[vol.6] Feature_ Looking into the employment changes of women workers
WORKING WOMAN 2008. 2. 1. 18:10These employment changes for women workers demand new organizational activity by women workers' associations. This is because it is impossible to reflect an understanding of irregular occupations and women workers in the newly increasing service industry with only the former activities based on one organized mass. Therefore based on discussions of how women workers' associations will cope with women's employment changes, we will firstly describe changes in women employment according to the statistics.
-
A steady increase in women's economic activity
- Women's employment by economic sector.
Despite the marked decrease in the number of women workers in the agriculture and manufacturing industry, the number of women workers in the service sector has risen markedly.According to the total industry rate, the agriculture industry (14.8%) and the manufacturing industry (24.1%) decreased while the service industry (61.0%) shows a marked increase. These changes in the economic structure had an impact on women's employment as the number of occupants in the service industry increased rapidly while those in the manufacturing industry decreased rapidly.
Table 2) Trends in the number of employed women by employment sector.
Agriculture & forest, fishery
Mining & manufacture
Social indirect capital & other service sectors
1980
39.0%
22.3%
38.7%
1985
27.8%
23.2%
49.0%
1990
20.4%
28.0%
51.8%
1993
17.0%
23.0%
60.0%
Source: ibid. Though the number of economically active women steadily increased, most of the women employees work in a place of business of less than 5 persons.
Increase in the number of married women workers.
According to the proportion of married women workers by economic sector in 1992, out of 6,702,000 workers, 5,139,000 (with a partner: 4,212,000; without a partner: 926,000) are married, while 1,563,000 workers are not married, thus married women workers account for 76% of the total. The proportion of married women workers in manufacturing is 68% and in the service industry 69.2%. The proportion of married workers in the manufacturing industry is increasing markedly.
- The majority of women workers work in companies with less than five employees.
In 1993, 28.6% of the workers employed in a workplace with less than five employees were women, and 28.7% of workers working in companies of less than 10 employees were women. Also, according to the "Report on the survey of wage structure in 1992" 62.7% of all women workers are working in companies with less than five employees, which means that about two-thirds of women workers work in small scale companies.
- 60% of women workers work in low-skill occupations.
Table 3) Women's employment by occupational type
Classification
Women Rate
%
Public, High rank officers & Managers
4.9
0.3
Professionalist
37.0
5.1
Engineers & mid professionalists
17.1
4.4
Clerical workers
53.4
13.9
Service workers, shop and market’s sellers
50.6
26.8
Farming & Skilled labor
47.3
25.7
Technical engineers & Recared engineers
23.1
8.4
Mechanists
18.8
5.8
Simple working labors
41.4
9.6
Source: National office of statistics, "Report on the survey of age structures"
- The marked increase of irregular workers.
- Women day workers
- The situation of part-time employees
Part time workers in Korea have increased markedly from 231,000 in 1980 to 570,000 in 1993. Therefore the proportion of part time workers out of total workers increased from 3.6% in 1980 to 4.3% in 1990, and 4.9% in 1993. This rate is rather low compared to other nations, but because the majority of part time workers are married women, and they are concentrated in restricted occupations, such an introduction of a new form of employment to specific companies and industries is bound to have influence.
According to the form of employment of part time workers, while 71% out of all part time workers had temporary employment contracts with less than a month, the number decreased to 66.1% in 1985, 58.5% in 1990, 48.8% in 1993. This tendency shows that the period of employment contract has increased compared to the fact that women workers in temporary part time occupations decreased from 76.4% in 1980 to 51.4% in 1993. In addition, the rate of female temporary part time jobs tends to still be high compared to males.
If one considers the part time worker's marriage rate, the rate of married workers has tended to decrease since 1985, from 81.4% in 1980, to 83.1% in 1985, to 77.1% in 1990, and to 73.3% in 1993. The rate of increase of unmarried and married workers in the same period is 19.5% and 9.4% respectively.
The higher rate of increase of unmarried part time workers is because the rate of increase of married part time workers has decreased relatively, and unmarried part time women workers have largely increased compared to the absolute numerical value. However according to the absolute numerical value, the majority of part time workers, both male and female are still married workers.
If one considers the age of part time workers, compared to that of 1980, the number of workers in the age groups of 15~19 and above 40 have decreased while workers between ages 20 to 39 have increased relatively.
This means that, like most other nations, women in the age group of 25~39 and males in the advanced age group in Korea are increasingly taking part time jobs. Due to extreme discrimination according to age in the labor market in Korea, women over 30 years of age who decide to participate in the labor market have to work in a part time job regardless of their education level since it is impossible to get a full time job.
Table 4) The number of part time workers in terms of year and gender
Total Workers
Women Workers
Rate of Women Work by hour
(part-time)
Wage labor
Work the hour labor
Workby the hour labor
Wage labor
Work by the hour labor
Work by the hour labor
1980
6,464
231
3.6
2,049
106
5.2
45.9
1985
8,104
248
3.1
2,810
134
4.8
54.0
1990
10,865
463
4.3
4,159
305
7.3
65.9
1993
11,751
570
4.9
4,404
370
8.4
84.9
Source: National office of statistics, "Annual reports on the economically active population", primary source tape, yearly reports Women in the age group of 25~39 and males in the advanced age have the majority of the part time jobs.
