Do Korean Women Should Work to Make the Marital Relationship Equal? Logistic Regression of Models on Data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey on Women and Families

Abstract

South Korea is a country where gender inequality has been observed from the past to the present. Many studies point out that gender inequality in Korean society is a consequence of Confucianism which still exists in the social norms, structure and hierarchy of society and the mentality of contemporary Korean people. It causes that gender inequality remains strong not only in the job market but also in the gender division of homework and care work issues, particularly in the sphere of family life. The main object of this paper is to investigate the possibility of making marital relationships equal while women are economically active. To achieve the paper’s main goal, the statistical analysis was carried out with logistic regression on data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey on Women and Families in 2012 and 2020. The results indicated that despite the significant social and economic changes in Korean society, women’s activity in the job market did not introduce a significant change in the division of household duties among men and women, which shows women’s involvement in economic support of the family it does not make any significant changes to the aspect of equality in the relationship.