• Korean Journal of Labor Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.277-306
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• 2017

This article empirically explores the impact of minijobs in the wake of the Hartz reform in Germany on women's employment relationship. Theoretically it is of great significance to examine whether the minijobs play an active role as a bridge in leading the minijobbers to regular, socially secured jobs or not. Several interviews as well as secondary data I could get during my sabbatical in 2015 were used to test the theory. One of the main findings was the fact that the minijob labor market opened doors wide for women in Germany, particularly for career-interrupted women, students or pensioners. However, the minijob can easily become a trap of lowest income and poverty for women. Most women minjobbers cannot go over to regular, socially secured jobs. Especially in terms of collective industrial relations, it considerably damages the power of industrial unions and the legal binding force of collective agreement. In conclusion, this study makes it clear that the labor market segmentation theory rather than the transitional labor market theory is valid in accounting for the reality of minijob in Germany. In other words, the minijob in Germany has a Toijan Horse Effect. It also suggests, from a practical viewpoint, that German industrial unions or works councils organize the minijobbers and that the coverage of collective agreements be extended to the minijobbers. Consequently, the time-selective part-timer model put into practice in Korea in 2014 is not only invalid but also undesirable.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.5-40
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• 2002

Using detailed data of women's work history, this study analyses the transition process between employment and non-employment over the life history in order to identity individual and structural determinants in the processes. Korean women comprise very heterogeneous groups in terms of work continuity: one group having a continuous work history and another having an interrupted work experience. While 4.0% of total women have stayed in the labor market since leaving school, 17.3% have not worked outside at all and remaining 87.9% have experienced into and out of the labor market at least once. On the average, the cumulated time of employment per woman is 8.2 years and the cumulated time of unemployment is 13.1 years. Thus Korean women work a total of only 38.5% of their whole lifetime after leaving school. We can conclude that the increase of the employment rate of married women in Korea since the 1970s has been due to the increase of the new entrants with short or little working careers into the labor market, not to the increase of women's work continuity on the whole. A women's educational achievement does not seem to be positively related to employment duration, contrary to the suggestion of the human capital theory, Rather, family variables, especially the existence of the child under 6 yens old, is a more significant determining factor for an individual's exit from employment. And there is little difference among different age cohorts which implies little improvement in the employment continuity of younger women. This study also documents the importance of structural variables, such as the type of occupation, as significant determining factors for the hazard rate. Specially women with professional jobs tend to stay longer in the labor market. Therefore, women's entry into more professional occupations is expected to contribute to the continuity of employment. Our results also show that duration-dependence is not spurious. When unobserved heterogeneity is controlled, the negative relation between the rate from employment and the duration of employment does not disappear.

• (The)Study of the Eastern Classic
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• no.37
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• pp.473-507
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to understand Zhuxi's Taoxuezhengzhi(道學政治) by reorganizing both his political opinion in each different political situation and his consistent political consciousness appeared in his whole political career. He concluded that the politics was the real problematic in Southern Sung, which made its structure distorted. This distorted structure of politics had widely rooted in whole sphere of society. In order to cure this political problematic, Zhuxi had focused on huangdi(皇帝) and chaoting(朝廷). That is why people is the basis of State and the result of politics, while huangdi and chaoting is the basis of politics and the beginnig of politics. According to Zhuxi, forming their political power group of their own will by using huangdi's power, the political elites close to only to huangdi made the function of chaoting unstable, with the result that the political decay produced. In chaoting, it resulted in the weakness of huangdi's power, the collapse of official discipline(紀綱), and the absence of public opinion(公論) and public aggreement(公議). Beyond chaoting, it resulted in the absence of political trust and the degeneration of public morals(風俗). In the Southern Sung were not altered the political orientation and culture based on the political decay, but only political orientation and characteristics of political elite only altered. This proves Zhuxi's approach that all problems in Southern Sung could resolve by the political approach. Zhuxi had suggested political issues in office. The alternatives for those political issues had basis of the theme, the one that saving people(恤民) is the purpose of politics. However his political ideas and the execution of them had been occsionally collapsed by the complex political structue, the mechanisms of political power, and the sameness and privatization of political geography in Southern Sung. Qingyuandanghuo(慶元黨禍) was the final stage of his political frustration, with the result that it led to the failure of Zhuxi's taoxuezhengzhi and interrupted the tradition of taoxue(道學) for the time being.