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Education & Employment
Employment and tertiary education opportunities for women in South Korea have steadily increased in the past few decades. In the pre-Korean War period the employment of women in Korea had been less than 30%. The OECD estimates female employment rate to be around around 53% and has been consistently below the average for all OECD countries. Potentially, these advances have often been impeded by cultural values and economic developments. In addition to having a large gendered wage gap, men in South Korea in general have longer working hours than other developed countries. This situation adds to the cultural idea of men being the financial supplier for families and is supplemented by the cultural norm of of high parental involvement in children's education and rearing. Female market labour with respect to age shows an M-shaped figure when many women who worked after graduating from tertiary education fall out of the workforce at the age when they raise children.

The level of tertiary education for women has similarly risen throughout the 20th century through the modern era but has been comparably lower than a number of developed countries, particularly those that have a higher proportion of educated women than men. Primary and Secondary education levels have generally been equal throughout the latter half of the 20th century, but the prevalence of a male-dominated working force and the stringent parental supervision of children's education made even those who did pursue tertiary education see further education as a tool for training children rather than pursuing a career. According to the OECD women in 2014 have achieved 62.6% tertiary education compared to the OECD average of 78.9%

A number of reforms and backslides have characterized gender equality development in South Korea. In particular, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 was met with a backlash against greater women participation in the workforce. However, the late 20th century also entailed a lot of policy changes that gave women greater social and political freedoms including: the Equality in Employment Act of 1999, the Ministry of Gender Equality in 2001, the Anti-Sexual Traffic Act, and the abolishment of the hoju system. Within primary and secondary education greater emphasis has been played to promote greater female participation in STEM fields with a similar push in tertiary institutions to admit a greater number of women.

Public funding of greater maternal and paternal leave, and development of childcare programs has slowly gained ground in South Korea where childcare and its relevant economic sector had predominately been private.