-Reports on Local WWAs-
Celebrating the Month of Equal Employment during October, each local WWA held a variety of activities such as conferences, talks and in particular sponsored surveys on women's working conditions and job searching activities. Below is the summary of those surveys.
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Survey on VDT-suffering women workers and Suggestion for its prevention
- Survey Results
- The survey was conducted focusing on women workers, 83.2 percent of whom are in their twenties, working in the 13 electronics plants in Masan and Changwon areas.
For the last number of years more and more workers have complained of VDT Syndrome, that is suffering pain on specific body parts such as shoulders. Though the VDT Syndrome is usually regarded as a disease mainly suffered by non-production office workers, production workers have increasingly reported suffering from the syndrome also.
76.6 percent of the workers surveyed said their jobs are sedentary; 59 percent having to raise and lower their arms a movement that gives one's back a lot of burden; 39 percent having to use their wrists in and out very frequently; and 88.8 percent having to use their fingers often.
This survey tells that the electronics workers perform highly repetitive jobs, using their specific body parts, which causes high frequency of the Cumulative Trauma Disorders among those workers.
Among the workers surveyed, 85.7% feel some 'disorder' on the arms; 80.6% on the hands and wrists; 70.9% on the lower parts of the body; 69.2% on the back; 57% on the elbows; 54.9% on the neck; and 50.2% on the shoulders. Although the survey is based on the workers' subjective symptoms, its results show how the working conditions in the electronics industry, one of the dominating and female-intensive industries in Korea, poses threats to women's health as well as to the autonomy to their own bodies.
- Suggested Policies
- Such cumulative trauma disorder is not yet officially acknowledged as an occupation-related disease here in Korea.
Although 'Guidelines for Workers Doing VDT-Related Jobs' has been added to the existing labor laws after the collective struggles of the telephone operators of the Korea Telecommunication, the guidelines are only applied to workers whose work is done mainly with computer terminals. This excludes most production workers whose labor process also makes them vulnerable to similar diseases to those of telephone operators.
So, the WWA-Masan Changwon members urge the government and the legislators to expand the coverage of the Guidelines so that it can benefit all workers who suffer the same or similar pains regardless of their occupational boundaries.
For this to be implemented, thorough and committed research on working conditions across occupations and industries must be conducted in advance.
- Such cumulative trauma disorder is not yet officially acknowledged as an occupation-related disease here in Korea.
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Survey on How to Increase the Employment Opportunities for Married Women
- Survey Results
- This survey was conducted not only to investigate the current employment situations of married women workers but also to find ways to enhance their employment opportunities.
According to the survey, 85.1 % of the women surveyed said they started their employed work before their children attended the elementary school, and 97.2 % before their children graduated the elementary school. Although 43.7 % of the respondents who had working experiences before they married worked as clerical workers, they now work mostly as service workers (29.2%) or as production workers (24.5%).
It is worth noticing that those women who are currently working as production workers show the least job satisfaction, and want to change their job into a more skilled and professional work.
To the question of why they want to hold an employed job, 36.0 % answered 'for their economic independence', and 38.6 % 'for immediate economic needs.' The high percentage of the need for 'economic independence' shows us the fast growing job commitment among the married women workers.
Most of the respondents of this survey said they want regular and stable employment rather than irregular and casual work, which disproves the conventional idea that married women prefer casual jobs, an idea especially held among employers and government officials. Women who responded they prefer casual jobs also said they too want to get a regular job if they can get access to appropriate childcare facilities.
The survey also investigated the way employers think of married women as workers, and found out that there are some big differences between jobs the married women prefer and jobs the employers want to provide them with. Employers responded that they rarely intend to hire married women for managerial positions even if those women have the experience for the jobs.
Employers said, however, they do not have any discriminatory policies on hiring married women as manufacturing production workers. On the contrary, managerial jobs are most preferred by married women while production jobs are least preferred.
- Suggested Policies
- The survey confirms that childbearing and housework responsibilities are the biggest obstacles against married women's access to employment outside home.
