KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Abstract

Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families: The 2021 Annual Report

Jae-seon Joo

Dong-sun Lee

Sun-mi Cho

Hyun-joo Yoon

Chi-seon Song

Jin-sook Lee

Yeon-gyu Lim

Chang-kyoon Son

 

 

Women’s lives change according to their life events and cycles. Policies on women should properly respond to this change. In the case of policies on women’s economic activity, including the policy on women’s career interruption, women’s issues should be analyzed in relation to not only the factors of the labor market but also socio-cultural factors such as family relations and values. Therefore, statistical data accompanying women’s policies should be established by contextualizing individual women not only in the private sector but also on socio-structural, perceptual, and cultural levels.

Since their launch in the early 2000s, panel surveys in Korea have had limitations in revealing diverse aspects of women’s lives. Due to their characteristics, most of the panel surveys were so designed that it was difficult to identify changes in the family structure and women’s issues in an integrated way. Furthermore, it was point out that these surveys did not have sufficient samples of women to make an in-depth analysis of their jobs and daily living, and the family structure and changes in the family. For these reasons, the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF) is designed to enable an integrative analysis of changes in women’s life cycles, and the family structure and changes in the family. By establishing a large-scale panel of approximately 10,000 women, the KLoWF aims to overcome the limitations of existing survey data.

As such, the Korean Women's Development Institute began to conduct research on the KLoWF in 2006 in order to establish a longitudinal database that keeps track of changes in women’s lives from multiple perspectives. The KLoWF established its first-wave panel and completed its first wave in 2007, then completed the second wave in 2008. Since its third wave, the KLoWF has conducted its survey biennially, and currently completed its eighth wave.

Based on the results of the eighth wave that began in 2020 and ended in 2021, the 2021 research analyzes major characteristics of women. In particular, as an additional study, the eighth wave identified changes in women’s lives under the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with its theme “Changes in Women’s Lives Due to COVID-19.” As an in-depth study, we conducted research entitled “Married Female Workers’ Burdens of Work-Family Balance and Depressive Syndromes Focusing on the Awareness of Sexual Discrimination in the Workplace and Moderating Effects of the Perception of COVID-19” and “Study on Prediction Models for Retaining Women’s Employment under the Pandemic.” We also performed research related to data quality analysis and weighting. Based on these studies, we carried out an in-depth analysis of changes in women’s lives arising from COVID-19, and derived implications from the analysis. In addition, we released the eighth-wave data to experts and held academic symposiums in an effort to disseminate the data for public use, and strived to promote diverse academic studies for gender equality.

 

 

Research areas: Panel, Family and Care, Work-life balance, Gender equality culture and awareness, Labor and Employment, Low birth and Aging

Keywords: Family and Care, Work-life balance, Gender equality culture and awareness, Labor and Employment, Low birth and Aging