KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

The purpose of this study is to examine whether cooperatives get women-friendliness, to see the women friendly level of cooperatives if getting women-friendliness, to identify if women friendliness have an positive impacts on the development of cooperatives, and to suggest policy orientation for nurturing women-friendly cooperatives based on comprehensive women-friendly theory

The study uses quantitative and qualitative methods such as literature review, professional analysis, empirical survey, case study. First, the concept and index of women-friendliness are developed through literature review. Second, we conducted the survey to 38 professional from 2014 May 19th to 2014 July 4th in order to identify a relative importance to the indicators of women-friendly cooperatives. The professional survey is analyzed by AHP method. Third, the empirical survey on the women-friendly level of cooperatives as well as organizational characteristics and working condition of cooperatives is conducted from 2014 August 6th to September 12th focused on cooperatives with at least two more employees in Seoul city and Kyeonggi-do province. Fourth, the study conducts case study in order to show the actual aspects of women-friendly cooperatives.

We suggests four policy orientations for women-friendly cooperatives; (1) need to develop a cooperation model between public sector, private sector, academic sector in order to supply human resources to women-friendly cooperatives; (2) need to make and disperse family-friendly certification system for cooperatives along with developing the family-friendly evaluation items and building the implementation system of family-friendly certification system; (3) need to expand the social markets for women-friendly cooperatives; (4) need to utilize financial support institutions for increasing the women-friendly indicators at relatively low level and to raise women-friendly care cooperatives for dispersing the culture of cooperatives.