Developmentalism, Social Policy,and the Lives of Korean Women Industrial Workers

국문 초록 (Abstract)

해당 없음

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

We have traced the process of capitalist industrialization and economic development in Korea, as an effort to delineate major factors that have affected the quality of lives of women industrial workers. First of all, Korean women have increasingly been integrated into the process since the 1960s, as an important part of the labor force. In the manufacturing labor market, women, and married women in particular, were more likely to be concentrated in the low-paying jobs and places. It was also women that were disadvantaged more than men in the economic crisis. All these factors show that the labor market is a gendered space where a strong gender prejudice is operative.
Secondly, social policies affecting women industrial labor have evolved very slowly. Although the laws to protect labor rights and welfare had been established as early as the 1950s and 1960s, industrial workers became eligible for pension, medical insurance, employment insurance and other social welfare benefits only by the success of their labor struggles. Industrial workers in small-scale businesses, the self-employed, and farmers have been the last to be covered by state social insurance.
The seemingly gender-neutral social insurance system revealed various gender discriminatory practices. Moreover, women-specific measures including the protection of ‘motherhood’ and daycare services were not automatically established or enforced. These rights were achieved by the women’s movement in Korea, separate from labor movement. Yet, the gender factor in the application of social insurance system is yet to be addressed.
Thirdly, the state social welfare policies are essentially corporate-based, at least with respect to corporate employees including a majority of industrial workers. Since employers are responsible for a large part of welfare costs, while the government’s share of welfare costs is very limited, the application of each and every welfare benefit programs must be won through collective bargains.
Finally, all non-wage benefits derived from state social policies to protect labor, in addition to the individual corporate welfare provisions, obviously supplement the low wages of industrial workers, “male and female alike.” However, women workers are disadvantaged here again due to the assumption that most of the policies regard women as dependents.
Taking the risk of over-generalization or over-simplification, the authors of this paper attribute most of these phenomena to developmentalism or to the developmental regime of a compressed process of capitalist industrialization on the one hand, and to societalized patriarchy and patriarchal familism on the other.
The persistent pursuit of development goals by subjects of all sectors, including the labor force as well as the state and political leaders, led to a compressed expansion and its expensive tolls. This compressed process was characterized by a very rapid change in one sector of the social system, an unbalanced and disarticulated change bypassing certain basic procedures, which distinguished itself from the the more gradual process of industrialization of the advanced West. In this analysis, the economic crisis came as a natural course of action caused by overloaded circuits in the system of compressed expansion of the developmental regime.
The analysis of the developmentalism in relation with gender also shows that patriarchal familism has been embedded in the entire process of economic development of Korea. Women’s labor has been assumed to be inferior and deserving of less pay, early retirement and other disadvantages. Furthermore, women’s dependency in the family has been taken for granted as a legitimate source of discrimination in social and corporate welfare schemes. In consequence, women have become concentrated in the secondary layer of the labor market and relatively a lower quality of life compared to their male counterparts. Although working women became beneficiaries of the social welfare system, still more have been excluded from access to the system or to equal benefits as provided to men.
We would like to conclude this paper with an expression of strong reservation concerning the replication of the Korean model of developmental regime in other parts of the world. In light of the serious issues raised in this paper, we believe such a replication is not desirable, nor possible.

국문 초록 (Abstract)

UNRISD에 제출된 기타 보고서임,
메타작성자초록(국문)은 결론부분에서 발췌하여 대신함

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

I.Introduction

II.Korean Developmentalism and Women's Labor Participation

III.Social Policies, the Corporate Welfare System and Women Workers

IV.Concluding Remarks