Employment rate of women in S.Korea hit 60%, but gender pay gap remains

Seoul, Sep 6 (IANS) The employment rate for women in South Korea exceeded the 60 per cent mark for the first time last year, but the wage gap between genders still remains high, a government report showed on Wednesday.

The employment index for women aged 15 to 64 reached 60 per cent in 2022, up 7.3 percentage points from 2010, but 22.8 per cent of them had low-paying jobs, nearly twofold the rate of men, according to the data issued by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

Some 46 per cent of women held temporary jobs, 15.4 percentage points higher than the 30.6 per cent of men working in non-regular positions, Yonhap News Agency reported citing the official figures.

The gender pay gap also remained in place, with female salary workers receiving 70 per cent of the hourly wage earned by their male counterparts.

In terms of monthly salaries, women received some 2.68 million won ($2,009) in wages, whereas men were paid 4.13 million won last year.

Women spent two hours and 17 minutes more on average doing household chores than men, but men spent roughly two hours more doing work or looking for a job in 2019.

Meanwhile, over 32,000 sexual abuse cases were reported in 2021, up 8.9 per cent year-on-year, but the number of dating violence criminals declined by 7.7 percent during the same period with nearly 11,000 cases.

In a separate survey of 2,716 listed firms, the gender pay gap narrowed to 30.7 per cent in 2022 from 38.1 per cent a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2019, according to the government data.

Men served an average of 11.9 years in listed companies and women served 8.9 years, with the difference in their career length marking 25.1 per cent last year.

The gender wage gap in public institutions was reported as smaller than private companies at 25.2 per cent, but the average number of years of employment for men was 31.5 percent longer than that of their female counterparts.