the stringent parental supervision of children's education made even those who did pursue tertiary education see further education as a tool for training children rather than pursuing a career.[16] According to the OECD women in 2014 have achieved 62.6% tertiary education compared to the OECD average of 78.9% [27]

Women are less likely to be promoted to higher managerial positions in the workplace, and working females receive relatively little support for child rearing. For example, taking paternity leave is highly unpopular and unofficially discouraged within Korean companies (even more so for men), which forces women out of the workplace following the birth of a child.[11][21][5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 World Economic Forum. "The Global Gender Gap Report 2017" (PDF).
  2. ↑ OECD (2017-10-04). "The Pursuit of Gender Equality". doi:10.1787/9789264281318-en.
  3. 1 2 "Since 2000, S. Korea number one in OECD for gender pay inequality". www.hani.co.kr. Retrieved 2016-06-17.
  4. ↑ "Earnings and wages - Gender wage gap - OECD Data". theOECD. Retrieved 2018-10-04.
  5. 1 2 "S. Korea reflects lag in gender equality: Column". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  6. 1 2 "The glass-ceiling index". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2016-06-17.
  7. ↑ Gender Equality Universally Embraced, but Inequalities Acknowledged. 22-NATION PEW GLOBAL ATTITUDES SURVEY. 2010
  8. ↑ "UNDP "한국, 세계에서 열번째로 성평등한 나라"".
  9. ↑ "S. Korea ranks 10th for gender equality: U.N. report". Yonhap News Agency. Retrieved 2017-11-20.
  10. ↑ "Korea -". www.genderindex.org.
  11. 1 2 3 4 "Gender Gap Index Rankings 2013 – South Korea – The Asian Philanthropy Advisory Network". 2014-10-09. Archived from the original on October 9, 2014. Retrieved 2016-06-20.
  12. 1 2 3 Laura C. Nelson; Cho Haejoang (29 January 2016). "Women, gender and social change". In Michael J Seth. Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History. Routledge. p. 335. ISBN 978-1-317-81149-7.
  13. ↑ Woojin Chung; Monica Das Gupta (2007). Why is Son Preference Declining in South Korea?. World Bank Publications. pp. 13–. GGKEY:P8TJK7JKF2Z.
  14. ↑ Cho 2013, p. 19-20.
  15. 1 2 Lee, Joohee (2017). Women, work and care in the Asia-Pacific. New York: Routledge. p. 214. ISBN 9781315652467.
  16. 1 2 3 Routledge handbook of modern Korean history. Seth, Michael J., 1948-. London. ISBN 9781315816722. OCLC 883647567.
  17. ↑ "OECD Reviews of Tertiary Education, Books /OECD Reviews of Tertiary Education /OECD Reviews of Tertiary Education: Korea 2009" (PDF). www.oecd-ilibrary.org. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
  18. 1 2 Cho, Uhn (2013). Contemporary South Korean Society: A Critical Perspective. Routledge. pp. 18–27. ISBN 9780415691390. OCLC 741542008.
  19. 1 2 Neil Howe, Richard Jackson, Keisuke Nakashima, Hyejin Kwon and Jeehoon Park. THE AGING OF KOREA. Demographics and Retirement Policyin the Land of the Morning Calm. Center for Strategic and International Studies. March 2007. Pages 37–38
  20. 1 2 Kim, Hee-Kang (2009). "ANALYZING THE GENDER DIVISION OF LABOR: THE CASES OF THE UNITED STATES AND SOUTH KOREA". Asian Perspective. 33 (2): 181–229.
  21. 1 2 "A Long Way To Go For Gender Equality In South Korea". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  22. ↑ OECD Family database. (http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/LMF_1_6_Gender_differences_in_employ ment_outcomes.xlsx) For Korea KOSIS (Korean statistical database) 2009 all women aged 15 and above
  23. ↑ Craig, Lyn (2017). Is It Just Too Hard? Gender Time Symmetry in Market and Nonmarket Work and Subjective Time Pressure in Australia, Finland, and Korea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 465–494. ISBN 978-1-137-56837-3.
  24. ↑ Women's working lives in East Asia. Brinton, Mary C. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 2001. ISBN 9780804743549. OCLC 45908958.
  25. ↑ "IMF Survey : Nordic Lessons to Raise Female Labor Participation in NE Asia". IMF. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
  26. ↑ Gender and time use in a global context : the economics of employment and unpaid labor. Connelly, Rachel, Kongar, Mesude Ebru,. New York, NY, U.S.A. ISBN 9781137568373. OCLC 993581679.
  27. ↑ OECD. Education at a Glance, Statistics /Education at a Glance /2017:OECD Indicators. doi:10.1787/eag-2017-en.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.