Pandenomics for women

By Jason Lim

Korea's young women are dying during the pandemic. Not from the disease but by their own hands. Suicides among young women were up an alarming 17.9 percent in April when Korea imposed strict social distancing measures. The overall suicide rate for people in their late teens and twenties in the first half of 2020 was up by 7 percent from last year. To note, the statistics only record successful suicides, with the consensus that women attempt far more suicides than men ― they just don't succeed as often. In short, it definitely looks like that there is a parallel pandemic of suicides among young women happening in Korea right now.

The Institute for Society and Health's December 2019 report stated that the increase in the suicide rate among millennial women has outpaced that of their male peers by a large margin over the last 20 years. While the mental health diagnosis will likely say depression or anxiety is the cause for attempting suicide, there are structural issues at place that make women ― especially young women ― more vulnerable to such mental diseases. Jang Soong-nang, who co-authored the report, says: “Women are disproportionately represented in the low-paying, informal workforce. Women generally feel less safe in public spaces. Over two thirds of women say they have experienced some form of abuse in a relationship … Women are more vulnerable to violence, discrimination and poverty.” Such structural issues for women have only been worsened by the socioeconomic problems induced by the pandemic.

In a way, Korea's statistics are in line with findings from other countries during the pandemic. In August, Japan experienced a whopping 40 percent increase in women committing suicide over the same period last year, prompting Japanese officials to reach out to their counterparts in Korea for pointers.

There seems to be a consensus as to the underlying reasons. Women are disproportionately employed in jobs with little stability or employment protection while also bearing the majority of housework and child-rearing duties, as many families have been forced to juggle work and childcare while children have been largely studying from home during the pandemic. Combine this with the sudden loss of personal support systems due to the quarantine, it's not difficult to imagine that the situation could easily have been overwhelming for women who were already at the invisible margins of the socioeconomic strata of Korean society.

To add global context, a recent survey done by McKinsey & Company and Lean In shows that more than a quarter of the 40,000 women they surveyed are considering “downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce entirely.” Basically, even women who managed to enter into an actual “career track” rather a series of dead-end, temporary jobs are facing an inordinate amount of pressure to sacrifice their professions and go back to their traditional roles as housewife and primary caretaker. To make a bad story worse for Korea, according to the World Economic Forum's 2020 Gender Gap Report, Korean women's Economic Participation and Opportunity Index pegs Korea in the 127th place out of 155 countries surveyed with a score of 0.555, placing it just below Sri Lanka (0.558) and above Senegal (0.552).

Put all these together, it basically says that women in Korea, who are worse off in both economic participation and opportunities compared to those in other countries, will likely leave the workplace in much bigger numbers due to the pandemic and be made to feel even more vulnerable than before. This even applies to college-educated women. Inevitably, this will lead to increasing mental illness that will feed into a growing trend of suicide in women and the rapid decrease of talented female workers in Korean society. In other words, this means that more young Korean women will continue to kill themselves for the foreseeable future unless macro trends change their trajectory. And no one knows when that may happen.

Good governance is all about influencing the macro trends to optimize the wellbeing of the country's citizens. Facing the suicide pandemic, the only solution is a targeted intervention with a range of measures aimed at preventing the suicide of vulnerable young women. It needs to start with a discovery phase to understand the demographic landscape, followed by analysis specifically designed to address the underlying structural issues that affect the target populations. Basically, a research, response and recovery plan that are tailored to support young women, knowing that pandemics hit genders in different and discriminatory ways.

But is the political will there? It's sadly ironic that this is happening against a backdrop of increasing male vs. female hostility among young people that's manifesting itself in public debate and politics. There's currently a huge backlash by Korea's young men against what they see as the unfair advantages that women enjoy in Korea that amount to discrimination against them. This might not seem related to the suicide issue, but politicians wishing to curry favor with the young male voting bloc might not be so keen to look as if they are catering specifically to women's needs, however warranted.

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.