Samsung's Increased Maternity Leave

According to this article from The Korea Times, it appears that Samsung is unilaterally planning to allow its female workforce to take up to two years' of paid maternity leave.

The law, on the other hand, requires that businesses provide up to only one year.

It is not entirely clear why Samsung decided to be so generous suddenly. The article does state that it could lead to more loyalty from Samsung's employees and that other businesses from around the world calculated that they save quite a bit of money by doing this. However, considering how Korea is also referred to as the Republic of Samsung, employee loyalty might not be something that Samsung needs to be overly worried about.

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Regardless of the reasons, Samsung seems to have made this seemingly generous decision without being compelled to do so.

What is interesting, however, is the bit in the article that says:

As of last year, Samsung Electronics had 319,208 full-time employees globally, with South Korea taking up 31.1 percent. Entry-level female employees accounted for 48.3 percent, followed by senior working moms at 12.4 percent, the report said.

"The return rate after maternity leave was 91 percent last year after 92 percent in 2013," another company official said. "Therefore, we are not worried about a vacuum in our workforce as a result of this new policy and those who take a longer leave shouldn't be deterred by job insecurity."

Statistics can be odd sometimes. Samsung's spokespeople can probably say, without being disingenuous at all, that the company's return rate after leave is 91 percent, but it does not change the fact that entry-level female employees make up 48.3 percent of its workforce but that working mothers make up only 12.4 percent.

That is quite a significant difference. Is it possible that many of the entry-level female employees, who are mostly young and unmarried, tend to quit their jobs (or get fired) after they marry and/or get pregnant, rather than go on maternity leave; thereby guaranteeing that the company's return rate after maternity leave remains so high? Or is it possible that Samsung just does not employ pregnant women that much from the get-go?

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The article, as per The Korea Times' usual standard of journalistic excellence, does not explain. So one can't help but use one's own imagination. However, I doubt that one needs that much imagination (see here and here).

So, will Samsung's sudden generosity be beneficial for women? Personally, I don't think it will be helpful for women at all. And that is because I think these added benefits will simply compel a significant number of Samsung's Human Resources managers to accept fewer female job applicants from the get-go.

Case in point, according to this article from The New York Times, when the Spanish government passed a law guaranteeing greater maternity benefits, it was revealed that:

Over the next decade, companies were 6 percent less likely to hire women of childbearing age compared with men, 37 percent less likely to promote them and 45 percent more likely to dismiss them, according to a study led by Daniel Fernández-Kranz, an economist at IE Business School in Madrid. The probability of women of childbearing age not being employed climbed 20 percent. Another result: Women were more likely to be in less stable, short-term contract jobs, which are not required to provide such benefits.

Of course, in Samsung's case, upper management chose to increase the company's maternity benefits as opposed to getting their arms twisted by the Korean government. So, this might be comparing apples and oranges. However, it should be noted that Samsung is a very big multinational corporation; and like any large organization chock full of people, there is bound to be competing interests. And it should come as no surprise that some of those interests might not always be on the same page as that of corporate headquarters.

What is true, however, is that for the past few years, more women in their 20s have been employed than people from other demographic groups, especially compared to men in the same age group. However, it is also true that fewer women in their 30s and 40s are employed compared to younger women.

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The problems that women face are much more deep-seated in Korea's corporate culture, as well as Korea's familial culture. Therefore, without first making a serious effort to challenge accepted norms and mores, I think that increasing maternity benefits will only exacerbate matters further, rather than alleviate them.

Does Capitalism Breed Nepotism?

By now, most people must have heard about the incident in Korean Air that has been dubbed “Nut Rage.”

For those who are still unaware, a Korean Air executive, Ms. Cho Hyun-ah, who is the airline's head of cabin service and the daughter of the company's boss, created a ruckus on one of her company's planes that was headed from New York to Incheon. Ms. Cho had caused a delay in the flight when she demanded that a senior crew member be removed from the flight when the crew member failed to serve macadamia nuts “properly.” According to the story, the crew member served Ms. Cho the nuts in a bag, instead of serving the nuts on a plate.

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When the news broke out on social media, justice was swift and terrible. Ms. Cho resigned from her position as head of cabin service, but continued to be an executive at the company. When that failed to satiate the fury of the Internet mob, she resigned from all of her roles from the company.

Justice had been served. Seemingly.

In a way, I can understand where Ms. Cho came from (assuming that the anger was purely based on her disappointment over improper service; and that her attitude having been the result of being her father's daughter did not play any role in her action).

What she did lack was tact. She could have resolved the situation so much more amicably. She could have given a stern one-on-one pep talk. She could have gently reminded the crew member of the company's regulations about how to properly serve food to first class passengers. However, she chose to be as dramatic as possible and turned herself into a symbol that represents everything that people hate about the rich.

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But we have to go back to the question. Does capitalism, indeed, breed nepotism? This question is not without merit. After all, Ms. Cho is her father's daughter.

However, I am disinclined to agree with the statement. I do not think that capitalism breeds nepotism at all.

Firstly, we have to recognize one thing – no matter how much we may talk about individualism, human society has always revolved around the family. Before meritocracy and individualism, children joining the family was standard practice, and in many ways, it still is.

Well, not all family businesses are created equal
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As time has progressed, with social and economic equality becoming more important to many people, nowadays people like to imagine that they are more ambivalent about family ties. However, there seems very little evidence to say that is actually the case.

Therefore, it would seem that nepotism is far older than capitalism.

Secondly, generally speaking, the children of wealthy parents tend to be highly qualified individuals in their own right. Though admittedly they went to the best schools because their wealthy parents paid for their pricey education, it does not change the fact that they have often gone to the best schools. Furthermore, due to the pressure that is often placed on them to be excellent in whatever they do, they often excel in their own right.

This, too, is much older than capitalism.

Thirdly, what do Benazir Bhutto, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and Park Geun-hye have in common?

I have heard many people point to these female Asian leaders to express their disappointment with the American people's inability/unwillingness to (yet) elect a woman to the White House. However, those people are only telling a half-truth. What they don't tend to mention is that people from India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Korea appear to be more willing to elect women because people in those societies tend to value family affiliations more.

Whether we like to admit it or not, women's advancement (at least in politics) often seems to begin at the altar.

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Fourth, nepotism is not unique to humans.

So, due to the historical precedence that nepotism has over capitalism, and that it is not unique to humans, it would appear that capitalism does not breed nepotism. However, considering that the rich tend to marry only among themselves, it would seem that at the very least, capitalism does enforce nepotism and vice versa. After all, one of the main reasons why people continue to work to earn more money than they need for themselves is to ensure that they can provide a more comfortable life for their children.

Is there a cure for nepotism? Well, I am not entirely sure if nepotism is actually a disease that requires a cure. More than anything else, it seems like it is an ingrained part of our more inner-psyche that cannot be easily extricated by mere legislation. Perhaps if all humans evolved to treat the rule of law as sacrosanct, we may see changing attitudes toward nepotism (and perhaps even toward the notion of family itself). Until, then, however, whether the prevailing economic system is based on laissez-faire capitalism, crony capitalism, corporatism, welfarism, socialism, communism, or whatever other -ism there is, it seems that we will not be ridding ourselves of nepotism any time soon.

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