'Korean women have long way to go for equality'

By Rachel Lee

With Korea’s phenomenal progress in the past 40 years, reaching per capita income similar to the European Union average, it is vital for Korea to harness fully the potential of people, particularly women, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, says the U.N. sub-regional Office for East and North-East Asia director.

Kilaparti Ramakrishna, head of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) East and North-East Asia (ENEA) Office in Incheon, Korea, praised Seoul for achieving significant development in gender equality.

“Korea has graduated from many of the gender-related development issues that developing countries are facing, such as achieving near universal literacy and enrolment in primary and secondary education,” Ramakrishna told The Korea Times.

“It also has a record of substantial improvement on its gender gap in professional and technical workers.”

But the director said this did not mean Korea had a gender-equal society.

While Korea ranks 17th of 188 countries in the U.N. Human Development Program’s Human Development Index, it ranked only 116th out of 144 countries in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Gender Gap in 2016.

According to WEF data, the labor participation rate for women is 73 percent that of men, and wage equality for similar work is 52 percent of men’s. Women account for only around 10 percent of legislators and senior government officials.

“While both men and women may be given equal job opportunities in legal terms in Korea, the differences in labor market participation suggest some involuntary causes that discourage women to participate in the labor market,” he said.

He also pointed out females made up half of Korea’s population last year.

The life expectancy at birth for women was 85.5 years in 2014, 6.5 years longer than that of men.

Compared with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, Korea stood considerably lower, indicating there was room for changes in customs and systems to secure sustainable development and improved quality of life, the director said.

“Discrimination on the basis of gender is a challenge faced by all countries. That is why the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include gender equality as SDG 5, so that all countries can address this challenge in a more collaborative way and we can learn from each other.”

Goal 5 is about achieving gender equality and empower all women and girls, according to the organization.

One of the targets for this Goal is Target 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life, with indicator 5.5.1: Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament and local governments. As for the score of this indicator, the Republic of Korea ranks low — lower than the average of developing countries.

“It appears necessary to make continuous and structural policy efforts to reduce gender discrepancies in the areas of decision-making. Furthermore, it is fundamental to promote policies to structurally reduce the number of victims of serious crime to enhance gender equality in the safety sector,” he added.

In order to address the persistent gender gaps in labor force participation and the continued barriers faced by many women in exercising their rights to decent work in Asia and the Pacific, ESCAP has focused its efforts on advancing women’s economic empowerment, including through entrepreneurship.

ESCAP has been working with governments in the region to foster the adoption of legal and regulatory measures that remove barriers to women’s entrepreneurship, as well as increase women’s access to financial services, markets and information and communication technologies.

Most recently, against the backdrop of the ASEAN Economic Community, ESCAP has launched a publication entitled, “Fostering Women’s Entrepreneurship in ASEAN: Transforming Prospects, Transforming Societies.”

“ESCAP is also championing the integration of gender concerns into national planning and budgetary processes. To date, ESCAP has provided technical assistance on gender-responsive budgeting to several countries, including Cambodia, China and Lao PDR,” the director said.

“ESCAP plans to expand its provision of technical assistance in order to enhance the capacity of senior officials in ministries of finance, planning and various line ministries to apply gender-responsive budgeting in their respective countries.”

With a view to addressing the low visibility of women in leadership roles in political, economic and social spheres in the region, ESCAP is also supporting measures to promote women’s transformative leadership, the director said.

“ESCAP asserts that efforts must go beyond merely increasing the numbers of women in leadership at all levels of society, but also prioritize the impact and quality of leadership,” he added.

With this in mind, ESCAP is currently leading a U.N. taskforce to develop an analytical publication, which aims to provide an evidence base to advocate for policy interventions and investment to promote women’s transformative leadership.

Before joining ESCAP, Ramakrishna, a climate policy leader and environmental lawyer, worked for the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) in a threefold position: holder of Sara Shallenberger Brown Chair in Environmental Law and Policy; director, WHRC Policy Program, and vice president.

He is an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lead author of assessment.

Since its inception, the ENEA office, working closely with our substantive divisions in Bangkok, has developed and strengthened sub-regional networks to promote sustainable development across its member States.

Under the framework of NEASPEC, the ENEA Office has helped member states launch the North-East Asia Marine Protected Areas Network and worked on trans-boundary air pollution and tackling desertification in Mongolia. The Asia Carbon Footprint Network was created to promote sustainable consumption and production through carbon labelling initiatives.