A Study on the Gender Sensitivity of Korean Public Officials and Public Institution Employees: Focusing on the Interaction Effect of Gender and Rank

Abstract

GGI is an indicator of the gender gap in each country, and GGI values closer to 1 indicate more gender equality. Korea's Gender Gap Index (GGI) as of 2020 is 0.672, thus Korea can be seen to have a high gender gap. Gender sensitivity refers to one's sensitivity to detecting sexist elements in daily life and their understanding of gender imbalance. Unlike GGI, it has the advantage of being able to measure an individual's gender equality consciousness. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the interaction between gender and rank affects gender sensitivity by targeting public officials and public institution employees who play an important role in the implementation of laws and policies related to gender sensitivity. A survey was conducted with 500 people in May 2021 by targeting Korean public officials and public institution employees. Allocation sampling was performed by dividing gender and rank into four groups. After excluding questionnaires with many non-responses, 480 copies were ultimately used for analysis. First, overall gender sensitivity, misogyny susceptibility, hostile sexism susceptibility, and passive sexism susceptibility were all higher in females than males as well as higher in team members than team managers or higher. Second, among the gender sensitivity sub-factors, there were no significant differences in gender or rank in sexual violence susceptibility. Third, the interaction between gender and rank had a significant effect on overall gender sensitivity, misogyny susceptibility, passive sexism susceptibility, and hostile sexism susceptibility. Therefore, the result of the study shows that an important task for the future development of Korea's gender sensitivity is not simply the issue of men and women, but also the need to explore ethical relationships with others.