Factors affecting female workers’ perceived discrimination in the workplace: an analysis using the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Family

An increasing number of South Korean women are participating in economic activities and married women are not excluded from this trend. Women’s labor participation has considerable implications not only on a personal level, but also for organizational productivity and national competitiveness. While institutional and environmental efforts continue to be extended in an attempt to promote gender equality in the South Korean labor market, a great number of women continue to experience discrimination in terms of employment opportunities as well as in training, human resource management, work deployment, promotion, wage, retirement age, resignation, and dismissal. Against this backdrop, this research attempts to identify the factors affecting women’s perceived discrimination in the labor market. Distinct from previous studies that separately discuss personal, organizational, and policy factors, this empirical project assumes a comprehensive approach spanning all the three factors, which respectively correspond to microscopic, mid-range scale, and macroscopic dimensions. In particular, it classifies time into the periods before and after employment as a means to identify the discrete impacts of each factor. Nationally representative Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Family (KLoWF) data were used for analysis. According to the findings of the analysis, the structural and practical aspects of organizational factors including company size and organization type were related to female workers’ perceived discrimination both at the point of and after employment. Company size was more influential than organization type. For factors affecting perceived post-employment discrimination, organization type, company size, and job satisfaction were statistically significant among the organizational factors, while childbirth leave, childcare leave, and the existence of workplace childcare facilities demonstrated significance among policy factors. The degree of influence was greatest with company size, followed by childcare leave, organization type, childbirth leave, workplace childcare facility, and job satisfaction. Unlike the findings of previous studies, childbirth leave and workplace childcare facility exhibited a negative impact on female workers’ perceived discrimination.