[Women’s Forum 10th Anniversary] Kim Kyung-sun "Equal Gender Roles at Home Must Reduce Women’s Employment Costs"

Interview with Kim Kyung-sun, Vice Minister of Gender Equality and Family
"Women bear more childcare and household burdens"
Proposal for permanent operation of anonymous childcare leave reporting center
Need to strengthen and expand AA standards

"We need to change the societal perception that childcare is solely a woman's responsibility in order to reduce the costs associated with female employment."

This is the current diagnosis of gender equality in Korea by Kim Kyung-sun, Vice Minister of Gender Equality and Family. Although systems such as parental leave and prohibitions against hiring discrimination based on gender have been established, the reality is different. Women still experience career interruptions due to childbirth and childcare, and face discrimination from the hiring process through their employment period.

According to a survey by Asia Economy on policies needed for the advancement of female leadership, the top responses were ▲improving social perceptions of gender roles (9.7%) ▲providing corporate incentives for hiring women with career interruptions (6.5%) ▲expanding childcare support (5.0%) ▲mandating employment equality (5.0%).

Vice Minister Kim stated, "To reduce the burden on companies, men and women must share childbirth and childcare responsibilities equally," adding, "Companies need to recognize that hiring a new employee of either gender incurs the same cost." Kim is a seasoned expert in female employment, having served as a mentor for the first Asia Women Leaders Forum, the Ministry of Employment and Labor's first female Director-General of Planning and Coordination, and Youth and Women Employment Policy Officer.

Childcare and household duties remain concentrated on women. The economic activity participation rate of women aged 15 to 64 in Korea is about 58%, which is 12 percentage points lower than Japan's 70.6%. Kim noted, "Women’s household labor time is 5 hours and 41 minutes when the husband is the sole earner, and over 3 hours in dual-income households, while men spend only around 50 minutes. Not only society but also gender roles within families must change."

Although parental leave is granted equally to both men and women for one year each, it is still perceived primarily as a 'mother's' benefit. Even within companies, men need courage to apply for parental leave. Kim emphasized, "The government should operate an anonymous parental leave reporting center continuously and actively respond by conducting labor inspections when reports are received," adding, "It should be possible to verify through the system cases where someone took maternity leave but never used parental leave, or where parental leave pay was relatively low."

To resolve the recurring issue of female unemployment during crises, improving the 'female employment structure' is paramount. The door should be opened for women to enter a wider variety of industries beyond the service sector.

One alternative is to strengthen the Active Employment Improvement Measures (AA) standards, implemented in 2006 to increase female employment rates. Kim said, "The female employment rate in shipbuilding and automobile manufacturing industries remains in the single digits domestically," and added, "The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family has proposed introducing absolute evaluation elements for industry comparisons."

She continued, "One reason why female employment rates in the US and Japan have risen to 70% is the mandatory reporting of female hiring targets by companies with over 300 employees," and said, "Korea also needs to lower the threshold to workplaces with over 300 employees."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.