Wage gap widens for female contract workers

A study showed Thursday that the wage gap between female contract workers and male full-time employees is widening, a reverse effect of the government’s plan to support employment for women by creating more irregular job opportunities for women returning to work.

According to the Korea Labor and Society Institute, female temporary workers here earned only 36 percent as much as full-time male workers’ average salary last year, a 1.4 percent decrease from 2004.

The number of temp workers of both genders increased in South Korea, from 8.16 million in 2004 to 8.52 million last year. Among the 360,000 who joined the temp workforce over the past decade, 89 percent were women.

Also, of 2.27 million workers who earned less than the minimum wage ― 5,580 won ($4.95) an hour ― 65 percent were female workers.

“Female contract workers are faced with double jeopardy in terms of discrimination ― one for being a woman and the other for not being a full-time employee,” said researcher Kim Yu-seon from the institute.

“Our findings suggest that the government’s gender equality policies, including the pledge to create quality jobs for women, are not working.”

The number of part-time workers (who are not working on a yearly contract), meanwhile, almost doubled in South Korea since 2004, from 1.07 million to 2.03 million last year, the study showed. Their hourly wage was only 48 percent as high as that of full-time workers, a 17.8 percent decrease from 2004.

According to the Korea Women’s Development Institute, only 53.9 percent of all South Korean women were in the workforce in 2013. The rate left South Korea in 25th place among the 33 OECD countries.

While the employment rate was low, South Korean women had the longest working hours among OECD countries in 2011, with a single Korean woman working an average of 41.7 hours a week.

Asia’s fourth-biggest economy also had the lowest employment of women with post-secondary degrees, at 61.2 percent, in 2012. The OECD average was 78.6 percent.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)