Mee-Hae Kong
With rapid economic development and the advent of the women’s movement, the changing status of women received much attention around the world. The status of women has been defined as women’s access to public resources that are open to everyone (Ward, 1984). The status of women, in this sense, reflects the level of social justice which plays a critical role in distributing these resources to each gender in a society. Justice is equality for equals. Women’s inferior status means injustice. Injustice, here, is the unequal treatment of the members of the two genders.
Although Korea has achieved remarkable economic development within a relatively short span of time, gender disparity seems to be problematic. Compared to the West, the newly developed countries of East Asia show a high negative percentage difference between the overall HDI (Human Development Index) and gender-disparity-adjusted HDI. For example, Hong Kong indicates the highest negative figure in this (–28.3), followed by Singapore (–23.8) and Korea (–22.2) (Chang, 1996). In addition, GEM (Gender Empowerment Measure) of Korea in 2005 indicated 59th position out of 80 countries (UNDP, 2005).
Is gender disparity inevitable for the national economic growth in the East Asian countries, including Korea? What kind mechanism plays a critical role to maintain women’s lower status?
Scholars have paid attention to the effects of the “economic miracle” on gender relations in the basic social unit of Korean culture (Chang, 1996; Cho U., 1996; Kim, 1995). They argue that Korean families on the basis of the Confucianism create different social relations and ideologies, including gender relations and family ideologies. That is, the traditional familism (family centered ideology) in Korea reacts to the exigencies of the nation’s intense industrialization in different ways from western familism. This exclusive familism provides survival strategy that enables the families to protect their members from the relative weakness of the national policy.
This chapter is to provide global explanation about following inquiry: to what extent has economic development led to the improvement of women’s status compared to the general development of society in the last couple of decades? In the following section, the effect of development on women’s employment, family, and gender role, and women’s political empowerment will be reviewed.
Along with an export-oriented growth strategy, Korea created the rapid incorporation of female labor which dominated in export industries such as textiles, wearing apparel, electronics, and footwear. These four industries were assessed to provide over half of all export earnings in the early 1970s (Seguino, 1995).
In the beginning of industrialization, Korea preferred young unmarried female supply for labor-intensive export industries. Table 4.1 indicates the labor force participation rates for women and men for selected years for the period 1970 to 2008. According to Table 4.1, women’s labor force participation has steadily risen since 1970, while men’s labor force participation has slightly declined until 1985 and is fluctuating. After economic crisis occurred in 1997, women’s labor force participation has dropped around the level of 1990 and is rising up to now. However, the gender gap is over 23 percent.
Korean women’s labor participation rate forms a typical M-shaped curve. It shows high participation in women’s late 20s, drops in their early 30s, and rises again from the late 30s in 2005 (Korea National Statistical Office, 2007). This means that Korean women’s economic participation is heavily affected by their life-cycle stages and that marriage and child rearing are important factors to reduce women’s participation in the labor market.
Moreover, Korean women tended to be marginalized in the process of development and industrialization. The majority of women who participate in the labor force are still working in the informal and subcontracting sectors (firms employing fewer than five). Out of the employed women, according to Table 4.2, 59.1 percent are in the informal and subcontracting sectors in 1990 (Cho U., 1996). Again, informal worker rate for women has rapidly risen after 1997,
reached up to 69.7 percent in 2000, and is decreasing recently. The gap between genders in informal sectors is still around 15 percent in 2010.
Gender segregation by occupation indicates another aspect of women’s lack of power in the labor market. According to Uhn Cho’s chapter in this book, only small portions of female workers occupy the prestigious sectors such as professional and managerial/administrative positions. The proportion of women in sales positions is relatively high from 1990s, because of the transition of industrial structure in Korean society. However, the case of managerial/administrative positions shows more severe gender disparity. The proportion of females in these sectors was 0.3 percent in 2000, 0.4 percent in 2005, and 0.5 percent in 2008. In addition, women’s economic status does not seem to have improved because of the feminization of cheap labor. Let me turn to the wage disparity between genders.
In spite of the relatively strong demand for female labor, women’s relative wages have not improved substantially since the late 1970s, although the earning ratio is increasing steadily. For example, the female/male earning ratio was 44.8 percent in 1981, 53.5 percent in 1990, 63.2 percent in 2000, and 63.4 percent in 2006 (Korea National Statistical Office, 2007).