Many women are still forced to quit their occupation when they get married or after they give birth to a baby. This is due to the lack of childcare facilities as well as to the direct or indirect discriminatory internal labor market policies.
In order for married women to keep their wage earning jobs outside the home, a lot of policies and systems must be implemented. These include the extension of the existing maternity protection-related policies, a social and community-sponsored maternity protection system, welfare programs for paid maternity and childbearing leave, construction of more public childcare facilities as well as company-supported facilities, legal protection for part-time workers, and introduction of 'family nursing leave' system In addition, there are several more key policies needed for married women workers.
Firstly, the central and local government should construct offices which would work exclusively to better women's employment.
They must also have special and committed programs for occupational training for women, especially married women who are the most vulnerable group in the labor market. Secondly, the Labor Standard Law and the ILO ratified Homeworkers Protection Agreement should be extended to cover work places with less than 4 workers - where some 62.7% of married women work - and implemented so that women are more motivated to work on production lines in the factories without being threatened..
- The survey confirms that childbearing and housework responsibilities are the biggest obstacles against married women's access to employment outside home.
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Survey on Gender Discriminatory Practices
- Survey Results
- This survey was conducted especially to investigate gender discriminatory practices regarding the personnel policies in the relatively large companies. These included five manufacturing companies, five financial businesses, and several press and broadcasting companies in the Kwangju area.
According to the survey, 14.2 % of the women respondents said they had the common experience of being rejected for employment just because they were women. And 35.6 % responded that they have been given 'lower' positions than their male counterparts who had the same education level and work experiences as the women. There is no meaningful differences between production workers and non-production workers regarding these survey items.
93.7 % of the respondents who are production workers said they are paid less than male workers because of the gender discriminatory wage system, while the figure for non-production workers was 41.7 %. Among the workers who said they are discriminated in terms of wage, 48.6 % reported the wage difference is less than 100,000 won; 40.6 %, 110,000 to 200,000 won; 5.4 %, 210,000 to 300,000 won; and another 5.4 % over 300,000 won.
As for the reasons for the wage differences between women and men workers, 80.3 % of the women respondents referred to the Gender-Based Wage System as the key factor. And 14.5 % referred to gender differences in job positions, and 4.6 % to differences in job capabilities between women and men. These results strikingly show that the Gender-Based Wage System, a wage system which has become indisputably illegal since the enactment of Equal Employment Law in 1988, in practice still remains strong and is not being monitored.
As for the promotion fairness between women and men, 65.0 percent responded that women are excluded from the opportunities for promotion mainly because only men are given chances for the so-called 'job-circulation programs' which is the number one condition for promotion in many companies. However, 14.7 percent of the women respondents said that, even though women too are given the job circulation programs in their companies, the contents of the programs are different from those for men workers. And, not surprisingly, such programs are often evaluated as 'not enough' for promotion.
The extremely limited chances for promotion for women workers seem to play a great role in creating low level of job commitment among women workers. 26.1 percent of those women said they neither regard their current job as a life-time one, nor want to devote themselves to the job because of the lack of promotion, while 37.8 percent referred low pay as the key reason, and 18.5 percent referred to lack of maternity provisions.
- Suggested Policies
- As we have seen above, women in Kwangju are still facing a variety of gender discriminatory employment practices despite the fact that many of those practices are overtly illegal. The central and local governments should monitor those illegal practices thoroughly and encourage the companies to implement more affirmative employment policies for women workers.
Trade unions also should exercise their responsibilities and role in realizing gender equality in labor markets. They should exert more efforts to educate not only women but also men workers about the gender issues, and to prioritize these issues among their union activities. In order to do so, the introduction of a women's quota system for trade unions' decision-making bodies needs to be considered.
- As we have seen above, women in Kwangju are still facing a variety of gender discriminatory employment practices despite the fact that many of those practices are overtly illegal. The central and local governments should monitor those illegal practices thoroughly and encourage the companies to implement more affirmative employment policies for women workers.