Table 5) The distribution of women part time workers in terms of age groups (unit:%)
Age
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
Over the 50
1980
5.7
12.4
11.4
13.3
12.4
13.3
8.6
22.9
1985
3.0
9.7
18.7
14.9
16.4
9.7
9.7
17.9
1990
4.2
14.3
16.9
20.8
12.7
9.8
5.9
15.3
1993
3.8
15.7
17.0
18.9
16.8
8.6
5.4
13.8
Source: ibid.
In terms of occupational type, the rate of women part time workers in the service and manufacturing industry is 32.4% and 34.3% respectively, and 17.0% are in the sales industry. Compared to other nations, this indicates that the percentage of temporary occupations in sales is relatively high.
If one considers division by industry, it can be seen that 75.8% of all women part time workers work in nine different types of industries: domestic services, educational services, repair of sales products, services connected to agriculture and forestry, hospitality industry, security and pension industry, furniture manufacture, and fur manufacturing industry.
In terms of division by occupational type, women part time workers, work mostly in manufacturing, specialized skills and administration, the services and the sales industry and so on. Compared to other nations, the rate of specialized skill, administration and manufacturing is relatively high.
By occupation, 86.8% of women part time workers work in nine occupational types such as; peddling and simple services, engineering, professional education, personal security service, agriculture and fishing industry, mining, architecture, manufacturing, driving, modeling sales and advertizing, handling machinery and teaching assistance. Further 56.5% of women part time workers work in a work place with less than 5 persons.
- The situation of temporary jobs
The number of temporary workers with contracts under one year was 1,718,000 in 1993 and is substantially larger than the number of full time workers. The number of such temporary workers has continued to increase since 1980, and reached 1,822,000 in 1990.
The numbers appear to have decreased a little recently. Yet, although the percentage of women in temporary work was 33.3% in 1980, it increased constantly to 46.2% in 1993. The ratio of temporary workers decreased from 81.1% in 1980 to 75.3% in 1993. On the contrary, the ratio of temporary worker substantially increased from 82% in 1980 to 196% in 1993. This reflects the fact that the form of employment is becoming more unstable.
Most of the increase in temporary workers is accounted for by female workers. Most of them were in their late thirties and a considerable number of them were over 50.
When the distribution of industrial classification of female temporary workers is examined (1993 statistics), most women are engaged in the manufacturing industry (41.5%), wholesale and retail trade (19.4%), and social service jobs (15.45%). When the occupational classification is considered, the most common occupation was production labor (53.3%) followed by services (24.9%), agriculture and fisheries (11.5%), and sales (7.5%).
Further, 60.1% of female temporary workers were employed in businesses with less than 5 employees. Although such workers were in an employed situation, the ratio of those who wanted to change jobs was high, because of unstable employment, low wages, and a poor working environment.
- Dispatched Workers
Estimation of Ministry of Labor : over 1000 corporations , over 100,000 workersEstimation of Labor ministry : over 3000 corporations, over 300,000 workersEstimation of Corporations : over 6000 corporations, over 600,000 workersAlthough the estimations differ, the statistics above show that the use of dispatched workers is quite widespread. Above all, 51.2% of such workers are females, and this percentage rises to 100% in sales and 75% in assistant of clerical worker, which shows that the ratio of female laborers as dispatched workers is quite high.
According to the "Report of the survey of wage structure" by the national office of statistics, 3,221,000 women employees excluding employers, independent enterprises and non-paid family managers out of 6,702,000 persons, work in very unstable conditions, as 2,658,000 of them are regular workers and 564,000 are day workers.
The organization rate all labor in 1993 was 15.6% and is constantly decreasing. The organization rate of female workers in 8.8%, which is considerably below average. In particular, the organization rate in the manufacturing industry, which was quite high in the eighties, has abruptly decreased.
The reason for such a decrease in the organization rate for female laborers lies in a significant decrease in the number of workers in manufacturing industries due to factories shutting down or moving overseas; a decrease in labor demand due to automation; movement of the labor force to services due to low wages and poor working conditions; and evasion of employment in manufacturing jobs.
Other reasons could be the increase of female workers in businesses with less than five employees, the sharp increase of married female workers in the labor market, and the increase in irregular jobs.
By 1994 the rate of women's economic participation had steadily increased to 47.9%, and currently the percentage of women workers is as much as 40% of the economically active population.
Table 1) Changes in the rate of women, participants and economically active population in terms of year and gender.
|
|
Rate of Economic active participation |
pupucation economically active rate |
Non Active pupulation | |||||
|
Year |
F. |
M. |
Total. |
F. |
F. Rate. |
Total |
F. |
F. Rate. |
|
80 |
42.8 |
76.4 |
14431 |
5412 |
37.5 |
10881 |
7645 |
70.3 |
|
85 |
41.9 |
72.3 |
15592 |
5975 |
38.3 |
12935 |
8741 |
67.6 |
|
90 |
47.0 |
73.9 |
18487 |
7474 |
40.4 |
12314 |
8423 |
68.4 |
|
93 |
47.2 |
75.8 |
19754 |
7887 |
39.9 |
|
|
|
|
94 |
47.9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Source: National Office of statistics, "Annual report on the economically active population" (because of the low rate of economic activity by fourteen year olds since 1986, the youngest age group of the subjects of the investigation was changed from fourteen to fifteen.)