주유엔 대한민국 대표부

Statement by H.E. Ms. CHO Yoon-Sun

Minister of Gender Equality and Family of the Republic of Korea

at The Fifty-Eighth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women

11 March 2014

New York

Mr. Chair,

Distinguished Delegates,

1. It is my great pleasure to address the Fifty-eighth United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on behalf of the government of the Republic of Korea. I would first like to express my gratitude to the members of the Bureau, the Executive Director of UN Women and her staff, and the UN Secretary General for their leadership and continued efforts in preparing for this year's session.

2. With less than two years to go before the target year of 2015, remarkable achievements in the MDGs were made, such as meeting the goal to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty.

3. However, I believe that everyone in this room will agree that we still have a long way to go to improve gender equality regardless of the level of achievement in each of our countries.

(1) Promoting gender-mainstreaming strategies

Mr. Chair,

4. The government of Korea set a detailed implementation plan and worked toward achieving gender equality at the national level.

5. We actively implemented gender-mainstreaming strategies in the policymaking process with the belief that “disregarding the differences between men and women could lead to unintended discrimination.”

6. As one of the strategies, Gender Impact Assessment was first introduced in Korea in 2004. The Act of Gender Impact Assessment was legislated in 2011 and its scope expanded from new legislations and amendments of laws to the existing laws and regulations, and from central to local government. Further, the guidelines have also been revised to ensure that the Gender Impact Assessment is conducted on new major government tasks of the Park Geun Hye administration.

7. Last year, 44 central government entities conducted the Gender Impact Assessment on 1,569 projects, and local governments on approximately 18,000 projects. We are continuing to compile more policy improvements that are relevant to the daily lives of our citizens.

8. Since the Assessment results must be incorporated in the following year’s budgets, coordination with Gender Responsive Budgeting is crucial.

9. To ensure that government resources are fairly allocated for men and women, the Korean government started using Gender Responsive Budgeting in 2010. Last year, its adoption was even expanded to local governments. Currently, the gender-sensitive budgets are estimated to be 21 billion US dollars (23 trillion KRW). This shows a 73.1% increase from the previous year’s budgets (12.5 billion USD in 2013).

(2) Enhancing Women’s Representation

10. It is true that women’s economic and political participation has been on the rise, cracking the glass-ceiling, but women’s representation especially at the executive, decision-making level is still very poor. I describe this situation as, ‘Even though the spring has come at the foot of the mountain, the mountain top is covered with an ice cap. And the ice cap is not melted automatically with a spring breeze, and the only thing that can melt the ice cap is the body temperature of women who are sitting on it.’

11. The Korean government has introduced various measures to increase women’s representation in policymaking and encouraged the public sector to lead the way. Quotas were set to raise the rate of women’s participation in both central and local government committees up to 40% in the law. Targets were set to raise the ratio of women in managerial positions in central governments (level 4 and above) from 9.9% to 15%, and the proportion of female principals and vice principals from 27.2% to 33% by 2017. In addition, government owned companies and public institutions have set voluntary targets to increase the number of female managers and board members: the results should be reported in their annual report publications starting this April, and it will be an important indicator for performance evaluation as of next year. The military and police, which had even poorer representation of women, established new strategies to enhance female representation.

12. In politics, we have seen small achievements in raising the number of female lawmakers from the quota system. Still, the proportion of women in the National Assembly remains at 15.7% and less than 20% at the local councils, ranking Korea 88th among 189 IPU member states (as of April 2013). In this regard, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is working with civil society to encourage political parties to support women’s participation in the Local General Election this coming June.

(3) Increasing Women’s Economic Participation

Mr. Chair,

13. The society, where women have to give up their dreams because they cannot keep a work life balance, where women’s labor is undervalued, and where women do not have fair opportunities, will fail to encourage growth, and fail to ensure the happiness of its members.

14. The latest report says Korea’s fertility rate is 1.19; the lowest among the OECD member countries. If this trend continues, the prime-age workers will start to decrease from 2017. Countries with high employment rate of women also have high GDP per capita and high fertility rate. Thus, boosting women’s economic participation would be the key to solving such social problems and to achieving sustainable growth.

15. Having its first female president last year, the Republic of Korea has underlined the importance of preventing career-interruption for women, fostering female talents, and promoting work-life balance. Madam Park Geun Hye’s new initiative, the ‘Three-year Economic Innovation Plan’ outlined its goals to raise the number of jobs for women up to 1.5 million by 2017, and raising the female employment rate from 53.9% to 61.9%.

16. Pushing forward with these goals, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family collaborated with the World Economic Forum to launch the ‘Gender Parity Task Force.’ It consists of members of ministries, political parties, and private companies to set goals of gender-focused missions and to raise public awareness on gender equality.

17. Last month, our ministry and five other Ministries jointly announced the ‘Lifecycle Career Support Strategies for Working Women’ with a shared vision of creating a society where women no longer are forced to sacrifice their career for raising children.

18. Living as a working mother is like juggling multiple balls. To relieve the burdens of child care on working mothers we need to raise the public understanding of the value of work-life balance. Acknowledging how the family-friendly management of a company can achieve the sustainable growth not only of a company but also of the employees we have introduced systems such as Flexible Working Hour, Generous incentives for companies creating Decent Part Time Jobs, and Remote Work System. However, there is no single panacea to help women keep a work-life balance, and we have to do whatever is possible. The only way to reach our goal is to give working mothers more options at hand.

19. We are continuing to improve the childcare environment for working parents by providing free childcare services to children aged 5 and under and building more daycare centers: about 50 billion US dollars (5,270 million KRW) of budget has been secured for this policy. Also, another 95 million US dollars (1,008 billion KRW) has been allocated to expand the after-school programs at elementary schools to build a reliable infrastructure for working parents.

20. By 2017, the rate of in-house childcare facilities at workplaces subject to mandatory work place childcare centers, will be raised to 70% from 39%.

21. For women who have already suffered job losses, we provide tailored career support services to help their reemployment with institutional infrastructure called “Re-start center”.

22. Last century, the Republic of Korea developed from an aid-recipient country into a donor country despite the brutal experience of colonization, the Korean War, and subsequent extreme poverty. There is no other country besides Korea that can provide hands-on advice with the understanding of a recipient country’s suffering and challenges.

23. Particularly, Korea acknowledges the importance of gender equality and women’s role in socio-economic development. Thus, it has engaged in many ODA projects around the world that promote women’s rights and the empowerment of women. We plan to expand our ODAs for women through enactment of the ‘Basic Act on International Development and Cooperation’ which includes the spirit of gender equality in its fundamental principles.

24. Currently, Korea is implementing 24 pilot projects in Asia and Africa through the work of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). From 2011, we have been increasing bilateral and multilateral cooperation on empowering women in developing countries by supporting the ‘career development centers for women’ projects, which benchmarks the ‘Women’s Re-Start Centers’ in Korea. Since the launch of UN Women, the Korean government has been donating 4.7 million US dollars annually to contribute to the global efforts to enhance the status of women in the world.

25. We have made great progress in reaching gender parity under the leadership of UN, CSW, and UN Women. However, no one can dare to say ‘it’s enough’ or ‘now we are all done’. For tackling crosscutting challenges, we must strengthen the global partnerships with effective strategies.

26. Gender equality should be included as a stand-alone goal in the Post-2015 agenda and it should be mainstreamed in the agenda. The Republic of Korea remains committed to the full implementation of the MDGs. We pledge to take active part in the global discussion on the post-2015 development agenda.

Thank you. /End/