At the point of entering into aged society within 10 years, women in early old age - age group between 50 and 54- are one of the most considerable groups in our society. In respect that women's average life span is longer than that of men and of the r...
At the point of entering into aged society within 10 years, women in early old age - age group between 50 and 54- are one of the most considerable groups in our society. In respect that women's average life span is longer than that of men and of the rapid progress to the aging society, one of the active policy measures in preparation for the aging society is to develope vocational education programs pertinent to the women in early old age. To provide a policy measure in preparation to the ageing society, this study was started with the interest in analysing the effectiveness of the actual vocational education programs provided by Women's Development Centers in Seoul, recognizing the necessity of vocational education programs focusing on the women in early old age. Specifically, the purpose of this study is to reveal motivation of the women over 50's who participated in the programs of the Women's Development Centers, and to find out factors significant to employment as the effect of the vocational education.
Since there was almost no research on the vocational education targeting women in early old age, this study includes reviewing relevant and similar literature. As the factors significant to employment of the women in early old age, personal background factor, family background factor, and vocational education factors were mainly considered. Targeting the women in early old age between 50 to 59 who participated in the 5 Women's Development Centers in Seoul from October 2005 to December 2005, a follow-up study was conducted at the point of one year 6 months after the completion of the education programs.
The student list used as the basis material here is the same list collected for student satisfaction survey done by Seoul Women's Foundation in 2006 as part of the Women's Development Center evaluation for the year of 2005, which is provided with the agreement of 5 Women's Development Centers. As the result of examining the 4th term of 2005 education programs, the actual number of students who participated in the vocational programs was 5,513, except repeating students. Among them, 467 women students age between 50 and 59 were chosen as the object of this study, telephone interview method was used. The period of survey was between 12 May 2007 and 17 May 2007. For the survey result analysis, 214 valid examples were sorted.
As the result of the survey, for the question on the motivation of participation, 33.6% of 214 respondents answered that they took the course‘as a hobby and pastime.’As the next most answers, 23.8% of respondents said‘to cultivate one's ability,’11.7% answered‘to find a job,’9.8% were‘to be prepared for the certificates of qualification,’and 8.9% said‘to be prepared for one's old age.’Questions were focused on asking major and the most important programs depending on the participants, excluding repeated participation in the programs. 24.8% of the respondents took the Dressmaking Course, which was the most popular program, and the next most popular course was cooking program(24.3%). Information Technology Education Course was taken by 16.4% of the respondents, and Craftwork Course was taken by 9.8%.
In order to reveal the interrelation between the factors sorted from the survey and the employment, Chi-square test was conducted.
The result is as follows:
Personal background factors
Personal Background factors includes age, educational background, marital status, past income activity, health condition, achievement motivation, and self-esteem. Among them, except past income activity, health condition and achievement motivation factors, the rest factors of personal background turned out to be invalid at the 95% confidence level. That is, as the result of Chi-square test, it is revealed that past income activity, health condition and achievement motivation factors are interrelated with employment.
Family background Factors
Family Background factors are composed of resource of household income, household gross income, number of dependents in family, and family members' relationship. As the result of Chi-square test, it is estimated that all the factors regarded as family background have no interrelation with employment status.
Vocational education factors
Vocational education factors includes participation motivation, course of vocational education, and the period of the vocational education. Studying the interrelation between these factors relevant to vocational education and employment status, participation motivation was turned into be a significant factor to the employment status.
Based upon the outcomes of the Chi-square test, the method of conditional logistic regression analysis was used in order to analyze factors significant to employment as the effect of the vocational education. The logistic regression analysis has been conducted with the three background factors as an independent variable and with the employment status as a dependent variable. As the result, among personal background factors, only past income activity, health condition and achievement motivation factors are turned into be interrelated with employment. In the analysis of the interrelation between the past income activity factor and employment status, it was turned into be statistically valid at the 95% confidence level. This means that the women who has past experience of employment has higher potential for the re-employment than that of women who has no employment experience. The analysis between self-esteem and employment status was revealed to be statistically valid, which means, higher the self-esteem, higher potential the participants have for the employment.
Based on the result of this study, five policy proposal was provided. First, it is necessary to develop vocational programs pertaining to the women in early old age and to encourage more women to participate in the programs. Secondly, vocational training contents should be enhanced, in the respect that there is a limit getting a job right after the education and that the women who has past experience of employment has higher potential for the re-employment. Thirdly, it is required to strengthen the post-control system for the participants, in order to monitor the effects of the education more accurately and to manage better the participants of the education. Forth, the vocation counseling should be expanded for the women in early old age. Fifth, expanding and creating jobs meeting the needs of women in early age is crucial.
In respect that a follow-up study was conducted at the point of one year 6 months after the completion of the education programs, this study is meaningful in some way, but has several limitations. In order to examine the effectiveness of the vocational education significant to employment, it is required to compare the group who participated in the education programs with the group who didn't. Thus, this study was ended in a phenomenal analysis revealing what the major motivation was for the participants in the Women's Development Centers' education programs. Another problem is that the effectiveness of the centers' vocational education is limited to the employment status. Restricting the effectiveness of the education to the employment status, more careful research was lacked on the effectiveness as the process to be employed and to get certificates, and on the achievement of participants who have jobs already. Further, in this study no explanation was made on the inconsistence between the vocational education programs and the fields of employment, and on the causes of the inconsistence. Since the problem is connected to the direction of the study, succeeding study is required on the issue.