A HRW report shows how South Korean women face systemic barriers to climbing the career ladder

At 27, a pistillate successful South Korea earns 8% little than antheral peers. By her precocious 50s, she earns 50% less. This is according to authorities wage information published successful a caller Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.  

South Korea is simply a planetary exertion and concern powerhouse, but its sex wage spread has remained the highest successful the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) since comparable records began successful 1992.  

"The sex part of labour wrong the location leads straight to a sex part of labour successful the labour market," Min Hee Kim, a Korean activist for women labour struggles, told DW. 

The problem, she argues, is not simply that women are paid little than men. As women age, the kinds of enactment disposable to them narrows and the consequences of little pay, vocation breaks and precarious jobs accumulate.  

For the report, "Too Old and a Woman," HRW interviewed 41 South Korean women aged 28 to 87 astir their moving lives.  

Structural barriers to women's careers

Discrimination has changed signifier alternatively than disappeared, Kim said. Until the 1980s, it was ineligible for employers to occurrence women simply for getting married, a signifier known arsenic "marriage-based dismissal," where employers assumed a joined woman would soon permission to rise children anyway. 

Today, "it is hard to openly say, 'We won't prosecute you due to the fact that you're a woman,'" Kim added. But caregiving responsibilities inactive autumn connected women, pushing them into lower-paid jobs erstwhile they effort to instrumentality to work. 

According to the HRW report, women's assemblage attainment has passed men's since the 1980s. Higher acquisition would suggest adjacent accidental aft graduation, but the occupation marketplace says otherwise.  

One twelvemonth aft graduating, women already gain 22% little than men, according to a 2024 study. 

Many women told HRW that aft leaving enactment for matrimony oregon children, chances of returning to the workforce were constricted to a fistful of jobs specified arsenic telephone centers, cleaning oregon caregiving.  

Women who opt to absorption connected their vocation told HRW they deed a solid ceiling astatine work. Women held 18% of manager jobs successful 2024, and lone 5 of 38 elder civilian servants were women. 

Wages highest and driblet off

Women's wages highest successful their precocious 30s and past steadily decline, according to Labor Ministry survey information cited by HRW.  

South Korea's Gender Ministry told HRW that vocation interruptions, on with occupational segregation and favoritism wrong organizations, thrust the gap. 

J. Mi-sook, 53, told HRW that her 3 years of acquisition weren't recognized by her adjacent employer, truthful she started astatine introduction level connected a little salary. 

The longer women walk extracurricular the workforce, the little acquisition they accumulate connected their resumes, which results successful little wage and little enactment stability.  

Kim pointed to structural discrimination, a conception from the study that HRW describes arsenic favoritism truthful embedded successful societal practices and institutions that adjacent the radical harmed by it whitethorn not admit it arsenic a problem.  

"When you are alone, it is casual to think, 'It's due to the fact that I'm not susceptible enough,' oregon 'It's due to the fact that I'm getting older,'" she said. It's lone erstwhile women who've had akin experiences conscionable and talk, she added, that they realize, "this wasn't conscionable my problem." 

It gets harder arsenic you get older

Park Jae-soon, 61, was forced to discontinue astatine 60 from a inferior institution and present works part-time arsenic a attraction worker. Her yearly income fell from 55 cardinal won ($40,500/€35,600) to 15.6 cardinal won, a 72% drop.

HRW argues the mandatory status property and the "peak wage" system, which lets employers chopped older workers' wage successful the years earlier retirement, should some beryllium abolished. 

According to information cited successful the report, women received 53% of men's National Old Age Pension connected mean successful October 2025, a 47% gap.  

"I deliberation what is important present is that this is not simply a occupation of middle-aged women having trouble uncovering jobs," Kim said.

"The enactment that women person traditionally done wrong the home, like cleaning, cooking, caregiving and managing different people's emotions, is classified arsenic 'work suitable for women' erstwhile it enters the labour market, and past debased wages are assigned to it," she added. 

From archetypal paycheck to pension 

HRW argues the disadvantage builds signifier by stage, from a woman's archetypal paycheck up until her pension. 

"Career interruption among women successful their 30s is already a pension issue," Kim said. "Part-time enactment among women successful their 40s is simply a pension issue, and debased wages among women successful their 50s are already a pension issue," she added.

South Korea's authorities has said it volition prosecute a phased summation successful the statutory status property from 60 to 65.

"This cannot beryllium solved with conscionable 1 policy. Equal wage for adjacent enactment needs to beryllium really implemented, wage structures request to beryllium transparent, and attraction needs to beryllium treated arsenic a nationalist work alternatively than thing that is pushed onto idiosyncratic families and women," Kim said.  

The rights activistic said the study is an important starting point, but believes its representation is incomplete.

Most interviewees were recruited done civic organizations and mostly successful Seoul, she noted, portion disabled women, migrant workers and others whitethorn acquisition a antithetic operation of property and sex discrimination. 

"The important question is not simply, 'How overmuch favoritism bash women face?'" she said. "It is which women, successful what positions, go progressively distanced from which resources and rights arsenic they turn older."

Edited by: Wesley Rahn