Institutional Options,Cultural Orientation and Mothers’ Work and Family Reconciliation in Korea

This paper examines what determines mothers' work and family reconciliation in the Republic of Korea. We conducted a survey to examine the influence of use of institutional options such as childcare leave and services, and cultural orientation towards gender roles on the probability of being employed, paid and unpaid care work time, and monthly wages. Our findings show that mothers' with high education tend to be in paid work and to have more traditional attitudes towards gender role. The use of maternity leave increases but the use of parental leave tends to decrease mothers' labor market participation. Maternity leave also is found to influence positively on working mothers' monthly wages. However, no factor is found to be relevant to reduce working mothers' time spent on unpaid care work. Issues have been put forwarded for policy considerations. Firstly, the use of maternity leave should be encouraged and job protection needs to be secured with the use of parental leave. Secondly, mothers with relatively higher education tend to prefer familial care to institutional care. Last but not least, the availability of institutional care services do not effectively reduce mothers' time spent on unpaid care work.