Does marriage help your career?

Most women resign from work to bear the responsibility of looking after their children.

By Isaac Kim

The effects of marriage on careers drastically differ for men and women.

Saramin, an online employment portal, conducted a survey on 1,215 men and 902 women July 5-15. Results show 82.7 percent of men believe “marriage helps work life,” while 65.5 percent of women thought “marriage is an obstacle” to their careers.

Female workers believe marriage is a barrier because of anxiety about housework and childcare (77.7 percent), companies’ disregard for married women (45 percent), too many things to handle (40.6 percent), and career discontinuity (34 percent).

On the other hand, men responded positively to marriage for the following reasons: they would work harder for family responsibilities (68.1 percent); it is mentally stabilizing (59.3 percent); they would receive assistance from their spouses (40.3 percent); and increase their savings and financial stability (27.6 percent).

When asked if they were discriminated against for being married in the workplace, 35 percent of the women replied “yes,” whereas only 5.2 percent of men answered the same question with “yes.”

Several biases married women have faced in the workplace are difficulty in getting holidays for family and household work (64.3 percent), pressure to resign for pregnancy or childbirth (47.6 percent), promotion discrimination (23.8 percent), wage gap between men and women (21.4 percent), and lack of recognition (21.4 percent).