KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

This study aims to examine how working parents make balance between their work and family life in different countries by focusing on supporting policy implementation and its effects. To accomplish the aim of study, an international survey has been conducted in Sweden, Britain and Korea. The survey provides an overview regarding how workers in wholesale and retail trade and information-technology industries perceive their work-family balance; what kind of burdens the workers are bear to balance their work and family life; how the workers perceive their organisation culture; and how the workers are supported by the work-family balance policies in terms of childcare policy, leave policy and working time policy.

The results of this study are as follows.

Above all, working parents in Sweden, Britain and Korea have different trends to take care of their children and policy needs. The largest portion of Swedish working parents use childcare facilities(72.3%). However, the UK working parents choose their partners(39.6%) and relatives(32.1%) as the primary carer of their children. Relatives(20.4%) and kindergartens(18.1%) are preferred by Korean parents. It is noticeable that parents in the UK and Korea use informal childcare services to raise their children while Swedish parents use formal childcare services. Nevertheless, parents in Britain and Korea have different policy requirements for work-family balance. Swedish and Korean workers choose childcare policy as the most significant though British workers consider that cash support is the most vital policy.

In addition, the UK and Korea present lower take-up rate of parental leave and flexitime than Sweden. The majority of Swedish respondents(80.8%) have experiences to use parental leave and it shows that parental leave in Sweden has been settled down as a universal policy. Yet, the UK and Korea have low take-up rate such as 31.2% and 9% respectively. The take-up rates of flexitime in Sweden, Britain and Korea are 54.2%, 30.6% and 3.0% respectively. Considering the disparities of take-up rates among Sweden, Britain and Korea, Korea needs to encourage the use of parental leave and flexitime.

Meanwhile, workers’ working hours for paid work and unpaid work are varied according to respondents’gender. In case of working hours for paid work, male respondents charge higher portion than female respondents in Sweden, Britain and Korea. On the other hand, female respondents spend more time for unpaid work such as childcare and domestic work than male respondents.

In this connection, the gendered division of labour within households still persists in Britain and Korea. In particular, the largest portion of Swedish couples answer that they divide work within their household equally. However, the largest portion of British and Korean respondents present that wives have more work than husbands within their households. Thus, the result of analysis on workers’ work-family conflicts in Sweden is different from those in the UK and Korea. In Sweden, respondents’work-family conflicts are low level in all related questions in the survey. Nevertheless, British and Korean respondents feel higher work-family conflicts compared with Swedish respondents

Last but not least, the study measures the degree of family-friendly organisation culture. Generally, Swedish organisation culture is the most family-friendly followed by the UK and Korea by a canvas.

To conclude, this study suggests policy recommendations and requirements for the improvement of work-family balance policies in Korea based on the above results: providing diversified childcare services according to parents’ working hours, sufficient cash support to childcare fees and enhanced parental leave for working parents, expending flexible working time arrangements and abolishing discrimination against part-time workers etc.

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