Growth with Gender Inequity: Another Look at East Asian Development

This brief gendered history of Taiwans and Koreas labor markets indicates a recent reversal in the persistent gender wage gaps that were long sustained by state policies that created and reproduced surplus labor conditions. The relative decline of manufacturing employment since the mid/late 1980s was accompanied by a generalized improvement in womens relative wages. However, gender wage inequality and womens low wages continue to be important policy variables, given the concentration of women in lower-paying and less secure occupations and sectors, Koreas more limited and stalled progress toward gender wage equality, recent signs of downward harmonization of wages in Taiwans largest sectors, and ongoing employment discrimination against women. Policies must tackle employment discrimination, improve womens labor market skills, support womens caring work in the home to ensure their equitable pursuit of employment, and create gender equitable old-age security systems.