The astounding gender discrimination case at the liquor-maker Kumbokju should remind all -- labor and rights officials, civic groups as well as law-enforcement authorities -- that South Korea still has a long way to go to get rid of this social ill.
The Daegu-based distiller had shocked the nation in March when one of its female workers filed a petition with authorities over the company’s pressure on her to quit because she was getting married.
The petition prompted an investigation by labor offices and the National Human Rights Commission. Their findings, announced this week, still do not mitigate the degree of the shock we suffered five months ago.
The rights panel said the company -- since its establishment in 1957 -- had made it a rule that female workers quit when they were getting married. No wonder there were only about 10 female staff among its 150-strong workforce, and none of them were married.
NHRC officials said in October last year, the woman notified her supervisors of her plan to get married in two months. As she refused their demand to quit, the supervisors transferred her to an unrelated job and put up more pressure, to which she had to yield.
It is fortunate -- for her and many more women who may suffer from the same hardship -- she bravely came forward to rectify this disgusting practice.
As it turned out, the company’s anti-women policies went beyond imagination. It limited job positions for female staff to low ones so they -- mostly high school graduates – could not be promoted beyond a certain level.
The company excluded mother-side relatives in giving employees special leave and allowances for funerals, marriages or other important family events and anniversaries.
All these anachronistic, abominable practices were maintained even after the legislation of the Law on Gender Equality Employment in 1987.
This raises the possibility that there may be a second or third Kumbokju somewhere in the country. This should be the most important lesson we should learn from the case.
Korea is already undergoing a drastic demographic change, such as the world’s lowest birthrate and rapid aging of population. More young people are delaying marriages and childbirths due to economic uncertainties and lack of decent jobs.
Last year’s total fertility rate remained at 1.24, the second-lowest in the 34-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The number of newborns in the first five months of this year dropped by 10,000 from a year ago.
The Kumbokju case tells us that all the nation’s efforts to reverse the trend would go nowhere unless we make sure there are no more perpetrators of such blatant discrimination against female workers.
