• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.555-568
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• 2004

The current national pension system tends to be sexually discriminatory in that it excludes elderly women. It is because the system is based on family incomes usually earned by men. Considering structural changes in a family - for example, a growing divorce rate, an increasing number of unmarried couples living together, and broken families - and socio-economic changes - such as an improved level of women's education and more female participation in economic activities, this paper will make some suggestions as follows: 1) to introduce basic pension system which guarantees incomes for the elderly with "one pension per person" policy; 2) to enlarge voluntary enrollment; 3) to implement pension credit system which pays women allowances for childbirth and upbringing; 4) to improve ways of allotting retirement pension of a husband; also to provide for an elderly woman both divided pension that derives from her husband's pension and an old-age pension of her own.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.31-50
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• 2005

The perspectives on the gender equality are various. Therefore the relationship between social policy and gender equality must be thought in the sense of the following question: What kind of gender equality pursue social policy? In spite of the mentioned question the mainstreaming discussion about the relationship between social policy and gender equality focuses on how a social policy leads to gender inequality. The debate about the perspective with which social policy pursues to conglomerate or abolish gender inequality is not popular. In this study the Korean National Pension System is analysed according to the gender neutral approach, the gender recognition approach, the gender reconstruction approach and the gender reinforcement approach. As a result, the Korean National Pension System has a character as a gender neutral approach. Therefore the critics on the National Pension System should focus on this perspective. In the future, when the pension credit system, the guarantee of right to pension in the case of divorce and the basic pension guarantee would be introduced, the Korean National Pension System could be featured as a field of social policy that has a gender recognition approach.