Table 4.3 indicates the ratio of female to male earnings in selected industries in the manufacturing sector for the period 1975 to 1990. Overall, the female/male earning ratio in manufacturing sector has risen from 47.0 percent in 1975 to 50.5 percent in 1990. This trend was more prominent in the female-dominated export industries – textiles, wearing apparel, and electronics. On the contrary, the wage gap has widened in the transport industries (Seguino, 1995).
The slight increase in the ratio of average female to male wages in manufacturing sectors is partly due to labor union activity (Seguino, 1995). During pro-democracy movement of the 1980s, women began to organize labor unions in response to dangerous work conditions, discriminatory work rules, and low pay. Widespread strikes in 1987 and 1988 resulted in substantial wage increases for workers, particularly in female-dominated industries.
Nevertheless, Seguino (1995) argues, gender-based wage differentials remained wide during three decades of rapid economic growth in Korea. Based on the assumption that growth of earnings is driven by productivity growth, she explains the wage gap between genders resulted from women’s concentration in industries with slow productivity growth. This trend continued after the national policy of social service sector for women has been focused on women- dominated jobs such as household helpers, nursery teachers, and sick care-givers.
Since kinship solidarity has been the single most important structure of Korean society, the family is considered as the basic social unit. Confucianism exercised great influence on family and overall society in Korea. Especially the rules guiding the relationship between husband and wife were based on severe prejudice toward women, resulting in lower status of women. According to Confucian virtues, a woman was required to obey to her father, husband, and son. In addition, a woman in the patriarchal family was regarded symbolically as an outsider from her biological family once married and also an outsider from her husband’s family until producing a son. Because a woman’s place was supposed to be at home, a “virtuous” woman should not deal with outside world and should not get ahead of her husband (Kong, 1992).
With a rapid increase of women’s education and labor participation outside home, feminism also has influenced to change the family over the past decades. The traditional extended family was transformed into the nuclear family and women had more control over the decision-making process within the family, although it does not mean that each individual woman obtained the actual power over her partner in the home. In addition, women in Korea became enlightened with the concept of equal rights between genders, educational opportunity, social participation, and individualistic value.
As a result, Korean women, on the one hand, are trying to develop new social roles with progressive and active attitudes, improved education, and social participation. On the other hand, they still maintain the traditional gender roles in the family because of widespread and deep-rooted acceptance of gender inequality based on a powerful legacy of Confucianism (Kim and Han, 1996). Accordingly, distorted thinking about gender roles leads Korean women to be placed in a lower position consistently: being treated as less important than men, excluded from prestigious occupations, alienated from politics.
Marriage and family is a system that holds traditional patriarchal gender roles. Married women with jobs are facing the deep conflict between their intentions and reality, because they have to pursue their career and take care of their family at the same time. The majority of Korean women do not have positive self-concepts and opportunities to exercise their potentials (Kim and Han, 1996).
According to Kim and Han’s study (1996), however, Korean women have gradually tried to escape the patriarchal system, involving social participation. In their survey, 84.3 percent disagree with the notion “women need not try to succeed in careers as men do”, and 82.7 percent oppose that “women should undertake household chores and child-rearing even when they have jobs”. But still those in their 50s and older and those with lower education (below middle school) seem to have traditional gender role attitude.
In a recent study by the Ministry of Gender Equality (2008), Korean women were asked if “women should have priority to marriage and family over her career”. Among respondents, 70.2 percent agree (including agreement and strong agreement) and 12.3 percent disagree (including opposition and strong opposition). In response to the question “husband should be a representative of the family”, 64.1 percent women answered as agreement, while 19.2 percent as disagreement. These statistics imply that Korean women still have strong traditional gender role attitudes.
In spite of drastic social change, enlightened notion of equality between genders, transformed family structure, and weakened parental authority over their children, both traditional and new concepts of family coexist in Korean society. For example, the majority of Korean parents want their son to be successful in a public domain and their daughters to have good spouses while expecting high education for both sons and daughters. This conflict between new values and the established ethical system becomes more clear when the tendency of son preference and gender ratio of newly born babies are reviewed.
As presented in Table 4.4, the ratio of newly born boys in 1990 is almost 117 per 100 girls, indicating 9 percent increase rate compared to 1980. The overall gender ratio stood at 106.4 boys to 100 girls in 2008. The imbalance of gender ratio especially becomes severe in the case of the third and the fourth born infants in 1990 and continues to in 2008. This means that married Koreans still hope for a son. In Kim and Han’s study (1996), as many as 13.2 percent of women said that they would feel guilty if they did not bear a son. This feeling is
more common among married women, those in their 40s and older, and the under- educated. What does this tell us ultimately?
