South Korea has been long known for its high gender wage gap. According to OECD 2017 data, South Korea recorded 34.6% in terms of gender wage gap, with the US 18.2% and Japan 24.5%. To evaluate whether this gap is due to women’s career disruption or due to the prevalence of gender discrimination, Kim and Oh (2019) used data from the multi-year Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey, investigating women and men’s income in their early career stages.
According to the data’s descriptive statistics, 6.7% more men graduate from four-year colleges than women, and 43% of men major in engineering compared to 9% of women. Therefore, in order to control for gender differences in the level of human capital, this study controlled for various variables including study field, GPA, reputation of college, age, and experience in internship. Results show that when controlling for human capital variables, women’s gender wage gap decreased to 17.4%, and the gap further decreased to 7.6% when controlling for labor market variables. To compare extensively, the wage gap between private and government/education sector was evaluated. Results showed that whereas the government and education sector recorded 2.6% of wage gap, the private sector recorded 22%. Furthermore, it was shown that women who graduated from elite colleges experienced severer earnings disadvantage than those who graduated from less-prestigious schools, implying that women graduating from elite colleges faced double discrimination in the labor market.
As a result, this research suggests that women’s disadvantage in wages is not only because of women’s career disruption, but also because of gender discrimination present in the early stages of careers. Based on the research, it can be also argued that the gender wage gap in South Korea is largely due to gendered labor market allocation processes.
References:
Kim, ChangHwan and Byeongdon Oh. 2019. “No Gender Discrimination before Career Disruption?: Gender Earnings Gap at the Early Stage of Work Career among College Graduates in South Korea.” Korean Journal of Sociology 53(1): 167-204.
