Abstract ▼

□ Background
Statistics Korea released that the number of women who have stayed out of career for reasons of marriage, pregnancy or childbirth reached 1.978 million in 2012. This reflects that a large number of married women who had discontinued their job for pregnancy, childbirth, child-rearing

□ Background
Statistics Korea released that the number of women who have stayed out of career for reasons of marriage, pregnancy or childbirth reached 1.978 million in 2012. This reflects that a large number of married women who had discontinued their job for pregnancy, childbirth, child-rearing and household chores failed to re-enter the labor market.  
The Korean government started a full-scale operation of the Re-employment Support Center for Women (“Saeil Center“) in 2009. The Saeil Center aims to help women with career interruptions re-enter the labor market with better working conditions by providing them with a one-stop service covering vocational consulting, information, training and job placement supports. As of 2013, a total of 120 designated Saeil Centers, funded by a matching grant from central and local governments, are under operation across the nation. 
Since the beginning, Saeil Centers have gained significant accomplishments, benefitting 160,000 women by assisting their re-employment. However, because they are operated by a single, unified model, they do run into limitations of not being able to offer a customized service that matches specific, individual needs and characteristics of sub-groups of career-interrupted women. To put it another way, their supports have not been very effective in helping highly-educated women with career interruptions or the vulnerable, such as single mothers, married immigrant women and battered women, who are placed in a blind spot of employment. 
 In this context, considering that more and more projects are coming to the Saeil Center, this study intends to upgrade the center’s existing unified model and suggest a specialized model which could provide women seeking to re-enter the labor market with a customized service designed to satisfy their needs and desires based on detailed and segmented information on characteristics of career-interrupted women. 

□ Process
 This study re-examined raw data from  the Survey of Regional Employment Statistics by Statistics Korea, closely scrutinized characteristics of Saeil Center users and their achievements in the labor market, analyzed the size and characteristics of career-interrupted women, and analyzed the problems of employment support services targeting the vulnerable. 
 Furthermore, expert consultations were held and the Focused Group Interview (FGI) was conducted with educational training organizations, association representatives and academic experts attending. These processes developed three new models to be operated by the Saeil Center: career-development, self-reliance support, and start-up incubation. Then, each model was presented with detailed descriptions on possible program projects and contents, expected workplace, performance indicators and procedures to select a project operating body.

□ Results
 Career-development model was designed to help women with a college diploma (or higher degree) re-enter the field where they have previous work experiences or their academic major is related. This model was suggested with three projects engaged in sports, IT and intellectual property, and each project includes necessary educational training programs and performance indicators.
 Self-reliance support model focuses on encouraging the re-employment of immigrant women, battered women and single mothers, etc. Suggested projects targeting the vulnerable are formulated in three types involving apparel and sewing business, education welfare jobs and local community base, and each project includes key programs, necessary educational training programs and performance indicators.
 Start-up incubation model was constructed in two types with different targets: urban residents and rural residents. Since this new model needs to be differentiated from existing start-up support programs, numerous supporting services were developed to satisfy specific needs of women who are now planning to start a business on their own or who went through a business failure. These specialized services include intensive consulting, capacity diagnosis, relevant information provision, training and start-up internships to help them gain prior experience with the business they plan to engage in.

□ Establishment and operation of the specialized Saeil Center: matters to be attended to.
 The specialized Saeil Center has the merit of providing employment supports customized to characteristics of subject groups. However, a significant quantity accomplishment by the specialized Saeil Center cannot be expected shortly, since the specialized model is operated on a limited size of subject beneficiaries and it takes time, unlike the previous model; it provides identical supports to all women with career interruptions so that improvements in tangible results, such as the number of center users and employed women, are easily and promptly measurable.
 Saeil Centers to be newly designated and operated should be given with much broader discretionary power in managing services and operations so that they could perform better to pursue the specialized purpose they are designated for. In addition, the role of a project operating body should be held by an organization with a good understanding of subject groups, prior experience with relevant projects, and a close network with relevant organizations.
 It would be appropriate to try first this new model as a pilot for 2014, and its expansion should be decided after evaluating its accomplishments when the pilot period ends. If it turns out that users have a particularly large demand for a certain model during a full-operation period, it would be necessary to meet the demand by increasing the number of centers operating the specific model or to explore new Seil Centers specialized in sub-sectors of career-development model.