KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Women and Future Changes In Korea

Hee-Jung Yoo
Taek-Meon Lee
Seon-Mee Shin
Dong-Sik Kim
Young-Sook Kim
Eun-Ji Kim
Yi-Seon Kim
Jong-Soog Kim
In-Sook Yang
Yoo-Jin Choi
Jung-Im Hwang
Yun-Jeong Choi

The study aims to map global trends in women's lives among the industrialised OECD countries, to assess how far women's lives in Korea deviate from these global trends, and to suggest what have to be done in order to make Korean society more gender-egalitarian. The study finds that female labor participation rate, fertility rate, and various indicators of women's status are increasing altogether among some key industrialised countries in OECD, while in Korea female labor participation rate remains  well below the level of 50%, fertility rate continues to be sluggish around 1.2, and women's status are shown, by any measure, to be very low compared to other key OECD countries.

The study takes these deviations from the global trends as an outcome stemming from Korea's failure to prepare a set of effective and adequate gender policies for an upcoming gender-equal society. It is noted, on the basis of findings previous studies have made, that if Korean society keeps on marching towards a gender-equal society, some important risk factors have to be sorted out and to be properly dealt with via well-designed policy initiatives. Dearth in child-care services, low fertility rate, impoverishment and isolation of female-headed households, high level of joblessness among young and educated women, difficulties in striking a work-life balance, career rupture among married women, increase of low-paying jobs among female employees, marginalization of women in labor markets, and increasing threats to women's health; these are what the study focuses on as key risk factors that face Korean society on its road to gender-equal society.Finally, the study proposes various policy initiatives to overcome threats resulting from these risk factors in the following policy arenas; family and welfare, child-care, labor market, corporate organization and management, public finance and taxation, education and human resource development, social capital and local communities, immigration and multi-culturalism, and women's health.