Unfinished missions of the Gender Ministry

The government must allow the Gender Ministry to play its due role.

Chung Jae-hongThe author is an international, diplomatic and security news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo. President Yoon Suk Yeol is on a crusade to shut down the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. After Kim Hyun-sook resigned as the minister, the ministry is being run by the vice minister. Other senior posts in the ministry will be handled by officials from other ministries. The Yoon administration plans to close down the ministry by revising the Government Organization Act if the People Power Party (PPP) wins the April 10 parliamentary elections.

Some pundits argue for removing the ministry as it already “completed its missions of the times.” They point to the reverse discrimination and the deepening social conflict spiked by the ministry in the past. The ministry did play a part in fueling social conflict, as implied by its 2011 ban on juveniles playing games online at midnight.

Kim Hyun-sook, former minister of gender equality and family, receives a bouquet from an official before leaving the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on Feb. 21. [YONHAP]

The government takes the position that if the Gender Ministry vanishes, its functions can be fully covered by other ministries — for instance, jobs for women by the Ministry of Employment and Labor; issues involving juveniles and female students by the Ministry of Education and local governments; women’s health and childcare by the Ministry of Health and Welfare; and sex crimes by the police and the prosecution.

But I wonder if the Gender Ministry really completed its missions of the times. Has the chronic gender gap at workplaces and other parts of our society disappeared — and is the responsibility for raising children being shared equally? Reality points in the opposite direction. In the glass-ceiling index announced by the Economist last week, Korea ranked at the bottom among 29 OECD members. The British magazine presents the index by reflecting various indicators, including the rate of women’s participation in the labor market, a gender gap in income and higher education, women’s share in executive posts, child care expenses and parental leave. But Korea has been in the lowest rank every year since 2013.

Korea’s gender pay gap was 31.1 percent — the largest among the 29 countries this year — just like last year. Women’s labor participation rate —17.2 percentage points lower than men’s — ranked 27th. The shares of women in managerial posts (16.3 percent) and female board members (12.8 percent) at companies were the second lowest. That represents a serious level of income disparity between the two sexes and the alienation of women in the labor market, as well as their mediocre social power. In the index, countries in Northern Europe — Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland — took the top four posts.

The labor market based on gender discrimination naturally leads to the world’s lowest birth rate of Korea, as seen in its total fertility rate of 0.65 in the last quarter of 2023. The National Assembly Research Service recently suggested that if the country can address a multi-layered discriminative structure for women’s job security, wage and employment, it could be a substantial measure to raise our lethargic birthrate.

According to the research body, the employment gap between men and women is 2 to 3 percentage points when they are in their 20s, but the gap widens to 30 percentage points in their 30s due to women’s overburden for bearing and raising a child. Thirty-something males’ employment rate reached 90 percent while their female counterparts’ stopped at 64.4 percent. While nearly all men are employed in their 30s, women start losing jobs in that stage and start finding new jobs in their 40s.

The share of temporary employees also shows a large gap. Last year, 70.2 percent of male wage earners were hired on a permanent employee contract, but the share was only 54.5 percent for their female counterparts. (The share of non-permanent employees was 29.8 percent for men, while that number was 45.5 percent for women.) Though the ratio of non-permanent workers steadily increased for women, the share rose after age 50 for men.

Experts single out our society’s immature recognition and culture over the gender-based discrimination in the labor sector as the very source of social conflict. If the government turns away from women’s low participation in economic activities and their gender-based wage gap, such issues cannot be resolved. The grim reality poses a plethora of challenges to the Gender Ministry.

Women’s proactive participation in economic activities amid Korea’s alarming population decline helps strengthen our national competitiveness. But the country has a long way to go. The government must allow the Gender Ministry to play its due role. Abolishing the ministry without such an awareness constitutes a brazen denial of reality. What must be ended is not the ministry but the gender-based discrimination.