Women in Korea are more open to having children if they can be sure of their return to the workplace after giving birth, according to research by a state-funded think tank.
Kim Eun-ji, a senior researcher at the Korean Women’s Development Institute, found that women who believed they could continue working after childbirth were significantly more willing to have children than those who did not expect such job security.
Her findings were based on an analysis of survey responses from men and women aged 19 to 44, conducted as part of preliminary research for the 2024 Generations and Gender Survey Korea.
This tendency was more profound among women who had medium or low income, or did not already have children, Kim said at a conference held in Seoul on Thursday.
Men, on the other hand, generally were more willing than women to have children overall. The expectation of job security after childbirth had little effect on their willingness to have children, according to Kim.
"These results show that one's willingness to have children is not the matter of one's personal beliefs, but is closely linked to the practical reasons of 'Am I guaranteed a condition to work even after childbirth?'," Kim said. "Korean society must be restructured to allow for accomplishments in both one's career and family, deviating from the traditional family model of before."
Data revealed by the KWDI researchers also indicated that women experience a significant decrease in employment rate, income and working hours in the labor market after birth, a disparity that lingered even a decade later.
It was also found that the inclination to have a child and to get married had dropped drastically since 2014 among women aged 25 to 35.
Researchers noted that this has coincided with heightened gender dispute within Korean society and distrust of leadership, such as with the Sewol ferry sinking in April 2014 that revealed a network of corruption between the government and civilian sector.
A survey revealed by the KWDI in July showed that Korean women have significantly lower tendency to want childbirth compared to other major countries across the world. The institute compared the tendency of Koreans to people from seven other governments that participated in the studies under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and the Generation and Gender Program.
Korean women scored 1.58 points out of 5 in terms of how much they want to give childbirth, lower than all other states and regions of the Netherlands, Germany, Hong Kong, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia.
Meanwhile, Korean men scored 2.09 points, which was the second lowest among eight countries. Men were generally more willing to have children than women across the survey, though the disparity among Korean men and women was the highest of all eight.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
