Gender inequality in South Korea

Throughout modern history, South Korean women have been subjected to military sexual slavery.[11] During World War II, thousands of young Korean women were forced to become "comfort women" for the Japanese Imperial Army.[11][12] During the Korean War, the United States enlisted more than one million South Korean women into military prostitution.[11][13] According to the Journal of Korean Studies authors Han and Chu, "military establishments have depended upon and justified the systematic discrimination of women by promoting gendered notions of femininity and masculinity, weakness and strength, conquered and conqueror."[11] Han and Chu believe that military sexual slavery has contributed to the patriarchal ideologies that perpetuate gender inequality in South Korea.[11]

Moreover, these women were victims to both violence and sexualization. In the European Journal of Women's Studies, author Yonson Ahn states soldiers of lower ranks conflicted violence in the form of sexual abuse towards the comfort women as a way to cope with the harsh treatment from higher ranked soldiers and war. To practice power and confirm their masculinity, soldiers had what Ahn terms "Shadow family."[14] These shadow families were pregnant comfort women reliant on the soldiers to provide stability. This idea perpetuated the existing frame of gender inequality present in the typical Korean family of men holding more power with decisions and having to be the head of the family.[14]

After the democratization of Korea, the number of feminist movements greatly increased.[15][16] The Korean government began to address gender equality issues in the late 20th century with the following legislative acts:[10]

• Sexual Equality Employment Act (1987)[15]
• Act on Equal Employment and Reconciliation of Work and Family (1989)[17]
• Mother-Child Welfare Act (1991)[18]
• Punishment of Sexual Violence and Protection of the Victim Act (1993)[18]
• Women’s Development Act (1995)[18]
• Prevention of Domestic Violence and Protection of the Victim Act (1997)[18]

In 2005, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family was established and the patrilineal family register (hoju) was abolished.[15][11] While gender equality in policymaking and governance has improved over the last few decades, gender equality in labor markets and the division of labor has remained stagnant.[19][11]

Park Geun-Hye

Although women gained the rights to vote and run for election in 1948, women have historically been underrepresented in South Korean politics.[20][21][22] When Park Geun-Hye became South Korea's first female president in 2012, many viewed her election as a victory for gender equality in South Korea.[9][23] Four years later, her scandal and impeachment nullified any progress made by her election and left many convinced that women are not fit to lead their country.[9]

In their 2001 article, Monk-Turner and Turner report that "all else equal, men earn from 33.6 percent to 46.9 percent more than women with comparable skills."[24] In 2017, the OECD placed Korea in the last position of all OECD countries for gender pay gap, a position that has not improved since the OECD first published this ranking in 2000.[25][26] The gender pay gap in Korea is 34.6%, while the OECD average is 13.1%.[27] The gap has improved by 7% since 2000, though the rate of improvement has been slower than in other OECD countries.[26] The Korean gender pay gap has been called "the worst... among the industrialized countries."[28] Korea also ranked the lowest for the eighth year in a row on the glass-ceiling index published by The Economist in 2020.[29] 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.[30]

Women tend to occupy low-paying, non-regular jobs and are less likely to be promoted to higher managerial positions in the workplace; however, employment opportunities for women in South Korea have steadily increased in the past few decades.[31] Before the Korean War, the employment rate of women was less than 30%.[32] In their 2018 Economic Survey for Korea, the OECD recorded the female employment rate to be around 56.1%, which is below the average (59.3%) for all OECD countries.[31] The male employment rate is 75.9%, which is slightly higher than the OECD average (74.7%).[31]

In their 2013 paper, Patterson and Walcutt found that gender inequality in the workplace stems from "a lack of legal enforcement, a weak punishment system, a tacit acceptance of the status quo by women, organizational cultural issues stemming from the traditional Korean mind-set that allow gender discrimination and a general lack of knowledge about EO [equal opportunity] regulations by many companies."[33]

In addition to the societal and familial expectations of women to be primary caregivers, the OECD report explains that "women tend to withdraw from the labour force once they have children, in part due to shortages of high quality early childhood education and care institutions."[31][34] During the 1970s and 1980s, women left the workforce at a very "early stage in family formation."[34] Currently, they are leaving the workforce later, usually right before or during their pregnancy.[34] May notes that this trend could be due to women's growing financial independence.[34]

Despite the rising employment rate for women, the labor force in Korea is still highly segregated by gender, marked by full-time employment gender share and industrial differences.[35][36] In 2017, women in Korea made up 39.5% of the full-time employment population, in contrast to the 62.7% gender share in part-time employment.[35] The relatively high part-time employment rate for women can partly be attributed to traditional Confucian ideals of gender roles in Korea, in which women are expected to take on the responsibility of family duties and childcare.[36] Part-time employment allows for reconciliation of professional and family life, especially for women, as explained in a 2002 OECD Employment Outlook analysis.[37]

In addition to differences in full- and part-time employment rates, gender inequality in Korea also manifests itself through industrial segregation.[36] In a 1994 article, Monk-Turner and Turner observed that "farming and production absorbed 66.3 percent of all women workers," and "another 29 percent of all women work as clerical, sales, or service workers."[36] In 2017, according to statistics from the International Labour Organization, agricultural sector employment had shrunk to around 5% for both men and women; 82.1% of women workers were concentrated in the service sector, with 11.5% in manufacturing and 1.4% in construction, in contrast to men with 61.9% in services, 20.8% in manufacturing, and 11.2% in construction.[38] In two decades, aside from the national trend of sectoral-shift away from agriculture for both men and women, the female working population remains highly clustered in certain industries, while the same pattern does not seem to apply for men. Furthermore, in the 2018 OECD Economic Survey for Korea, it was observed that within the entrepreneurial sphere, "female entrepreneurs are concentrated in basic livelihood sectors, such as health and social welfare, accommodations and restaurants, other personal services and educational services, reflecting in part their more limited access to financing and their educational background."[39]

Although South Korea offers 12 weeks for maternity leave and the longest paid paternity leave among all the OECD countries at 53 weeks, taking the leave is highly unpopular and unofficially discouraged within Korean companies, which forces women out of the workplace following the birth of a child.[19][40][28][41] As a result, working parents - especially mothers - receive relatively little support for child rearing.[31] Public funding for parental leaves as well as the development of childcare programs have slowly gained ground in South Korea, where childcare and its economic sector had predominately been private.[42]