여성 노동시장의 변화와 활용방안에 관한 연구

Abstract

Korean society has been aging at an alarming speed since the 1990s, and so making efficient use of female labor force is becoming more important factor for sustainable economic growth. But the employment structure of women is worse than that of men, in spite of the increasing percentage of female employees. More than half of the women workers quit their jobs just before or after marriage and about half stop working after delivering their first child. Raising and educating children are heavy burdens; on average, a Korean couple spends half their income on their children's education, which is the largest share of all living expenses. The difficulty in balancing work and family, and the discrimination of wage, promotion, working condition, etc. on the basis of sex are also heavy burdens and handicaps to women. Korea must strive to tackle the problems of an aging population, women's discrimination in employment, and low birthrate that could threaten the country's productivity and economic growth in the long term. Suggestible improvement measures for increasing the participation rate of female labor force in economic activity and utilizing women's capability are as follows: First, it is necessary for the government and enterprise to develop and select types of occupation suitable for women, and to expand the opportunity of job training for the development of female capability. The improvement of women's capability and productivity might contribute to abolishing women's discrimination in working condition, wage, promotion, etc. Second, it is necessary to reform the employment system by introducing flextime or telecommuting in order to relieve women's burden of housework and nurturing children, and women's difficulty in balancing work and family. Flextime and telecommuting system could help to make efficient use of human capital and social overhead capital by cutting waste of time as well as to solve the problems of energy, environmental pollution, and traffic jam. Third, it is necessary, for the activation of telecommuting, to arrange the legal job security system, to build the foundation of information ＆ telecommunication system, to adopt new standard of work performance and assessment for the efficient management of telecommuter, and to develop program and model suitable for telecommuting with reference to the cases of advanced countries. Fourth, reemployment system should be enforced in order to make the most of married women with diverse experiences who have raised their children and are willing to take part in economic activity. Fifth, the government and enterprise should make every effort to develop and reorganize types of occupation and jobs which are suitable for women workers. Utilizing the female labor is a key to solving the structural problems of labor market with shortage of simple labor in small-medium manufacturing industry, high rate of unemployment of the highly educated labor, and women's increasing desire for participation in economic activity. Sixth, the government should establish the employment stabilization infrastructure and expand network system which help to improve the function of labor market by serving both male and female workers with information, education ＆ training, and consultation for jobs. Seventh, it is necessary to establish and expand the systematic foundation such as public or private nursery and preschool, and to introduce or expand maternity protection and paid maternity leave in order to relieve the burden of housework and nurturing children, the difficulty in balancing work and family, and the job security concerns of pregnant workers. The government authorities should draft a comprehensive plan that centers on providing social and financial support for nurturing children, increasing the productivity of female employees, and establishing the infrastructure for secure and healthy life. The wages paid to female employees during the three month maternity leave should be fully covered by the government, which will relieve the burden from employers and consequently ease the job concerns of pregnant workers.