Neo-liberal era, Korean woman’s life

Korea society has been through severe change after the 1997 IMF crisis. The words such as laborer, temporary worker, youth unemployment, working poor, house poor etc. which were unfamiliar before the IMF crisis have become too common that they even seem cliché now.

Up until 20 years ago, ordinary people in Korea were able to become middle class if they work diligently and were able to gain better social status as much as they wish if they studied hard. However, now it is hard to avoid poverty even if you work hard and “rising from humble family” became an old adage.

Although Korea is proud in its 10th highest national economic power, the gap between the rich and the poor is getting larger and pass down of poverty is setting in and deepening.

Now, no one really attributes individual’s laziness to poverty. Poverty is society’s structural problem and one of the problems among the deepening trend of poverty that we should pay attention to is “feminization of poverty”.

As neo-liberal economic policies such as restructuring, labor market flexibilisation, reduction of welfare etc. accelerate, women became quickly poorer compared to men.

To put it the other way, neo-liberal Korean economy is more intensifying based on repression and exploitation of women. As a result, women have been forced out to jobs with low quality such as low income and insecure working condition. After 2007, various women employment indexes show that  

The G20 summit is held in Seoul during November 11th and 12th. Many alternatives such as adoption of bank levy, derivative regulation etc. to overcome economic crisis that brought in false belief of market being the all-around solution have been discussed in G20 so far, however, they have not been effective. Besides, although this year’s G20 Seoul summit is fancifully coated with agendas related to climate change, development issues etc., it is expected that it will turn out to be exchange rate war. It means that it is going to be a war between United States and China who wish to vitalize their economies through exchange rate. Moreover, the essence of this year’s G20 summit is in accomplishing United State’s intention of producing profits by releasing dollars that have been recklessly stamped through reviving IMF to emerging countries’ capital markets.

Therefore, neither will financial instabilities get settled nor will global economic crisis be solved through G2o summit and it will only be a heated competition to achieve covetous greed of developed countries and transnational capitals.

Today, we women at International women’s forum against G20 summit denounce G20 who is making women and people’s lives harder by accelerating neo-liberal economic policies and hope to find alternatives with belief that women’s power and wisdom can rescue the world.

Korean woman’s life, more vulnerable due to economic crisis

It is obvious that the old fashioned ideology of sexual discrimination ‘Women in the house and men being the provider’ is responsible for the success of neo-liberal strategy.

Women’s preemptive role is regarded as doing housework and protecting children and the elderly. And women’s labor is treated as subsidiary activity of family finance. For this reason, no matter what women’s job is or how much time she puts into her work, female worker is always regarded as ‘temporary’ worker.

Labor market flexibilsation strategy eventually leads to weeding out female workers who are regarded as temporary workers and reassigning them to sites with worse working conditions. Priority in firing female workers, Trend of changing female regular workers to irregular workers, worsening of working conditions that took place fully showed the essence of neo-liberalism.  

Present condition of Korean women’s employment worsening due to business fluctuation

Korean women’s employment is more sensitive than men’s employment. At 1998, during the time of IMF, the number of female employee’s decreased 7.34% compared to the year before and men decreased by 5.09%. At 2003 when the number of employees decreased about 30.000 due to credit crisis, although male employment increased 0.67% compared to the year before women employment decreased 1.27% compared to last year.

In 2009 in particular when economic crisis struck, the number of female workers decreased to 211,000 at most and took up 96.3%of the whole employee’s decrease. This shows the damage of employment stagnation. 96 people out of 100 people who lost their job appeared to be women. Also, while men said that the biggest reason they quit their job is either wage of future, women said their biggest reason is marriage, infant care and housework (20.2%). This presents that the condition for women to work and take care of their household is still weak. (Based on May 2009’s analysis of female employment depression phenomenon and reporter Kim Hee sun from the Korea Development Institute.)

