Women, get out of the kitchen!

last updated 8 January 2015

South Korea

Editorial

Korea needs its women to go to work, said the Seoul Korea Herald in an editorial. We’re making “good progress” right now, with more than half of women working outside the home. But there’s a long way to go. Among youths ages 18 to 21, fully 80 percent of males are enrolled in university, but only 50 percent of females are. As in every other developed country, our birth rate is low. We need many more women to enter into the workforce if we are to support our elderly in the coming decades. “The state and businesses should make concerted efforts” to “pull them out of homes” and into offices. Mandatory equal pay and promotion would be a start. Many women who do work are underpaid. That’s not only an “abuse of human rights,” but it’s also not conducive to generating the tax revenue we’ll need to fund pensions. Companies should also offer child-care facilities—on site, if possible. In the next decade, women should make a real contribution to the “economic advancement of the nation.”