In her study “Male Dominance and Mother Power: The Two Sides of Confucian Patriarchy in South Korea”, Hae Joang Cho (1996) discussed the two sides of Confucian patriarchy; extreme suppression of women on the one hand and extreme idealization of motherhood and encouragement of mother’s accomplishments on the other. She argues that patriarchy legitimizes mother power as a way of incorporating women in a male- dominated social system. That is, instead of excluding women from the public and political domains, patriarchy institutionalized mother power since it is the most unthreatening source of power to the patriarchal system.
Mother power is based on their son or sons’ well-being. As a result, mother power basically places at the personal level within the family. On the surface, institutionalized mother power enables women to be independent from their husbands. This independence, however, is limited within the symbiotic nature of mother–son relationships. Without the mother–son relationship, women barely establish their identity as autonomous individuals. Thus, Hae Joang Cho (1996) contends, “The heavy emphasis on the identity of women as mothers is, in fact, the major stumbling block in the women’s rights movement in Korea today. It is not motherly to feel oppressed” (p. 97).
Furthermore, after experiencing the long-lasting socio-political instability from events such as Japanese occupation and the Korean War, exclusive familism became the core value that protected the family itself (Cho H., 1996; Kong, 1992). The tendency of exclusive familism seems to have strengthened through the rapid industrialization of Korea. As contemporary capitalism developed the division between the public and private domains, the family assumes a nuclear form based on a particular gender division of labor: the breadwinner husband and the full-time wife (Kim, 1995).
The separation of public and private domains legitimizes the separation of the official economic sphere from the domestic sphere. Women who are alienated at home lose their identity and try to compensate for their loss by pursuing the well- being of their family. Also, Korean women pay little attention to community welfare programs, compared to the middle-class housewives in Western societies. Korean women instead tend to focus their time and energy on immediate family interests (Cho H., 1996).
In short, mother power and sequent “overdependence” between mother and son and exclusive familism play a critical role in maintaining an extremely conservative social system in Korean society. As Cho H. (1996) suggests, the fundamental social change and women’s empowerment cannot be obtained until mother power is deconstructed and reconstructed exclusive familism and the disctinction between the dual public/private domains.
In general, political activities are correlated with social education, work experience, and group membership. Women in newly developed countries have fewer opportunities in these areas. Because of the lack in education and work experience, the ability to organize political actions is also limited. Although women’s educational and work opportunities have increased in Korea, these are not critically effective in enhancing women’s political status at more powerful levels of government (Kong, 1990).
Women’s political status has been categorized into two indicators: women’s political participation, and equal rights legislation (Ward, 1984). Korean women gained political rights through suffrage. However, there are still several constraints on women’s political participation: (1) women’s perception of their public role; (2) cultural norms and social prejudices; and (3) lack of active women’s political organizations.
First, women’s political issues are closely related to their domestic maternal role. Even women tend to view their public roles as extensions of their traditional tasks of mothering and nurturing. Since women in political power have mostly involved “soft” issues (such as health, welfare, or education), their impact on government and whole society is little visible. Second, cultural norms and social prejudices are more important factors than women’s socio-economic determinants in defining women’s political roles and status. Thus, increasing women’s economic independence has not yet transferred to increasing their political power. Finally, obstacles in the socio-cultural superstructure are so strong that women cannot develop their political organizations. Women’s political strength can grow in terms of women’s organizations, women can hardly mobilize themselves to integrate into political institutions. Although their educational and employment opportunities are increasing, women are continually excluded from political elite tracts.
Fundamental changes in politics and gender relations in daily life are possible by the organizations of women. Women’s organizations, however, have been strongly discouraged by national politics within the world-system. With intrusion of the world-system, women’s organizations in the process of development became marginalized by the insufficient credit for members. Moreover, since multinational industries are looking for a cheap and docile labor force, women’s unionization has been deliberately disrupted by national governments (Kong, 1990). Techniques of hierarchical organization and control seem to be closely related to the gender division of labor.
Men had enough opportunities to develop organizational structure, since men have had a head position both in the household and in the workplace, while women’s subordinated position at home and work did not provide women with the ability to organize into groups as wage workers. Further, during the process of industrialization, male unions played a role in excluding women from gaining skills. Because the main policy of male unions was to keep women less efficient, women received lower wages and remained in segregated jobs.
