Activating Women in the Labor Market: The Development of South Korea’s Female-Friendly Employment and Labor Market Policies

This paper analyzes the development of female-friendly employment and labor market policies, focusing on the case of South Korea, whose government has pursued an increase in women’s employment in the labor market over the past decade under the pressure of social, economic, and demographic challenges. It examines the three policy cases - Affirmative Action, the creation of good quality part-time employment, and the flexible work arrangement system -, all of which have been actively promoted by the government to assist female workers participating in the labor market. In this paper, I argue that South Korean policy-makers have made various efforts to boost female labor force participation as part of its economic growth strategy, but have achieved very limited outcomes in the improvement of the quality and quantity of women’s employment.