KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Improvement in women’s employment rate has ripple effects in various social areas such as childbirth, education and income security after retirement. It has been quite a while since the active implementation of policies for increasing women’s employment rate, and as policies become more concrete, they require efforts for further specification of their orientations and goals. In addition, comprehensive research is needed to improve structural problems in different fields, to develop various socioeconomic conditions related to women’s employment, and to implement relevant policies in more coordinated ways.

The study attempts to improve policies by analyzing and evaluating the relationship between relevant policies and women’s employment according to women’s life cycle stages. The focus was placed on the analysis of the impact of child care policy regarding infants and preschool children on women’s employment. An analysis was made on why women leave the labor market when their children reach school age through education support activities and field research at schools. Consideration was given on the issue of wage, a key working condition for women’s return to the labor market after career interruption. To solve the problem of low wage in the women’s labor market and to deal with the gender wage gap, the issue of gender wage gap under the minimum wage system was examined thoroughly.

To set the direction of the study, analysis of previous studies and reanalysis of related source data were made. A survey on the actual conditions of educational practices and women’s employment was carried out to tackle the lack of relevant previous studies and data. It was also attempted to reflect diverse opinions on the study through joint organization of expert advisory meetings, forums and conferences, and to share and disperse the results of the study.

The results of the analysis of various policies, programs and environment that enable women to continue to work without career interruption according to their life cycle show varied influences of different programs on women’s employment according to their unique purposes.

The results of the analysis of the impact of infant and preschool child care policies — which have recently been focused on child care support under the overall direction of reinforcement of services and reduction of cash grants — on women’s employment indicate that support for child care expenses has a positive influence on women’s employment and is thus helping to accomplish policy goals. On the other hand, the increase in cash grants including child care allowance appears to undermine women’s labor supply by raising unearned income.

As it is seen through the changes in employment effect of child care expenses over several years that the outcome of women’s employment does not immediately respond to policy input but is generated after several years of gap, as a result of accumulated effects of a policy, we need to consider the prevention effect against women’s career interruption and the reemployment effect in a longer term.

The alleviation of child care burden should be made in a way that diminishes gender role division. As seen from the result of provision of child care allowance, policies that have the effects of promoting the stereotype that the primary responsibility for child care lies with women and traditional gender role division should be avoided. In this regard, expansion of child care services forms the basis of not only increasing women’s participation in economic activities but also resolving traditional gender role division in child care.

The results of the analysis of the education support policy for elementary school children and its impact on women’s employment showed that support for school education had a negative impact on women’s employment. There were opinions that mothers’ jobs had a negative influence on children and that it gets even more difficult to maintain work-family balance after children enter elementary school. Employed mothers who actively took part in children’s education support programs were likely to quit or want to quit their jobs. Their perception that the parental role was important to children’s relationships with friends, as well as their feeling that it is more difficult to maintain work-family balance when their children enter elementary school, positively affected their possibility of career interruption. Moving and change of address related to entrance to elementary school, which were used as proxy variables indicating their enthusiasm for children’s education, had a positive influence on the possibility of career interruption.

Until recently, decision making in schools considering working parents has been quite limited. Education support activities of children in lower grades at elementary schools still tend to use women’s labor. In particular, education support activities in schools with high income effect, that mainly target mothers without jobs and with spouses earning sufficient levels of income, may reproduce the gender role division that leads to recognition of women’s employment as supplementary.

Social expectation on the mothers’ role in the outcomes of children’s education have a negative impact on women’s employment by imposing the role of schools on parents as well as gender role division. An innovation of school education is needed so that the functions and roles of schools may be performed more sufficiently.

Numerous education activities taking place in schools should be carried out on the premise of the employment of parents. Concerning such issues as school starting hours and discretionary holidays, it is necessary to conduct opinion polls and reflect the results. In addition, schools should make active efforts to build cooperation networks in the local communities to deal with the problems of the blind spot of child care. The difficulties of work-family balance that get aggravated in the elementary school age indicate the necessity of expansion of child care policies that have been focused on infants and preschool children until the present. The discussion on how to fill in the gaps in child care after school hours should be extended beyond lower grades in elementary schools.

It is clearly seen that, among common problems of child care in the preschool age and lower-grade elementary school age, one of the key problems is that of long working hours. One of the most fundamental problems that undermine women’s employment is how work-centered Korean society is.

Finally, the results of the analysis of the minimum wage policy and its impact on women’s employment showed that the problem of women’s low wages needs to be considered as a central issue in the improvement of the overall labor market structure. As seen in the discussion on the improvement of the labor market structure, the problems of women, non-regular workers and small businesses are main factors that aggravate the dual labor market. The lack of wage premium from better skills or longer service years in business types or job types with a high percentage of low wage workers leads to widening wage gaps, and female workers are concentrated in these dual labor markets.

Women in the low wage sector tend to be middle-aged or elderly and low-educated. Women who return to work after career interruption make up the majority in the low wage labor group. Their low wage provides the cause of quitting jobs once again after returning to the labor market. The effort to diminish the low wage sector is highly important to increasing the women’s employment rate and activating a female workforce whose careers have been discontinued.