Women’s economic activity participation rate and employment rate is decreasing and economically inactive population has gone well over ten million people. Women’s economic activity participation rate has been declining for 3years since 2007 and was 49.2%, declining by 0.8% compared to last year. Employment rate was 47.7% also declining 1.0% compared to last year. Compared to men’s economic activity participation rate which decreased 0.4% compared to last year and employment rate which decreased 0.8%, it is shown that women’s economic activity participation rate and employment rate decreased more.

In 2009, women working population recorded the highest with 10,420,000 people. This is about twice larger than men’s economically inactive population which was 5,218,000. In particular as the reason for economical inactivity is infant care and housework takes a huge 67.2%, career extinction phenomenon and employment discrimination due to childbirth and infant care appear to be severe. Also women’s unemployment rate was 3.0% in 2009 which is a rate that has risen from 2008 by 0.4%.

Irregular and Temporary employment trend of women

Number of nation’s irregular worker is 8,580,000 according to Korea labor and society institute’s estimation in March, 2008. Men have more regular workers than irregular workers as there are 5,080,000(55.0%) male regular workers and 4,160,000(45.0%) male irregular workers. However, there are 2,330,000(34.5%) female workers and 4,420,000(65.6%) female workers which show that there are twice as many of female irregular workers than female regular workers. This means that one out of two men and two out of three women are irregular workers.

Also, 7 out of 11 irregular worker-dominated profession overlap female-dominated professions. This means that female labor force are concentrated more on previous female-dominate professions as a form of irregular worker position. As the rate of female irregular worker increases, gender segregation by occupation intensifies.

Moreover, women’s career extinction due to childbirth and infant care adds to the increase of irregular workers. The difference according to form of marriage presents that while there are 4 out of 10 married men who are irregular workers, there are 8 out of 10 married women who are irregular workers. That is to say, there is a high tendency to fill most of female irregular workers with married women.

However, when we consider the fact that most of the women who are in special employment relations the size of female irregular workers increases. Special employment relation refers to laborer whose labor traits are not respected under labor law and so not included in the irregular worker statistics but are left in insecure and devastating conditions just like irregular workers. Representative examples of special employment relations are 100% of golf tournament assistant(caddy), 88.9% of home-school teachers, 95.9% of insurance salesperson, 95.7% of book salesperson, 95.1% of cosmetic salesperson that are women.

Women entering informal section of labor

In order to deal with mass production of poor class due to polarization of labor market, increase of women’s economic activity participation, low fertility rate and aging, Korean government switched various caring labor that was produce in private sections by women to wage labor and sells service as commodity.

However, the status of ‘social service worker’ who are mostly women is very unstable. They exist in the informal section which is not protected by law and their wage and working conditions are also devaluated. In particular, married women workers who do not possess special skills or professional abilities enter social service labor in order to overcome their poverty.

Now the informal section

When various forms of informal workers are considered, the number of informal workers is estimated to be around 5,000,000.
 

Worsening working condition

As one of the reasons that employers hire irregular workers is to reduce labor expenses, irregular workers are treated with disadvantages in terms of wage, welfare etc. although they work the same hours as regular workers.

Only the men in their early twenties and late fifties show higher number of irregular workers than regular workers. However, there are higher rate of irregular worker for women except for women in late twenties. It is because women who try to find jobs after they have childbirth are only left with irregular working positions. Although it is the same irregular working position, women were paid lower wage. If the regular male worker’s wage is supposed to be 100, irregular male worker’s wage was found to be 52 and irregular female worker’s wage as 40.

One of the main reasons that women’s wage level is low can be found from the reality that most of women work in small-scale companies. Female employment data according to different sizes of companies shows that 64% of working women work in small companies where there are less than 30 workers. Most of the working women are exposed to poor working condition of small scale companies or irregular working conditions and are affected by wage difference according to sex. Female irregular position mostly suffer from not only low wage but also not receiving legal wage such as severance pay, bonus, overtime working charge, paid vacation etc. and are excluded from four insurances. Most of the female irregular workers are not benefited with maternity leave. Even if there are some benefits, it is show from the 2007 statistics that only 66 people out of the 60,000 women maternity leavers are irregular workers. The reality is that female irregular workers are forced to give up their motherhood.  