Let me turn to the point of women’s political participation in Korea regarding to women’s three roles: as voters, decision makers, and political activists (Chun, 1996; Kim and Chun, 1996). First, voting is the most common method of political participation for women. Although voting is relatively simple compared to other political activities, women are able to access political power and clarify eligibility for leadership through voting. In the National Assembly election, 67.0 percent in 1992, 71.9 percent in 2000, and 74.8 percent in 2004 of female electorate participated in voting (Korea Women’s Development Institute, 2011). This partly indicates women’s active political participation.
Women’s political participation became more active with reinstatement of local autonomy in Korea from 1991. Many changes have been made in repeated elections up to the local elections of 1995. The recognition that local politics is the politics for daily life enabled several women to win in the local elections. Despite the fact that women became more active about election activity, discussions about politics, and membership in political parties, women are not likely to participate in the democratic process in a direct way.
Second, the Korean political situation does not allow women to be representatives at the elite level. Political elites include legislators, governmental officials, political party officials, and other opinion leaders from diverse public and private sectors who influence the policy-making system. According to Table 4.5, the number of women in the National Assembly was slightly increasing: two (0.8 percent) in 1996, five (2.2 percent) in 2000, ten (4.1 percent) in 2004, and 14 (5.7 percent) in 2008. Although local autonomy was expected to provide women with more opportunities, the result was disappointing. Only 41 won out of 124 women (0.9 percent of the total) in the 1991 local election, 71 won out of 206 women (1.6 percent) in 1995, 56 won out of 140 women (1.6 percent) in 1998, 77 won out of 222 women (2.2 percent) in 2002, and 110 won out of 391 women (4.4 percent) in the 2006 election (KWDI, 2011). This result implies that Korean women failed to achieve a breaking-through into the male domain of political power.
The highest rank of government positions that women have reached is the minister level. There have been fewer than 15 women cabinet ministers since 1948. The proportion of female ministers is below 5 percent in 1997, 14.3 percent in 2004, and 13.3 percent in 2011. The higher the decision-making positions, the lower the percentage of women. At the end of 1999, only 3.0 percent were women above the fifth class of national government employees. Now the rate of women above fifth class has been reached 8.4 percent in 2005, and 10.8 percent in 2008 (KWDI, 2011). In spite of the increasing number of women in the government, the majority of them belong to the lower ranks.
Third, women’s participation in high level positions in the political parties is disappointing, although women’s active participation in party activity is growing. There are few women members (less than 10 percent) in the decision-making posts (such as party advisor, party affairs committee, the central standing committee, party chairs) in the existing political parties in Korea. This reflects the patriarchal idea that women are merely assistants. Because of the bureaucracy of political parties, women hardly get the position of candidacy. On the other hand, it is also true that women have been too passive in claiming their rights to share the high level decision-making positions.
In general, Korean women have been excluded and alienated from politics. There are several obstacles in empowering women: first of all, cultural ideology effectively prevents women from participating in the public domain; women lack self- consciousness of gender equality; the national policies are not balanced for women; the distribution of power is determined by the rule of the dominant ideology, that is, male power holders.
The purpose of this study is to review the effect of economic development on women’s employment, the family and gender role, and their political empowerment. Economic growth has been the primary concern for power elites in Korea for several decades. Although Korea achieves a certain level of economic growth, those who have suffered from the developmental process are the powerless people, including women. As we have seen, despite increasing women’s participation in the labor force, they tended to be marginalized in the process of development and industrialization. Gender segregation by occupation and sector indicates another aspect of women’s lack of power in the labor market.
Marriage and family in Korea is a mechanism that maintains traditional patriarchal gender roles. Married women with jobs are facing the deep conflict between their intentions and reality, because they have to pursue their career and take care of their family at the same time. Thus, the majority of them do not have positive self-concepts and opportunities to exercise their potentials.
Political activities are correlated with social education, work experience, and group membership. Women in Korea have fewer opportunities in these areas than men. Because of the lack in work experience, the ability to organize political actions is also limited. Although women’s educational and work opportunities have increased recently, these are not critically effective in enhancing women’s political status at more powerful levels of government.
In order to construct a new society, women need to have systematic knowledge about the world. In addition, an understanding of women’s oppressive condition or women’s present status needs a call for change and participation in altering power relations. Knowledge based on concrete personal experiences in particular settings will provide women with institutional identities. The institutional identities are important to develop national resources for women.
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