The study is designed to understand changes in Korean women farmers' roles in various activity areas such as farm work, off-farm work, and local community work. It also evaluates values of the roles that women farmers have performed and proposes government policies for reinvigorating the women farmers' roles and activities which are anticipated to be a driving force for developing the future of our agriculture and rural areas.
The rate of women farmers in the agricultural working population was 28 percent in 1970, but since then it has increased rapidly, rising to 52 percent in 2006. The farming labor hours of women farmers made up 45 percent of the total family farming labor hours in 2005. The rate of women farmers taking charge of a half of total farm work and above made up approximately 44 percent, indicating that women farmers have become a major farming labor force in a farm household.
However, women farmers still do not occupy a central position in the agricultural management of a farm household. There is a traditional division of farming labor where men work in rice farming while women farmers are assigned with dry-field farming. The women farmers' participation rates in the decision making of input purchase and at producer organizations are relatively low. The rate of women farmers possessing their own farmland is markedly scare.
The women farmers 60 years of age and above made up 62 percent of the agricultural working women population in 2006, while the rate of women farmers 40 years of age and below was approximately 3 percent. This implies that the aging of women farmers and the low inflow of younger women farmers into rural areas are significant problems of Korean agriculture and rural communities.
As economic and social conditions have changed, like the decline in farm income and changes in social atmosphere, the number of women farmers participating in economic activities through the commencement of an agricultural enterprise or by entering an off-farm work has been increasing. The activities of women farmers are prominent in making and selling traditional local foods. Such economic activities of women farmers are evaluated to have influence on the reinforcement of women's social and economic position and the realization of women's rights.
Local community activities performed by younger women farmers such as caring for local elders and helping local festivals are active. Active participation of women farmers is more required for rural tourism and the exchanges between urban and rural areas that have the salient traits of service industry. Furthermore, some women farmers are recently branching out into playing local community leadership roles.
The shadow wages of unpaid “family women farmers” are estimated using farm-level cross-sectional data from 2005. Such measurements are obtained from the duality theorem for cost function and input distance function. The empirical evidence suggests that the average shadow wage of “family women farmers” is significantly higher than the average wage of “hired women farmers” in rural areas. This indicates that it might be under-evaluated if the wage of “hired women farmers” would be applied to evaluate the wage of “family women farmers.” In our survey, the women farmers in their 40s and 50s are asked how much they are willing to pay if they employ alternative labor forces for the each role that they are currently performing. According to the survey results, relatively younger women farmers with higher education express that they are more willing to pay for alternative laborers; that is, they tend to evaluate highly their opportunity costs.
The constraints blocking vigorous activities of women farmers in various areas are surveyed. Those are the double burden of farming and housework including childcare, insufficient farming skills and management ability, deficient marketing and information, lacking leadership, and so on. For active women farmers in their 40s and 50s, policy makers should first of all consider how farming and housework can be well-balanced and how professional abilities required in various activity areas are improved.
Policy directions should be reorganized to correspond with changes in women farmers' roles. Instead of a uniform policy direction which regards women farmers as welfare recipients, it is required to customize policies for women farmers so that they correspond to women's life-cycles and activity development phases. Accordingly, this study suggests policy tasks for women farmers by considering the activity development phases reflected by woman's life-cycles.
For women farmers in the entry phase, policy measures to expand the base for fostering new women farmers should be systematically prepared. For women farmers in the developing phase, this study proposes several policy tasks to build a convenient environment for the active participation of women farmers in farming. These tasks include authorization of joint management of farms by women farmers, efficient operation of assistance programs, and establishment of childcare institutions in rural areas and a farm machinery rent system for women farmers. Also, strengthening of educational programs for improving farm skills and management abilities and supporting of women farmers starting an agricultural enterprise are required. For the women farmers in the retirement phase, the policies expanding the farmers' pension system to women farmers and supporting the living of elder women farmers should be prepared before others.