KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

In 1975, UN announced "International Women's Day" and decided the years from 1976 to 1985 as the "UN Decade for Women". Accordingly, UN made many efforts to collect data and statistics on status of women systematically and to create indicators from the gathered data. UN also demanded the collection of statistics separated by sex to the countries around the globe and provided technological support. During the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women in 1995 (Beijing Declaration), the following has been chosen by the UN as an active strategy; "Collect, compile, analyze and present on a regular basis data disaggregated by sex, age, socio-economic and other relevant indicators for utilization in policy and program planning and implementation and to reflect problems and questions related to men and women".

In South Korea, Korean Women's Development Institute (KWDI) started to develop gender-sensitive statistical indicators to follow the international trend and published "Social Statistics and Indicators on Women" in 1986 and 1993. KWDI recognized difficulties in reflecting rapid social changes on irregularly published statistical reports and has been publishing annual reports called "Statistical Yearbook on Women" since 1994. In 1996, KWDI better systemized existing women's social indicators and created "The development of Social Indicators on Women". These information were gathered and put into "Statistical Yearbook on Women 2006", which was established in 2006. "Statistical Yearbook on Women 2006" has a total of 263 statistical charts for 11 categories and contains charts reorganized to compare the data with previous statistics and to present more accurate information on region of interest and specialized region of interest. "Statistical Yearbook on Women 2006" maintained the indicator system of the existing statistical yearbook but added childcare, a hotly debated subject, to the content. For childcare, a total of 13 individual indicators were compiled for childcare service and nurturing budget as region of interest. Redundant statistics and the statistics viewed as no long relevant in displaying women's status and conditions were deleted from the yearbook. In addition, by organizing data collection categories in a consistent manner, names and contents of charts were matched. "Statistical Yearbook on Women" has been publishing extra issues since 2003. Extra issue for this year reflects "Regional Statistics on Women" published in 2004 with new statistical data added and revised. Extra issue was compiled to compare the status and conditions of women in regions easily and to be a small size for convenience in handling.     

Key characteristics of Korean women stated in "Statistical Yearbook on Women 2006" are as the followings. Number of children born in 2005 by women within the age range of safe pregnancy (15-45) was 1.08, the smallest number ever recorded. However, preference for boys over girls still existed where 107.7 boys were born for every 100 girls. For the third child and children born afterwards, 133.5 babies were boys for every 100 girls born.         

Total Fertility Rate and Gender Ratio at Birth

(Unit：1 person)

Year	1970	1980	1990	2000	2005
Total Fertility Rate	4.53	2.83	1.59	1.47	1.08
Gender Ratio at Birth	109.4	105.3	116.5	110.2	107.7

For economic activities, participation of women continually grew and reached 50.1% in 2005 for women over the age of 15. On annual average, a total of 9,860,000 women had participated in economic activity. This figure is a 1.3% increase in participation compared to that in 2000, and 759,000 more participants which implies consistent trend of female participation in labor market. Increase in economic activity participation rate of men was only 0.2% for the same period, but the economic activity participation rate of men was 74.6% which is 24.5% higher than that of women.

Economic Activity Population

(Unit: 1,000 people, %)

Year	Economic Activity Population (in 1,000s)		Economic Activity Participation Rate (%)
	Women	Men	Women	Men
2000 2005	9,101 9,860	13,034 13,883	48.8 50.1	74.4 74.6

 Wages for women was 1,673,000 (monthly wage + yearly special bonus wage / 12), which is 63.6% of wages for men. Wages for women increased by 342,000 won compared to five years ago and the wage difference decreased by 0.7%. However, wages of women with technical college or a 2-year college degree was lower than wages of men with junior high school diploma. Also the wage difference between men and women appears to be bigger as the size of company is larger.

Wage Difference by Education

(Unit： %)

Year	Junior High School or Below		High School Graduate		Technical College Graduate		4-year College Graduate
	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men
2000 2005	80.8 80.2	137.1 131.0	100.0 100.0	150.1 148.8	109.1 109.4	156.5 154.4	160.8 152.8	225.3 226.9

Remark: Wage ratio when women with high school diploma is represented by 100

 In 2006, 50.5% of 4-year college graduates, 44.7% of masters program graduates, and 27.3% of doctoral program graduates were women. Since 2004, ratio of women has continued to be more than 50% for bachelor's degree and over 40% with increasing number for master's degree. Despite the increasing ratio of women for people with doctoral degrees, the percentage stayed at 27.3% as of 2006 which still is a relatively low ratio compared to men.

Other key statistics from 2005 include average life span of women (81.9 years) which was 6.8 years longer than men (75.1 years). Mortality rate was 289.8 for the age between 50 and 54 where 290 men died for the death of every 100 women. Hyman Development Report from 2006 stated that Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), a measure for the degree of rights exercised by women, was ranked 53 of 75 countries listed which is a six-rank rise from the previous year. Gender-related Development Index (GDI) was ranked 25 of 140 countries which was a two-rank rise from the preceding year.

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