Time Divide, Gender Divide: Gender, Work, and Family in South Korea

South Korea is celebrated for its rapid economic growth and development, but gender equity is far out of reach in the South Korean economy: women’s labor force participation remains among the lowest, and the gender gap in pay is among the largest among the advanced industrialized countries. What explains this pervasive and persistent gender disparity? In this introductory essay, the authors argue that the social organization of time—specifically, how time is used and valuated—is an important proximate mechanism that creates and reinforces gender inequality in South Korea. Following the logic of gender, which dictates what women and men should do at work and in the family and how hours spent on these domains are compensated economically and culturally, the time divide takes a deeply gendered form and creates unequal economic outcomes between women and men. The authors also argue that the time divide is more consequential in South Korea, relative to other countries, because two cultural forces—work culture emphasizing long work hours and parenting culture emphasizing gender essentialism—both operate at the highest level. At the end of this essay, the authors put forth ideas about how organizational and institutional policies might help to reform this deeply gendered system.