At the beginning of the year, President Park Geun-hye said her administration aims to build a country that promotes the quality of women’s lives by creating an environment where working women are able to raise children without any excessive financial burden or strain on their careers. The latest survey reflecting some of the harsh realities of Korea’s working mothers and single women shows the President has much work to do to keep her word.
The most notable finding of the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) survey was that most working moms were unhappy with the government’s policies for boosting the birthrate. The FKI report said that only 5.4 percent of respondents were satisfied with the administration’s pro-birthrate policies. Nearly 70 percent said that the support measures were unhelpful. Four out of 10 single female workers said they have no plans to have children in the future.
The high level of discontent among single and married women shows that there are serious flaws with the Park administration’s policies for encouraging women toward motherhood. Their main complaint is that a lot of the government’s support measures for families are unrealistic. The government’s tax breaks and cash incentives are directed toward families with three or more children. This means that the majority of working women, who have one or two children at the most, are excluded from such benefits. The support measures need to be adjusted to properly reflect the realities of working mothers.
The government announced a five-year plan late last year to raise the birthrate to 1.5 per woman by 2020 and spend more than 100 trillion won to do this. Park does not have much time to restore the credibility she has lost among mothers and women on birthrate policies. But the national goal of boosting the birthrate must succeed regardless of Park’s term in office. This is why Korea needs to benchmark cases of Japan or Singapore and establish a ministry that specializes in birthrate and population issues. The ministry should ensure that policies are carried out consistently and that the budget is spent on programs that actually help women start and raise a family. This is the first step to the success of the five-year plan for boosting the birthrate.
For women to become more enthusiastic about having children, the corporate sector also needs to create mother-friendly initiatives, such as expanding in-house daycare facilities and paid parental leave.