The fact that the average wage of married workers is rising as compared to that of unmarried workers and the relative increase in the average wage of workers in their 30s indicate the increasing ratio of workers with long service years. These changes have appeared since 2013 and can possibly continue in the women’s labor market. Thus, the policy for prevention of women’s career interruption is a key policy measure for alleviation of the wage gap. In this regard, policies for improvement in discrimination in workplaces and work-family balance as well as child care support policies should be further strengthened to diminish career interruption.

Minimum wage sets the lower limit of wage, and it can help reduce the wage gap by affecting the wage level of low-wage female workers. Therefore, it is important to consider the policy goal of alleviating the gender gap in the process of determining minimum wage.

The ratio of women located in the blind spot of the minimum wage system still remains high, limiting the effect of the system on the labor market; thus, it is necessary to reinforce administrative power in relation to the implementation of minimum wage.

As previous studies on the causes of the gender wage gap have shown, its alleviation in the high-wage sector is required to solve the overall gender wage gap. Therefore, an increase in the number of high-wage female workers is the most effective means for solving the problem. The increase in minimum wage has relatively limited effect on the solution of the gender wage gap, although the effect is positive. In this regard, a number of different policy measures should be developed in addition to the minimum wage system. Based on the above results, the following policy suggestions were made.

1) Promotion of friendliness of child care support policy to women’s employment

□ Reduction of cash support and increase in service support - Establishment of policy direction in which expansion of cash support is avoided, and service support is enhanced to promote women’s participation in the labor market. Introduction of essential payment conditions other than age or economic levels.

2) Enhancement of gender equality in child care

□ Expansion of fathers’ participation in child care

- Negative perception of child care for infants and preschool children in child care facilities is a mechanism that focuses on the responsibility of child care on women. It is necessary to strengthen measures for the expansion of child care participation by men so that both parents can share responsibilities in child care.

- Facilitation of men’s child care leave, expansion of company incentives for more active utilization of programs including work-hour reduction during the period of rearing young children and compulsory disclosure (linkage to the employment pattern disclosure system)

3) Reinforcement of the public aspects of child care

□ Development of a mid- to long-term plan for reinforcement of the public aspects of child care and establishment of a governance system

- Alleviation of the asymmetry of information through the government’s supply of information and enhancement of the authentication function as well as reduction in the burden of expenses

- Development of and compliance with the mid- to long-term plan including adjustment of the ratios of national/public and private expenses as well as stipulation of agreement among stakeholders

4) Improvement in the quality of child care

□ Improvement in the working conditions of child care teachers

- Development of a plan for improvement in working conditions for social service workers in general, including introduction of a salary class system reflecting educational and career backgrounds, etc.

□ Improvement in the evaluation and accreditation system

- Compulsory implementation of evaluation and accreditation system

- Expansion of participation by teachers and parents in the evaluation and accreditation process

- Linkage to financial support for child care institutions based on results of the evaluation

5) Promotion of friendliness of education support activities to working mothers

□ Promotion of friendliness of the policy for participation of parents to employment

- Focus of parent participation activities at schools on working parents and limitation of activities during weekdays

- Limitation of parent participation in unnecessary support activities and normalization of education activities at schools

□ Promotion of friendliness of school schedules to employment

- Setting of school start/dismissal hours considering the work hours of employees (from around 8:30 to 18:30 in general) if the rigidity in the labor market cannot be improved in the short term

- As short-term vacations result in the absence of child care, they should be held based on prior opinion polls and solutions for the absence of child care should be sought

□ Reinforcement of detailed notification function on students’ education activities and outcomes as well as promotion of fairness

- Revision of relevant guidelines so that announcement of schools’ plans on education activities can be made regularly and systematically

- Prior provision of evaluation guidelines to avoid the influence of mothers’ participation on the education outcomes of students as well as reinforcement of notification

6) Alleviation of gender wage gap

□ Monitoring the gender wage gap

- Implementation of tangible measures to alleviate the ongoing gender wage gap. Specification of ‘implementation of measures to solve gender wage gap’ in relevant laws

□ Reinforcement of gender impact evaluation from the wage system

- Gender impact evaluation from the minimum wage system, salary peak system, etc.

□ Crackdown on wages lower than the minimum wage

- Reinforcement of administrative power to reduce the number of workers who receive wages lower than the minimum wage

- Wider dissemination of employment rules and standard employment contract

7) Establishment of the governance system for alleviation of the wage gap

□ Establishment and operation of a Korean-style EEOC within the National Human Rights Commission of Korea

- Establishment and operation of a committee for correcting discriminatory measures related to wage

- Reinforcement of the organization structure to implement measures against wage discrimination based on gender and employment patterns

8) Improvement in the minimum wage system

- Specification of ‘alleviation of the wage gaps based on gender and employment patterns’ as a factor to be considered in determining the minimum wage

- Analysis of the gender gap by the Research Committee under the Minimum Wage Council and active utilization at the time of deliberation on the minimum wage