From Alice Evans:
Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan are closing gender gaps in pay, seniority and parliamentary representation. Japan and South Korea, meanwhile, have the largest gender pay gaps in the OECD. Management remains 85% male. Female graduates are treated like secretaries, expected to pour the tea and run errands.
In Japan, a female graduate earns the same as a man who has only completed school. For Korean women aged 25-39, gender gaps in wages are indistinguishable between those with children and those without. In Europe, by contrast, there is a major penalty for motherhood.
Japanese businesses have lobbied again legislative change, even refusing sexual harassment training. Courts routinely deny systematic discrimination. Employers cannot even be sued for sexual harassment. Employees can only ask the Ministry of Labour for mediation. Accusations of abuse are mostly ignored.
At least part of the explanation stems from the lifetime full employment norms of Japan and South Korea, not present in Taiwan or Singapore, where those wage gaps are lower.
To summarise, Japan and South Korea have enshrined a system of lifetime employment and seniority pay for both blue collar and white collar workers. Firms are extremely sexist: men are treated as future managers, women are their subordinates. These inequalities are largest amongst low status regular workers. Fed up and frustrated, wives quit regular work to spend more time with their children and undertake non-regular, low paid work.
That is only part of the argument, here is the entire piece.
The post Why are Gender Pay Gaps so Large in Japan and South Korea? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Comments
Post a Comment