Gender inequality in South Korea refers to health, education, economic, and political inequalities between men and women in South Korea. In modern Korea, the social status of women has become practically equal to men’s in social sectors such legal rights, education, and health. There are however still major inequalities in workforce and political participation.
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Statistics and international rankings
According to the Global Gender Gap Report, South Korea ranked 115th out of 145 countries measured. The 2015 report notes that all sub-indices (health and survival, education, economic participation and equality, and political empowerment) show improvement compared to 2006 (the date of the first publication of this yearly report), with the overall score improvement over the last eleven years estimated at 3.5%. For those sub-indices, South Korea scores best on Health and Survival (79th, with a near perfect equality score of 0.973), followed by Political Empowerment (101, score of 0.107) and Education (102nd with a score of 0.965), with the lowest ranking of Economic Participation and Equality (125th, score of 0.557). The report shows low female to male ratios in: labor force participation (0.73), wage equality for similar work (0.55), estimated earned income (0.56), legislators, senior officials and managers (0.12), enrollment in tertiary education (0.75), women in parliament (0.2), women in ministerial positions (0.06), and years with female head of state (0.07).
The Social Institutions and Gender Index did not rank South Korea due to missing data, but in its country profile concluded that South Korea has low or very low levels of discrimination in family code and civil liberties, but medium levels in resources and assets.
OECD statistics for 2012 have placed Korea in the last position of all OECD countries when it comes to gender pay gap (62.6% for South Korea), a position that has not improved since OECD begun publishing this ranking in 2000. The Korean gender pay gap has been called "the worst... among the industrialized countries". The same statistic did show a slow but steady improvement, with the gap improving by 3% since 2000, through the rate of improvement has also been slower then in some other OECD countries. Korea has also ranked on the bottom of the glass-ceiling index published by The Economist.
93% of Koreans surveyed in 2010 believe women should have equal rights to men, and among them, 71% believe more changes are needed before that goal is achieved.
Analysis
Reasons for gender inequality in South Korea include traditions and cultural practices in home and at workplaces, and insufficient support systems. Korean patriarchal order (which includes patrilineality) is a major factor influencing this situation. Confucian family values support traditional sex roles. Males are seen as the major breadwinners in families. There is a strong cultural tendency to see a woman's place at home, defining her roles as that of wife, mother, and housekeeper. Women are less likely to be promoted to higher managerial positions in the workplace, and working females receive relatively little support for child rearing. For example, taking paternity leave is highly unpopular, and unofficially discouraged within Korean companies (even more so for men), which forces women out of the workplace following the birth of a child.
Torn between family and career, Korean women are marrying later and having fewer children. A 2007 report by Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that as a result of perceived problems, "The result is in many ways the worst of both worlds. Korea now has a lower fertility rate than any developed country and one of the lowest rates of female labor-force participation — 60% for women aged 25 to 54 versus 75% in the USA and 76% in the EU." The percentage of Korean women who say it is “necessary” to have children declined from 90% in 1991 to 58% in 2000. In 1970, the average age of first marriage for females was 23; by 2005 it was almost 28. The report suggests that traditional Korean family and workplace cultures need to change to prevent serious economic and societal problems due to extremely low fertility rates.
History
The situation of women in Korea is seen as improving over the last few decades. In particular, recent legislation has been positively received, particularly since Korea's transition to democracy (the prior military regime of South Korea was criticized for doing little to improve gender equality), and most progress on the issues of women rights and related social movements occurred after the democratization of Korea. The Korean government started to address gender equality issues around the late 1980s, with legislative acts such as the Sex Equality in Employment Act (1987), the Employment Security and Promotion Act (1989), and the Mother-Child Welfare Act (1989). In 1991 revisions of Korean law granted women equal rights to custody of children and material property in case of divorce; the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family was established in 2001, and in 2005 the patrilineal family register (hoju) was ruled abolished.