The number of women who quit work due to marriages, pregnancies and child rearing grew slightly this year, state data showed Wednesday, amid government efforts to help them stay on.
According to the data by Statistics Korea, 1.98 million women had given up their careers as of April this year to get married, have children or raise them. The figure is up 1.1 percent, or 22,000, from the previous year.
These women made up 20.7 percent of the population of married women, compared to 20.1 percent in 2013. The proportion rises to 22.4 percent when including those who quit work to take care of sick family members.
Career disruptions were most common among those in their 30s and 40s.
Of the women who gave up their jobs, 1.09 million, or 55.4 percent, were in their 30s, followed by those in their 40s with 563,000, or 28.5 percent.
Women leaving jobs to support their child’s education jumped 27.9 percent from a year earlier. The number of those who left due to pregnancies and baby care grew 5.4 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively.
The government has been targeting women’s employment as one of the key prerequisites to long-term economic growth and is seeking measures to minimize disruptions to their careers and bring them back into the workforce after childbirth.
In a related move, the government said it will increase its 2015 budget for improving women’s rights, reducing gender-based discrimination and supporting child care by 13 percent on-year to 26 trillion won (US$23.42 billion).
In particular, more than 6 trillion won will be set aside to build social infrastructure necessary to support women who have to juggle work and home commitments, it said. (Yonhap)
