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43 Why women don’t work The Korean labor force is character- ized by a lack of women. The latest em- ployment figures from Statistics Korea show that while female participation in the labor force increased to just over 50 percent in March, it still lags far behind the 73.5 percent employment participation rate for men. Despite this slight growth, top companies are still failing to employ women. Earlier this year, market research firm CEOScore found that women made up only 16.6 percent of the workforce on average in the top 19 companies by sales in the country last year. This is just over a 2 percent increase com- pared to a decade ago. At the top level the statistics get worse. Women make up less than 2 percent of the 5,699 corporate officials of the 10 biggest companies. According to the data, roughly 1 out of every 1,430 female employees has reached a corporate management level compared to 1 out of 90 for men. On a global scale, Korea’s reputa- tion for not being female-friendly was cast into the limelight last year after the World Economic Forum placed the country 111th out of 136 countries in its 2013 Global Gender Gap report. In 2011, the Korea Women’s De- velopment Institute found that women accounted for less than 5 percent of corporate executives in companies with more than 1,000 employees, and in a 2012 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel- opment, Korea had the biggest gender pay gap, 39 percent, among member countries in 2010 — narrowing the gap by 1 percent since 2000 when it also topped the list. Song Eun-jung, director of labor policy at the Korean Women Workers Association, an NGO that advocates for women’s rights, says that women still face discrimination in the office even though there are laws in place to protect them. Last year, the organiza- tion saw a threefold increase in con- sultations concerning maternity leave, including women who said they were being pressured to quit their jobs due to pregnancy. Song says tactics such as verbal abuse or a heavier workload have been employed by some compa- nies to relieve the burden of maternity pay. “For example, a superior said to a woman, ‘I don’t want to look at your tummy because it’s too fat,’ or they just dispatch the women to a harsh department. They say they cannot give maternity leave at all or ‘I will give just one month, and if you want to continue the break, just quit,’” Song says. Korean law states that a woman is entitled to up to 90 days of maternity leave, with the first 60 days paid. It is illegal for an employer to allocate any overtime work to a pregnant employee, and a light workload should be given at her request. The law also stipu- lates paid time off for health checks. Both parents of a child under age 6 are also eligible for child care leave, which allows for a yearlong break with the guarantee of the same job, or one that pays the same wage, after the 12-month break. Dismissal or unfavor- able treatment of an employee upon request of child care leave is illegal. In a more woman-populated work en- vironment, such as the education field, maternity leave works well. But Song maintains that a lack of maternity leave is more prevalent in small companies, which are usually male-dominated and where temporary replacements can be hard to find. Even though the law states this benefit is a requirement, Song says companies rarely receive any punishment, as it is a “matter of the government’s will.” “Technically, (small companies) don’t take it really seriously,” she says. “There are cases where one or two women want to file a lawsuit against the government about maternity leave or birth breaks, but it’s really hard to fight against the company or the gov- ernment.” Only 50 percent of women are employed, compared to 73.5 percent for men. On a global scale, the World Economic Forum placed Korea 108th out of 135 countries in its Global Gender Gap report.