KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

As the national desire for safety increases, the necessity to analyze risks and threats and provide safety policies accordingly has become important. In the Korean society, women, along with minors and the elderly, are considered vulnerable when it comes to safety. Additionally, as major activity areas change over one's life cycle, threat factors may change accordingly. Therefore, this study first identifies women's safety status and safety needs; through the identification, this study wishes to present safety strengthening measures according to a woman's life cycle.

To identify the current safety status of women in Korea, this study first reviewed literature and case studies both in Korea and abroad in order to examine current conditions on women safety and safety education and also policies related to safety education. Next, this study analyzed the safety education contents currently being provided by the Ministry of Public Safety and Security from a gender perspective. Then, the study conducted a Focus Group Interview on women safety education with safety education experts as interview participants.

The study results revealed that safety education for women is lacking in Korea and thus the safety competency of women is low. Of the 1,711 safety education contents available, only 31 were for women, accounting for a mere 1.76% of the total contents. This figure showed that there was a severe lack of safety education contents for women. In reality, there is also a lack of safety education programs and instructors specially geared towards women. Currently in Korea, the majority of required safety education comprises of those received by children and adolescents. Such lack of safety education for women leads to decrease of safety competency of women and absence of safety sensitivity. Moreover, lack of safety education for women may also act as a factor for decreasing safety competency of the children and adolescent who have received safety education.

On another note, the vulnerability of safety competency in old age was taken into account. In old age, one gets vulnerable physically. Thus, the elderly are much more susceptible to safety accidents than in other stages of one's life cycle. Investigation on the current state of women safety in Korea revealed that in terms of safety competency, elderly women scored lower in all areas when compared with their male counterparts. In addition, there is also a lack of safety education contents for the elderly and such education is not easy to access.

Based on the aforementioned research results, this study proposes the following policies as measures for strengthening the safety of women according to the women's life cycle. First, there is need to analyze in detail the various threats and risks women face in different life cycles. Such analysis can be conducted by generating risk statistics according to gender and according to life cycle. Additionally, to strengthen the safety competency of women and the elderly, safety education should be made more accessible by conducting programs such as school parent safety education and outbound safety education. To efficiently proceed with safety education, safety education contents will have to be continually developed for different situations and groups. Such contents should pay special attention to the women and elderly. Along with development of contents, professional instructors who can provide the developed contents will also need to be trained and fostered through a safety education management entity (organization).