Glaring Gender Inequality

Policies Should Be Geared to Change Culture, Consciousness

As if by common consent, major U.S. newspapers have lately carried articles describing difficulties Korea's working moms have to undergo. A report released by the Ministry of Gender Equality Wednesday shows why this is no coincidence.

According to the study conducted by the Korean Women's Development Institute, the nation's gender equality index stood at 0.594 in 2009 on a 1-0 scale (or 59.4 points out of a possible 100), failing to rise above a grade of ``F" for the past several years.

Especially weak was the ``decision-making" or gender empowerment category, as female parliamentarians account for a mere 13.7 percent of the total and women executives at the nation's four largest conglomerates remain at less than 2 percent. No less glaring were the gaps in welfare levels with men, equality within families and victimhood of crimes.

The result of the study itself is hardly surprising, reaffirming similar research by foreign institutions, including the World Economic Forum, which put Korea's gender gap index at 115th place out of 134 countries. For instance, only 60.9 percent of female college graduates landed jobs here in 2007, the lowest level among OECD members, whose average rate stood at 79.9 percent. Women also receive 38 percent less in wages than men, hitting the lowest level in the club of 30 industrial countries.

The social discrimination at work places, when added to inequality within families, namely the nearly one-sided burden of household chores and childcare, explains why women increasingly tend to neither marry nor have children, as well as why people call those who manage to combine work and family ``superwomen" in this country.

Keeping highly-educated women at home or at low-paying, simple jobs is an outrageous waste of money and labor, especially considering the prohibitive tutoring costs in Korea, posing a big deterrent to the nation's further economic growth.

This is especially true in this land of equal educational opportunity, where women make up at least half of the successful applicants of the three most difficult state exams to select the nation's diplomats, administrators, judges and prosecutors.

The problem is that such a sharp increase in women's advancement to higher government posts reflects not just their improved academic achievement but also a thick glass ceiling in the nation's private sector, also shown by the fact that there are no female executives at the domestic commercial banks.

Most urgent to rectify the lamentable situation is a change in government policy, but such prospects don't appear very bright for now. As a candidate, President Lee Myung-bak promised to expand the Ministry of Gender Equality, but his transition committee ― led by a woman ― first attempted to abolish the ministry and, faced with fierce opposition from feminists, backed down to sharply downsizing it. Equally problematic was Lee's choice for its top post, a food and nutrition expert who had no experience at all in the female rights movement, under the excuse of ``globalizing Korean food."

Lee's aides may be right ― in theory ― to say the improvement of gender equality should not be limited to a single ministry but tackled by the entire administration by taking the matter into account in shaping all policies.

As evidenced by the stagnant equality index, however, the President may well approach this crucial issue from the ground up by, for instance, expanding the ministry and naming the right person as its head.

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