The gender gap in the Korean female labour market

This chapter examines the rise of precarious jobs through outsourcing in the service economy, particularly affecting young and old female workers. The chapter sheds light on the inconsistencies between institutions for decommodification and melting labour, leading to an expansion of female precarious workers in the Korean labour market. The problems faced by these newly emerging forms of work overlap with those of non-regular workers, and it is necessary to comprehensively examine both types of issues. Through empirical data and interviews with 23 workers and union leaders, the chapter highlights the gender gap in the Korean labour market, focusing on young female call centre workers and examining the issues of institutional protection and job instability surrounding older and younger female subcontracted labour in call centres and cleaning services. The chapter underscores how outsourcing has become more accessible due to technological development and offers insights into the unique challenges faced by female workers in precarious forms of work.

The Korean female labour market is characterised by a high concentration of females in irregular employment and a wide wage gap. Despite the fact that more than 82.8 per cent of Korean women have tertiary education degrees as of 2020, the wage gap between genders in Korea is still high, at 33 per cent, which is significantly higher than in the US (19 per cent), the UK (13 per cent) and Germany (3 per cent) (Jung E.H., 2015). Lee S.Y. and Kim Y.H. (2020) also pointed out the barriers to gender pay equality presented by the South Korean gendered dual labour market structure, particularly the gendered division between regular and irregular work. While there has been some progress in recent years, with the ratio of female to total male earnings increasing from 58 per cent in 2006 to 64 per cent in 2018, this progress has been limited given the narrow and decreasing educational attainment gap between men and women and the introduction of legislative measures to address gender discrimination in the labour market.