KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

With the introduction of the Skills Development Accounts(SDA), there has been a major change in training for women whose careers have been interrupted. This study examined possible ways to promote the outcomes of training for women with interrupted careers and to enable vocational training institutions for women to deal with the system changes. The results of analysis of people's experiences in the Skills Development Accounts show that the percentage of account issue for women was 72.2%. Among those who participated in the training under the Skills Development Accounts, women took 74.5%, which is about 20% higher than women's participation ratio in the past training programs for the unemployed. The Skills Development Accounts which women want to issue are concentrated on occupations preferred by women, and the employment rate is lower than in the training programs for the unemployed in the past.

As a lot of women participate in the Skills Development Accounts programs, the relation between the outcomes of women's participation and the outcomes of the program itself is becoming even closer. While the progress of the Skills Development Accounts has been due to the active participation of women, the low employment rate after training is seen as the result of some of these women's low interest in employment. Recently, the Skills Development Accounts has been moving in the direction of restricting the participation of people with low interest in seeking jobs and training in fields with poor possibility of employment, and this, in turn, is likely to limit women's participation in the future.

This study proposed policies that can help promote women's training and employment under the Skills Development Accounts as follows: First, one of the key problems in the account issue process is that it is difficult to verify women's intention for employment. The problem leads to decrease in employment rate. In this relation, we propose allowing public training institutions for women to select women suitable for training. Second, various training courses should be offered for women to be able to choose those they want. New ideas should be developed to resolve problems that restrict the choices of users, including lack of new training courses, lack of advanced courses, cancellation of certification courses and decrease in available accounts due to growth of the cost of training etc.. Third, another key problem of the Skills Development Accounts program is decrease in employment rate. As women are pointed out as a major reason for reduced employment rate, the accounts program is being modified to restrain women's participation. To promote employment rate, it is better to consider such means as reinforcement of counseling for account issue, introduction of mechanisms to promote employment, and utilization of employment support capability of public training institutions for women with interrupted careers, rather than restraining training of women in female-dominated occupations. Fourth, functions and roles of public Women's Re-employment Centers should be redefined. As private profit-making training institutions are allowed to play the role of public training, public institutions which used to provide exclusive training opportunities for job seekers under government support are experiencing an identity crisis. Therefore, public training institutions for women should redefine their public functions under consultation with the government, while strengthening their competitiveness faced with private training institutions.