A Study of Specific Gender Impact Analysis and Assessment on Youth Policy in Seoul

Lee Jae Kyung
Research Fellow, Seoul Foundation of Women & Family

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the legal basis and selection criteria for the project are properly established from a gender-sensitive perspective, and whether the project produces equal business performance for women and men in their 20s and 30s. In this study, we targeted Small-but-powerful Seoul-type Business Project and Youth Project Impact Investment among the youth job policies, and analyzing these projects in gender perspective. The research methods used prior research, survey and FGI.

Small-but-powerful Seoul-type Business Project, which was launched in 2016, is a small and medium-sized company selected as having excellent job creation and balanced work-life organizational culture, job security, and welfare benefits for the youth. By selecting and supporting them, it is the Seoul Metropolitan Government's project to resolve mismatches between young workers and small businesses, and also to contribute to the expansion of jobs for young people.

A remarkable point is that the project has a relatively high score for "quality of jobs" in the selection process. It is also positive that the government is striving to promote employment of young women. It is also important that on-site inspections are being carried out.

However, it is negative that the monitoring function does not work after selection. It is also regrettable that standards for re-certification do not meet business purposes. Not only that the field survey team is male-centered. In addition, most of the subsidies for working environment are used to improve facilities.

To see how young people actually perceive Small-but-powerful Seoul-type Business, an online survey was conducted on 110 people and an interview survey was conducted on 11 people. According to the analysis, most young people who work for Small-but-powerful Seoul-type Business is full-time employees, and the possibility of converting to full-time employees is more than 80 percent. This is positive for job security. The average daily working hours are about eight to nine hours, and it has been confirmed that long working hours are not routine. In particular, they felt relatively less job insecurity despite the unexpected risks of COVID-19.

However, young people recognized gender-based wage gaps and gender divisions. Specifically they were pointed out as problems with complaints about authoritative and rigid organizational culture, wages and promotions, the lack of clarity in the division of duties, and the existence of decoupling in relation to welfare and flexible work systems.

Youth Project Impact Investment was first implemented in 2017. It is to solve social problems by discovering and investing social innovation projects, and to promote the creation of good jobs for young people beyond the limitations of short-term performance-oriented youth start-up policies and employment policies. The amount of support for selected companies is large in that they are required to pay less than 1 billion won for two years. The project differs from other start-up support in that it pursues social values. It is also positive that the government supports wages at the level of living wages in Seoul for stable employment of young people. However, it is regrettable that the corporate review process does not include the current status of institutional operations or plans for institutional operations to enhance the quality of jobs.

To check the working environment of the Youth Project Impact Investment, an online survey was conducted on 47 people, and interviews were conducted on seven young entrepreneurs and three young workers. As a result, it has been confirmed that young workers are highly satisfied with the overall job satisfaction, organizational culture, daily life balance system, and flexible work system. It is confirmed that the wage gap between 10,000 young workers by gender, especially the wage gap by age effect (the wage gap by gender as the age increases) is growing. In addition, there were times when there was anxiety regarding employment.

On the other hand, young entrepreneurs were highly satisfied with their participation in the project. It was recognized that their activities were valued through value and potential support, and that they were able to make various attempts and experiences in the course of carrying out the project through massive support. In particular, it was very positive that young entrepreneurs were able to get out of the crisis despite of the difficulties in COVID-19. However, they often had financial difficulties in operating their organizations, complaining of excessive administrative work due to their participation in Youth Project Impact Investment, and thus difficulties in work-life balance. There is also a lack of consulting. However, the content is different depending on gender. The female representative cited areas of consulting that do not conform to social values as regrettable, and in the case of male representatives, she hopes that areas that can actually help develop the business will be provided. In addition, some female representatives demanded opportunities for network formation among representatives seeking similar social values, and consulting opportunities for new social value models rather than male-centered consulting.

In order to solve these problems, it is necessary to strengthen the follow-up management of Youth Project Impact Investment. In order to strengthen follow-up management, statistics on the survival rate of organizations according to the gender of youth representatives should be produced and managed after the implementation of the project, and successful cases of youth start-ups should be discovered. In addition, it is proposed to add criteria related to the working environment to internalize the Youth Project Impact Investment, identify the demand for consulting and education for project participants so that customized consulting and education can be implemented reflecting the characteristics of the project beneficiaries, and open programs based on them.

*Key words: Specific Gender Impact Analysis and Assessment, gender equality, work-life balance, gender wage gap, Small-but-powerful Seoul-type Businesses Project, Youth Project Impact Investment