By Michelle Kwon
A realistic ratio of men to women in the Korean workforce (image courtesy of Washingtonpost.com)
While South Korea has an enviable unemployment rate, currently hovering at about 3.9 percent, that figure obscures more complexities about the work environment in Korea than it reveals. Korea’s economy has grown dramatically since the 1970’s, often referred to as an “economic miracle” and earning the title as one of the four Asian Tigers. This success has been in large part the result of the labor of women working in low status and low wage jobs within the manufacturing industries. “The Miracle on the Han River”[1] was achieved on the backs of Korean female factory workers. The labor force participation rate of women increased from 26.8 percent in 1960 to 47.6 percent in 1995 as women left the rural areas and moved to the cities for work in the new factories and businesses. Until the early 1990s, women were employed in labor-intensive sectors such as textiles, food processing, and manufacturing; these very sectors provided the export goods that created Korea’s economic growth, and yet the contribution of women to the development of Korea is rarely spoken of. As Korea has become a more advanced country with greater lucrative economic opportunities, job creation has shifted to services sector, which happens to be a natural progression for countries that pass the threshold from “developing” to “developed.”
Women represent a large pool of untapped labor in the Korean economy. The labor participation rate of women in South Korea is low by the standards of advanced economies—about 57 percent of women are economically active, compared with 73 percent in Sweden and 69 percent in Germany. South Korean women also drop out of the labor force at a much higher rate when they marry or have children, leading to a 15 percentage point dip in the labor participation rate of women in their 30s. In essence, Korea is losing, from an economic standpoint, potential workers, however women’s participation in the labor force has not always been this low. What has caused such a decrease in the presence of female workers?
In regards to labor, there is an unequal representation of women, specifically in the corporate industry and upper management. According to the 2012 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, the female to male ratio is 0.73. Currently standing at a .73 ratio ranks the Republic of Korea 83rd in the global report, behind some of the world’s least developed countries such as Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Timor-Leste. Further, the loss of female talent from the labor force is even sharper among high-skill women. Specifically measuring the presence of women as legislators, senior officials, and managers, South Korea drops in ranking to 104th place. The current ratio of women to men in upper management positions and public office is a meager 1 to 9. At 104th, Korea ranks far below countries such as Syria. The reason for such gender disparity can be narrowed down to two reasons.
First, women continue to drop out of the labor force to marry and raise children at higher rates than in other nations. Moreover, most South Korean women withdraw from the labor force when they marry or have their first child. For women between the ages of 30 to 39, labor participation rates are 15 percentage points below the national average (of just 57 percent). The primary purpose for such a drastic decrease is that women in this age group drop out of the labor force to raise children. And, unfortunately, Korean women are less likely to rejoin the labor force. In the McKinsey Global Institute 2013 study on Korea, the accumulated data revealed highly educated women follow a pattern of an inverted “double cascade”—participation in the labor force peaks in their 30s and never rebounds, depriving the economy of highly productive talent. Korean women with high-levels of education actually have a more difficult time being accommodated in the workforce. Women in Korea either choose to leave the work place and their career to have children or are pushed out by their male co-workers or husbands, for they are not perceived to be able to be both worker and mother/child bearer. For this reason, there is a stark difference between the number of women who are able to achieve higher rank in management and public office than the number of women simply present in the labor force. Women are not thought to be capable enough workers. As a result, Korea faces the peculiar situation where the more educated a woman is the less likely she is to find work accommodating her qualifications. Highly educated women have good reason to stay on the sidelines: women who choose to re-enter the labor force are often unable to secure the level of employment they once had and instead settle into temporary or low-skill work, regardless of education and previous experience.
In another unfortunate turn of events, those women who do stay in the work place and forego marriage and childbearing until they advance their career are also left battling another issue: unequal work pay. For every $17,402 dollars (converted from Korean Won for the purposes of the article) women are paid, men in Korea make $43,088. The absurd difference in pay wage ranks Korea the lowest amongst peer nations in regards to pay equality. This staggering difference in women’s presence in the workforce, especially in upper management positions compounded with the wage inequality between men and women in Korea is indicative of a certain attitude towards women.
The practice of gender discrimination does not just stop with Korea though. More generally, women are still categorically inferior in the eyes of men. What we see is that gender equality is a problem that is only dealt with in the developed country; it is a luxury and a privilege. Therefore, Korea, having survived harsh economic times, is facing the problem of gender inequality now after having tackled economic priorities leading up to the turn of the 21st century. South Korea needs a series of initiatives that will enable women to work up to their capabilities, even after the birth of a child. South Korea has been sitting at an economic crossroads for many years now. By itself, the growth formula that brought the nation out of poverty and into wealth no longer serves the overall society, especially if a positive emphasis on promoting women in the economy does not take place. If Korea hopes to move forward, it must find a way to reconcile its present with its past, and make women equal partners in the fight for prosperity.
References:
Choi, Wonsik, Richard Dobbs, Dongrok Suh, Jan Mischke, Eunjo Chon, Hanjip Cho, Boyoung Kim, and Hyunmin Kim. Beyond Korean Style: Shaping a New Growth Formula. Rep. McKinsey & Company, 13 Apr. 2013. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Hampson, Sasha “Rhetoric or reality? Contesting definitions of women in Korea” in Women in Asia: Tradition, Modernity and Globalisation. Edited by Louise Edwards and Mina Roces, England: Allen and Unwin, 2000.
Hausmann, Ricardo, Laura D. Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi. The Gender Gap Report 2012. Rep. World Economic Forum, 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Zahidi, Saadia, and Herminia Ibarra. The Corporate Gender Gap Report 2010. Rep. World Economic Forum, 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
[1] A term used to describe Korea’s postwar export-fueled economic growth. More specifically, however, the term refers to the rapid industrialization and gentrification of Seoul, through which the Han River flows.
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