The paradox of human capital? Gendered precarious labor in the Korean Confucian gender regime

Abstract

Purpose This study investigates the gendered dynamics of precarious labor in South Korea, an underexplored context in international scholarship. It examines how Confucian-influenced patriarchal norms relate to women's exposure to insecure employment despite rising educational attainment and labor force participation. By critically assessing the explanatory adequacy of human capital theory, the study identifies gender disparities in labor market outcomes and situates them within South Korea's unique socio-cultural gender regime. Design/methodology/approach A multidimensional framework simultaneously examines three dimensions of precarious labor: employment, wage and social protection insecurities. A composite index is constructed using hedonic weighting, generating eight distinct configurations. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (2001–2019), the study uses panel logit models to assess gendered differences in precarity configurations over time, descriptive analysis to examine gendered precarity across occupational strata and panel regression models to investigate how individual characteristics such as age, education, marital status and parenthood are differentially associated with precarious labor for men and women. Findings Results highlight a significant human capital paradox whereby, despite Korean women's superior educational attainment, they experience markedly higher rates of precarious labor and disproportionately occupy the most precarious employment configurations. Conversely, men's exposure is more limited, revealing patterns overlooked by single-dimension approaches. Individual factors (i.e. age, education, marital status and parenthood) have gendered effects that weaken the labor market value of women's human capital. Originality/value This study extends precarious labor research by offering a multidimensional, hedonic-weighted operationalization that captures intersecting insecurities beyond linear models. It advances theory by contextualizing gendered labor market inequalities within South Korea's Confucian gender regime, challenging universal applications of human capital theory. By integrating longitudinal, structural and individual-level analyses, it highlights the importance of socio-cultural regimes in understanding women's labor market outcomes, contributing original insights to comparative research on gender, work and inequality.