Feminization of poverty

Women are not given the basic right to work even if they want to and are excluded from basic labor right. Moreover, although women are working with will and ability to work, they always suffer from employment instability and low wage.

The reason for feminization of poverty is caring labor that causes serious problems to employment such as sexual discrimination structured labor market problem, welfare policy problem that are based on male-dominated household, infant care that are taken full charge of by women, nursing etc.. Female poor class that take up two thirds of the poor are driven over the edge. When they face difficulties during their role as head of household, they even decide to commit suicide together etc. Now, problem of poverty is a problem of women and female poverty is becoming popularized and structured.

Family at crisis

People who view change in families as a crisis lately find the reason of high divorce rate and low fertility rate, increase of no marriage and late marriage due to rise of first marriage age etc. from spread of women’s selfishness and individualism. However, this is the crisis of patriarchal family.

Patriarchal family custom which gives authority to men has been supported by social norm which value paternal descent belief, labor market that requires family wage, ideological discussion that justifies familism and division of sex. However, spread of democratic ideology that values individuals and horizontal relationship, change of women due to rise of women’s education level and economic participation, change of labor market that is developing in worldwide capitalism system etc. have been challenged by traditional patriarchal family which institutionalized division of sex and discrimination.

Massive unemployment crisis named IMF caused instability of labor market and shook up families’ economic bases. This became the reason that not only women but also men avoid or postpone marriage. Although it became inevitable that women entered labor market to be of help to household, discriminative custom of male dominating labor market did not change and marriage became even harder decision for women to make. In other words, patriarchal family model which is based on division of sex in housework and caring, that is, male household provider, female household helper is rapidly collapsing due to economic situation where men cannot provide for his family, increase of unmarried people caused by high divorce rate and life cycle change etc. .

Women movements to overcome neo-liberalism
 

Strengthen women movement through participating fights to overcome neo-liberalism

As a social revolutionary movement, women movement should recover its position and search for strategies and actions related to overall social revolution. It should start with taking a look at realistic basis of women’s live all around the world, apply their understandings and demand and connect it to efforts of social revolutionary attention.  

The world that women movement views is a world where ‘women are respected as individuals of society, rights of female labor are guaranteed, rights of body and sexual desire are not threatened by violence, men and women freely communicate and relate on equal status.’. If the fight for this world does not combine with fight against social structure that is strengthened by neo-liberalism and it only ends as fights by women, a new world can never come true.  

Women movement should meet with social revolutionary movement and be combined with it. As the new world will come true when new social revolutionary movement and new women movement takes place and although it is not easy, this is the reason we should go forward.

Organize demands of various women

As the primary sufferer of neo-liberalistic dominance strategy, women are forced out without any safety measures.

Although the number of elderly women is increasing due to fast progress of aging society, elderly women are not treated primarily when it comes to social welfare benefits; therefore, they are left in the blind spot of welfare.

Also, as female head of household is increasing due to increase in divorce rate and one person household, in the current social structure where women are treated as subsidiary economic activity participator of male head of household, female head of household are driven out as poor class except for very small group of professional group. As immigrant women rapidly increased and multi cultured family spreads it is becoming main issue of local community.

Degradation of living conditions for these women requires that women movement change its organizing strategy. It means that requirements of full time housewives and female workers should combine, local organization’s movement, popular movements should combine, issues of class and non-class should combine and fight for living rights and fight for better living condition should combine.

Therefore when female workers fight for harmony of work and family, society to care together for their caring labor and women’s labor rights, local women should unite with female workers to fight for better working position as caring labor and living community. Also, they should come up with alternatives to form local community that can provide generosity to single parent family and immigrant women. In order for this, groups of various women and various agendas should be vitalized.  
 

Strengthen women’s solidarity

Women each live separately as various classes such as laborers, farmers, students, housewives etc. Although their understandings and demands are different, divided state of country and neo-liberalism order plainly show that new, gender equal social community is impossible without fundamental change of social order.

In order to achieve this, we should take demands and aims of women like women peasant and female workers as a top priority and form stronger solidarity of women that will lead more political and powerful fight.

