A Study on Childcare Support Service Corresponding to the Increase in Married Women's Economic Activities

기혼여성의 경제활동 증대에 따른 육아지원서비스 개선방안에 관한 연구

This study is to examine current child care support policies and their limitations and to make some suggestions by means of statistics and previous literature. Major findings are as follows: First, As the women have younger children, the effect is more negative. Second, a maternity leave of Korea is 90 days, which is below ILO standard. Moreover, it is not well supported by the companies they work for. Third, the increasing number of men has spent a paternity leave since the pertinent law was enforced in 2001. The rate of spending the leave, however, is not as high as expected, because it has not yet been decided whether the leave would be paid or not. Lastly, the number of the employer-supporting child care center is rather few due to the legal standard of the facility and the expense that a company should cover. Only 46.5% of the companies that has been appointed to obligatorily establish the center now operate the facility. Therefore, child care support policies should be reformed or improved to help reduce married women's child care burden obviously hindering women from being employed, and this will consequently promote their economic activities. It is also urgently required to expand the application of the parental leave in terms of both object and scope. It is important that employers and employees get ready to compromise each other on the wage issue during the leave. In addition, the flexibility in period and form of the parental leave and the connection of working places with local community for better child care service must be taken into consideration.