South Korea's 2024 employment rate for women was 54.7 percent, a government report showed Sunday, indicating a reduced but still significant gender gap.
The joint report by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Ministry of Employment and Labor found that the women’s employment rate rose by 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier. It was 16.2 percentage points lower than the 70.9 percent for men.
The difference between women’s and men’s employment rates has fallen from 22 percentage points in 2014 to 19.1 percentage points in 2019, and to 16.2 percentage points in 2024.
Analysts continue to attribute the gap largely to entrenched gender roles within households.
“In Korea, the burden of child care and housework remains a major factor undermining women’s participation in economic activity,” the Federation of Korean Industries said in an analysis released earlier this year.
“To raise women’s employment to levels seen in other advanced economies, policy efforts should focus on creating an environment that reduces the difficulty of balancing work and motherhood.”
At the same time, the report pointed to notable improvements in job stability among women.
Of the 12.65 million women employed in Korea in 2024, 55.1 percent were permanent workers, an increase of 13.1 percentage points compared to a decade earlier. Over the same period, the share among men rose by 7.3 percentage points.
The proportion of women working as daily laborers and as unpaid family workers also declined over the decade, by 3.8 percentage points and 3.9 percentage points, respectively.
The number of women experiencing career breaks fell by 9.9 percent in 2024 from the previous year, a trend the report linked in part to the growing use of parental leave by men.
Male recipients of parental leave subsidies increased by 18.4 percent year-on-year to 41,829 people, accounting for 31.6 percent of all recipients.
forestjs@heraldcorp.com
