IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/16011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Gender Gaps in Japan and Korea: A comparative study on the rates of promotions to managing positions

Author

Listed:
  • YOUM Yoosik
  • YAMAGUCHI Kazuo

Abstract

Both Korea and Japan are countries that are well known for showing a strong persistence of their traditional gender role attitudes and behaviors. Thus, we have observed very large gender gaps in wage and economic statuses in both countries. For example, as of 2010, the proportion of women in management ranks was only about 10% for both Korea and Japan while it ranged from 43% for the United States to 30% for Germany. We used RIETI's Survey for Japan and Occupational Wage Survey (OWS) in 2009 for Korea that had been operated by Korea's Ministry of Labor from 1990 to 2013 as multiple cross-sectional data. For decomposition purposes, we adopted the DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux (DFL) method to examine the disparity in the promotion rates (Yamaguchi 2011; 2014; 2015). We decomposed the disparity in promotions into two parts: one that can be explained by human capital including age, educational level, and employment duration; and another part that cannot be explained by human capital. In 2009, the unexplained portion in Japan was 70% for kakaricho (task group heads) and 79% for kacho (section heads). The closest year for comparison purposes available in OWS for Korea was 2004, and the unexplained portions were 62% and 67% for kakaricho and kacho, respectively. Based on this, we deduce that the glass ceiling, which is invisible above human capital, was possibly more serious in Japan compared to Korea. However, the result from 1990-2013 OWS revealed that the unexplained disparity portion in promotions to managers (kakaricho and higher) in Korea has increased since 2004, from 72% to 84%, and it might be possible that the magnitude of the glass ceiling is quite similar in the two countries. Further studies need more comparable data to draw stronger conclusions.

Suggested Citation

  • YOUM Yoosik & YAMAGUCHI Kazuo, 2016. "Gender Gaps in Japan and Korea: A comparative study on the rates of promotions to managing positions," Discussion papers 16011, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
  • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:16011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/16e011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. DiNardo, John & Fortin, Nicole M & Lemieux, Thomas, 1996. "Labor Market Institutions and the Distribution of Wages, 1973-1992: A Semiparametric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1001-1044, September.
    2. Wiji Arulampalam & Alison L. Booth & Mark L. Bryan, 2007. "Is There a Glass Ceiling over Europe? Exploring the Gender Pay Gap across the Wage Distribution," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(2), pages 163-186, January.
    3. James Albrecht & Anders Bjorklund & Susan Vroman, 2003. "Is There a Glass Ceiling in Sweden?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(1), pages 145-177, January.
    4. Catherine J. Weinberger, 2011. "In Search of the Glass Ceiling: Gender and Earnings Growth among U.S. College Graduates in the 1990S," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(5), pages 949-980, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vladimir Hlasny, 2017. "Different Faces of Inequality across Asia: Decomposition of Income Gaps across Demographic Groups," LIS Working papers 691, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sloczynski, Tymon, 2013. "Population Average Gender Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 7315, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Juan Manuel del Pozo Segura, 2017. "Has the Gender Wage Gap been Reduced during the 'Peruvian Growth Miracle?' A Distributional Approach," Documentos de Trabajo / Working Papers 2017-442, Departamento de Economía - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
    3. Sonja C. Kassenboehmer & Mathias G. Sinning, 2014. "Distributional Changes in the Gender Wage Gap," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 335-361, April.
    4. Juan D. Barón & Deborah A. Cobb‐Clark, 2010. "Occupational Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap in Private‐ and Public‐Sector Employment: A Distributional Analysis," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 86(273), pages 227-246, June.
    5. Picchio, Matteo & Mussida, Chiara, 2011. "Gender wage gap: A semi-parametric approach with sample selection correction," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 564-578, October.
    6. Antonczyk, Dirk & Fitzenberger, Bernd & Sommerfeld, Katrin, 2010. "Rising wage inequality, the decline of collective bargaining, and the gender wage gap," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 835-847, October.
    7. Azam, Mehtabul, 2012. "Changes in Wage Structure in Urban India, 1983–2004: A Quantile Regression Decomposition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 1135-1150.
    8. Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Marina & Briel, Stephanie, 2022. "The gender pay gap revisited: Does machine learning offer new insights?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    9. Albrecht, James & van Vuuren, Aico & Vroman, Susan, 2009. "Counterfactual distributions with sample selection adjustments: Econometric theory and an application to the Netherlands," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 383-396, August.
    10. Robert Breunig & Sandrine Rospabe, 2005. "Parametric vs. semi-parametric estimation of the male-female wage gap: An application to France," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2005-458, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    11. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    12. Fortin, Nicole M. & Bell, Brian & Böhm, Michael, 2017. "Top earnings inequality and the gender pay gap: Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 107-123.
    13. Philippe Van Kerm, 2013. "Generalized measures of wage differentials," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 465-482, August.
    14. Chi, Wei & Li, Bo, 2008. "Glass ceiling or sticky floor? Examining the gender earnings differential across the earnings distribution in urban China, 1987-2004," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 243-263, June.
    15. Coral Río & Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó, 2011. "The measurement of gender wage discrimination: the distributional approach revisited," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(1), pages 57-86, March.
    16. Martinez-Sanchis, Elena & Mora, Juan & Kandemir, Ilker, 2012. "Counterfactual distributions of wages via quantile regression with endogeneity," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(11), pages 3212-3229.
    17. Boll Christina & Rossen Anja & Wolf André, 2017. "The EU Gender Earnings Gap: Job Segregation and Working Time as Driving Factors," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 237(5), pages 407-452, October.
    18. Grandner, Thomas & Gstach, Dieter, 2012. "Decomposing wage discrimination in Germany and Austria with counterfactual densities," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 145, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    19. Jacqueline Mosomi, 2019. "Distributional changes in the gender wage gap in the post-apartheid South African labour market," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-17, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. repec:zbw:rwirep:0220 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Philippe Van Kerm & Seunghee Yu & Chung Choe, 2016. "Decomposing quantile wage gaps: a conditional likelihood approach," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 65(4), pages 507-527, August.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:16011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.