The retreat of the policies on gender equality since the amendment of the Gender Equality Act

Retreating policies on gender equality: focusing on policies from the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family

 

 According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Report, South Korea ranked 116th in wage gap between women and men. Korea ranked behind Nepal and Cambodia. Economic growth that the country achieved was glossy, yet it was a result of exploitation of women workers, and discrimination against women still exists. A few days ago, my author, who is in a university now, said this to me. " It is more difficult for a woman to get a job, even if we study hard as men do. Gender equality..? What the crap."

 

 We all know that it is unlikely that male bread winners can support the family as it they did in the 70s and the 80s. Future is so uncertain and unstable in this ear that everyone, men and women, are all irregular workers. The instability in our lives is a result of wrong policies that Park Geun-hye administration is promoting, policies that expand inequality, instead of reducing it. The retrogressive reform of the labor market is a good example. If the labor market is reformed as the government intends, people will be working as irregular workers in their entire lives like salves; they will work as irregular workers in their 20s, part-time workers in their 30s, and dispatched workers in their 50s.

 

 If you look at the counseling cases in our Call for Equality, the only available job for a woman who went to graduate school but discontinued her career is a job with the minimum wage, which pays her 1,200,000 won a month. The government said that they will create decent part-time jobs, yet they are converting regular jobs into part-time jobs with poor working conditions. It is uncommon to see the cases that the employer sign the contract for only 11 months in order to avoid the retirement pay. The government promised solutions for the women's career discontinuity, yet in the past five years, we have 26,000 women who were fired because they could not get the maternal leave. Moreover, sexual harassment, insulting individual's character, and human right violence are going worse and worse! What are the government, who is supposed to protect the people and enforce the law, and especially the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, who is supposed to protect women's human rights, doing now?

 

 It is the government and the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family that who must be fired because of their unsatisfactory performance in fulfilling their constitutional duties to protect the rights of the people. We, women, will not hesitate in demanding our rights but we will stand up for our constitutional rights. The more they try to oppress us, the more persistently we will arise. We urge the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to respect and obey the constitutional law.

 

November 25th, 2015