한국의 가사노동자 규모와 그 의미: 노동시장 및 젠더체제 특징과 관련하여

This paper explores why South Korea has relatively small size of domestic workers, although it has underdeveloped social service system and familialist care regime along with Southern European and developed East Asian countries. We explain the characteristics of marketized domestic work in Korea in relationship with its labor market and gender regime and suggest some policy implications. In international comparison, the male-centered internal labor market in Korea appears to set a higher barrier for highly-educated women than low-educated. This resulted in low participation of married middle–class women in labor market and low effective demand of domestic workers. In addition, stratified male breadearner model of Korea contributed to decreasing the effective demand for domestic workers on the one hand. It decreased the demand for foreign domestic workers by creating large pool of low-waged female workers on the other. The research results show that to increase the female employment rate, it is not sufficient to extend childcare-related policies. It is necessary to get rid of the labor market entry barriers for women, particularly for the highly-educated, and to reduce the workplace practices that make family-work balance precarious. To alleviate the care deficit problems, as existing studies suggested, extension of social care services is more desirable than increasing the marketization of domestic work.