KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

The creative economy can be achieved when accompanied by organizational changes going beyond industrial policy levels in order to promote the creativity of individuals, businesses, and local communities in a comprehensive and systematical manner. The starting point of the second-year research of “Women’s Jobs in the Creative Economy” was the intuition that expansion and enhancement of the social economy can bring such changes. Therefore, studies are needed to explore the conditions for establishing and promoting the social economy, how enhancing the social economy at the local community levels can satisfy the needs of residents for jobs, care, and other social needs, and furthermore how enhancing the social economy drives economic and social development and facilitates sustainable growth of the local communities. Also, a close analysis is needed to examine how this process facilitates women’s economic and social participation, promotes their rights and interests, and eventually results in greater gender equality.

This research also starts from the preposition that enhancing the social economy at the local community levels is an important prerequisite, then attempts at theoretical justification that based on what grounds, the social economy can become a driving force for promoting the creative economy. Then, the research looks into theoretical bases at the local levels regarding the possibilities of the creative economy and the social economy contributing to strengthening the local innovation competencies and local regeneration projects. It also discusses how the creative economy and the social economy, respectively, can contribute to economic and social development and integration of local communities in a distinctive manner. Based on these theoretical discussions, we empirically measured the size and portion of the social economy at the national level, identified the effects of the social economy on increasing employment and facilitating women’s participation in social and economic activities. We also selected particular areas and grasped through surveys of the actual conditions how the production and supply of goods and services and the supply of care labor and social services at the local community levels are organized by social methods rather than by the price mechanisms of the market.

This research aims to explore policy support measures to transform social enterprises, village businesses, and cooperatives into new local creative enterprises through the convergence of local creative industries and cultural and artistic resources. It also aims to examine changes that enhancing the social economy will bring in the quality, quantity, and form of local women’s jobs. Finally, the research proposes policy measures for creating jobs for women.

Lastly, improve services of the New Job Centers for Women. The results of the survey and the analysis showed that employment retention rates were low in the occupational types that traditionally hire a majority of women and in the manufacturing sector. In the educational service area, where highly educated women are employed in large numbers, it was highly likely that there was a high turnover and low employment retention rate. These findings imply that in order to raise retainment, more women need to enter new areas of employment. To this end, it is necessary to improve evaluation indicators to ease the separation between the genders and occupational types so that the New Job Centers for Women can link their employment efforts with diverse business and occupational types. Second, it is necessary to make effort to expand services that report high satisfaction among the services of the New Job Centers for Women. Vocational training needs to be improved toward a vocational training system that induces employment.