This article discusses the differences in 알바 part-time jobs between Korean and Japanese women. Japanese women have a larger gender gap in terms of wages than their OECD counterparts, and also have a higher risk of automation in their part-time jobs.
In Japan, part-time employment is defined as any job that requires less than 30 hours per week and usually does not include benefits such as health insurance or retirement savings. In 2019, only 11.7% of employed women were in part-time jobs compared to 8.2% of employed men, whereas in Korea the numbers were much higher: 44.2% for women and 71.4% for men.
This is due to the fact that in Japan, the number of womens older peoples employment has been increasing over recent years, with more women being added to the labor force. In Japan, the rate of an increasingly aging population has also been rising, and this has meant that a larger proportion of women workers are 65 years and older. As well as this, Japan’s low birth rates have also made decreases in its labor force as fewer young people enter it. This means that foreign workers are increasingly taking on roles in order to fill the gap left by Japanese workers.
This has led to a sharp increase in the number of part-time jobs for women in Japan. The same is true for South Korea, where the fertility rate is also low and young men’s employment is worsening. Costs of employment insecurity have been thought to be related to low fertility rates and decreasing marriage rates. Low incomes related to part-time work may also be driving these trends, as insecurity increases when wages are low. In developed Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, womens labor force participation has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Attitude towards part-time work in each country has been studied by academics such as Suzuki (2013) and Matsuda (2013).
Their studies have shown that there are differences in the types of part-time jobs for women in Korea and Japan. In Korea, the largest gender gaps in labor force participation is seen amongst female managers and risk jobs, while in Japan it is seen amongst occupations such as sales and high skill occupations. Additionally, in Japan, there is a larger proportion of clerical occupations and service jobs taken up by women compared to Korea. Japan has a higher ratio of full time workers compared to Korea, where temporary employees take up a larger proportion of the labor force. This could be due to the fact that dependent employment jobs are more common in Korea than Japan. Part-time work for women also differs between the two countries; Korean women tend to opt for part-time work over full-time work more often than Japanese women, contributing to a larger gap between male and female labor force participation.
Generally, Korean part-time workers have lower wages and more irregular working hours than Japanese workers. This is largely due to the prevalence of low-skill employment in Korea and the economy’s reliance on temporary work. According to OECD countries’ employment growth statistics, Japan has seen an increase in regular employment while Korea has seen a rise in part-time work since the collapse of its bubble economy in the 1990s. As a result, Korean women are often employed at lower wages than men in similar positions, while Japanese women often can find higher-skill jobs with more regular working hours.
The differences in part-time jobs between Korean and Japanese women are significant. In Korea, the number of unemployed young adults has increased, with irregular earnings and decreased incomes leading to experienced economic losses. Highly skilled women are often unable to find regular employment, and instead take on time-work positions with less financial stability. In Japan, part-time positions are often taken by experienced women or children who have the flexibility to work around their other commitments. These jobs tend to offer more regular pay than those in Korea, and their increasing share of the workforce remains a problem for full-time job seekers. Despite this difference in opportunities between the two countries, both Korean and Japanese women face financial problems due to their reliance on part-time work rather than full-time jobs with regular pay.
For female college graduates, part-time jobs are the most accessible form of employment in both countries. However, for childless women, Japan has a smaller wage gap than South Korea due to the higher literacy skills of Japanese women. This enables many Japanese women to make full time work despite their relative lack of experience compared to men. In addition, due to their higher literacy skills, Japanese women are more likely to obtain managerial and professional positions than their Korean counterparts. In South Korea however, only compulsory education is available and this leaves many female workers with lower literacy skills than in Japan.
This has led to an entire female work force that is generally less skilled than in Japan, leading to fewer opportunities. As a result, many South Korean women have quit their jobs or been forced out of their positions due to the low fertility rate and the tendency for families to enter many women into childcare facilities or similar services. This baby strike has caused a work inordinate number of South Korean women in their 30s, compared to Japan where the numbers are more evenly distributed.
In Korea, many women are juggling long working hours and opt to quit their jobs when they hit their 30s in order to focus on their family life. In Japan, the government has encouraged women to stay in the workplace by developing related laws such as Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and maternity leave. Despite these efforts, Japanese women’s proportion of remaining female executives is still lower than men’s. Also, when they drop out of the workforce, their salaries remain lower than men’s. This difference between Korean and Japanese women is due to different perceptions towards career and marriage.
Japanese women spend less time on the job than their male counterparts, and earn less than them as well. Additionally, Japanese women are often excluded from working cultures like after-work socializing and drinks with coworkers. This results in an invisible pay gap between their male counterparts. In other OECD countries, the gap is much smaller; however, in Japan only 41 minutes of unpaid labor such as household chores and childcare are done by men, compared to 3 hours for women. South Korea has a similar pay gap to other countries except South Korea where men spend more hours at work and have more contacts to talk business.