Solidarity of women should continue to take action in strengthening each sectors and local groups and should develop united fight for emancipation of women overall based on those strengthened sectors and local capacities.

The fight has already been internationalized because of neo-liberalism. Discrimination, poverty and pain of discrimination that women around the world face are all related and we should solve it altogether. Therefore, it would be more important to strengthen global solidarity of women as time passes. Taking this forum as an opportunity, let’s strengthen Korean and world women’s sisterhood solidarity.

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Korean Women’s Alliance

Korean Women’s Alliance is a nationwide organization, seeking for the liberation of the feminine, the national independence, the implementation of the June 15 Joint Declaration between north and south KOREA, the opposition to the neo-liberalism globalization, and the realization of anti-war peace. 

Korean Women’s Alliance currently consists of 3 sectors and 41 regional women’s associations. These sectors and associations that dispersed across the nation have integrated into an organization since the foundation of Korean Women’s Alliance. Many organizations for women newly starting the women’s movement in different regions are now learning from us and working together. Members of Korean Women’s Alliance have taken root in regions and have been working on demands from women in regional societies. KWA, as a member of Korea Alliance of Progressive Movements, is supporting the progressive movements in Korean society. 

KWA actively fights for fairness in society, representing a variety of women such as workers, farmers, students, housewives, etc. Women gather their power and wisdom together and actively involve themselves in becoming the leader of history and society. We will continue to fight for building a gender-equalized world, an independent and unified nation for our future generations, and peaceful community without wars.
 

Main Activities

KWA has been active in a variety of areas since its foundation on July 8th, 2007.

    * We oppose to all kinds of violence and discrimination against women, and work for the realization of gender-equalized society by abolishing all kinds of suppression and discrimination.

      (The gender-equality teachers project, the struggle for gaining political power for women, the analysis and revision of the ordinance, the struggle for resolving the Japanese army’s comfort women issue)

    * We oppose to dominance, interference, or a war by foreign powers, and fight for independent unification, the realization of peace, and the implementation of the June 15 Joint Declaration.

      (The June 15, and August 15 Women’s unification meeting, the protest against war exercises, the education project of teaching unification in schools, the reinforcement of 6.15 South Korean Women’s center)

    * We oppose to neo-liberalism that aggravates women’s poverty, and fight for the realization of the people’s right to live.

      (The food sovereignty project: vegetable gardens, the protest against US-Korea FTA, the action project for boycotting U.S. beef with mad cow diseases, the project titled as ‘Provide Chairs to Female Workers Standing during Work)

    * We consolidate women’s movements in sectors and regions, and join the organizations of the women’s movement at home and abroad.

      (Meetings of newly-organized women’s associations, ‘Saengsaeng’-which means alive - women’s action, joining the World March of Women, hosting the anti-G20 international women’s forum)

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Introduction of our Member  Groups

    * National level

Gender Equality Committee from Democratic Labor’s Party

Gender Equality Committee from Korean Confederation of Trade Unions

Korean Women Peasant Association

    * Local level and special sector

Gyeonggi Independent Women’s Coalition (Goyang Women, Gwangju Women, Guri Women, Namyangju Women quasi-association, Bucheon Women, Bundang Women, Seongnam Women, Suwon Working Women, Suji Women, Anseong Women, Anyang Nanum Women, Yangju Women, Osan Women, Yongin Women, Uijeongbu Dure Women, Icheon Women, Pyeongtaek Women, Hanam Women, Hwaseong Women)

Gyeongnam Women’s Coalition (Namhae Women, Sacheon Women, Jinju Women, Changwon Hope Women, Haman Women, Hapcheon Women)

Gwangju Women / Guro Women / Daegu Women Square / Busan Education and Culture Center / Busan Women’s Association United / Bucheon New Era Women / Seoul Women / Yangsan Women / Ulsan Women / Incheon Women / Cheongju Women for Saving the Earth / Changwon Women / Cheonan Women / Cheongju Women quasi-association / Unification Women / 615 Women Association