The Economist - USA (2020-10-17)

32 Asia The EconomistOctober 17th 2020

2 waiting up past midnight for husbands

compelled to stay at the office, she says that

lots of fathers want to be more involved—

and more employers are letting them.

Even beyond Sejong, the number of

men who choose to be involved in child

care is inching upwards. In 2009 a mere

500 men outside the civil service took any

paternity leave at all. In 2017 about 12,000

did. By last year the figure had reached

22,000—still barely a quarter of the 80,000

or so women who take maternity leave each

year. The increase seems to be the result in

part of the government’s belated realisa-

tion that women do not tend to have chil-

dren on their own. “Making men partici-

pate in child care is important to allow

women both to have children and to stay in

the labour force,” says Kim Seung-tae, who

runs the population policy division at the

finance ministry. Consequently, the gov-

ernment has made it possible for parents to

share what used to be maternity leave.

South Korea remains a tough place for

working women, boasting the biggest pay

gap between the sexes in the oecdand reg-

ularly taking last place in the “glass-ceiling

index”, which ranks countries by the ease

with which women can get ahead in their

careers. (It is compiled by the Economist

Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The

Economist.) Mr Kim takes a somewhat de-

featist view of the power of public policy to

promote cultural change: “When it comes

to people’s attitudes, all we can do is just

highlight good examples and hope they

will follow them.”

But one indication that the changes

may stick and expand is that they are be-

ginning to take hold among small and me-

dium-size companies, which have tended

to lag behind the government and large

corporations when it comes to working

conditions in general and opportunities

for women in particular. Meere Company, a

medium-size firm in Hwaseong, just south

of Seoul, is typical. The company produces

surgical robots and other high-tech equip-

ment. The bulk of its 330 employees are en-

gineers or salespeople; less than 10% are

women. The first time any of its workers

took paternity leave was three years ago.

Since then seven more have done so. Kim

Joon-koo, the ceo, expects the number to

keep rising: “Of course there was resistance

at first, but as we encourage more people to

take leave it’s becoming more of a normal

thing to do.” Mr Kim says that everyone tak-

ing leave can come back to the same job at

the end of it—a legal requirement which

companies in South Korea have tended to

flout, in practice encouraging women to

quit once they get pregnant. He says that

the shift at the company has been acceler-

ated by the example set by the government.

“We’ve been moving in a more egalitarian

direction ever since they have.”

The government’s intention in making

businessesmorefriendlytofamiliesisto

adapttoa shrinkingpopulationbyincreas-

ingtheproportionofwomenwhowork.

Whatismore,theimprovingconditions

mayalsohelpa littlewiththegoalithad

largelyabandoned:gettingwomentohave

morechildren.TheimpactonSouthKo-

rea’sdemographictrajectorywillbeslight,

acknowledgesMrKimfromthefinance

ministry:eveninSejongwomenhavetoo

fewbabies to stopthe population from

shrinking.Butevery current and future

taxpayerisa plus. 7

Spittingthedummy

SouthKorea,fertilityrate

Projectedlifetimebirthsperwoman

Source:StatisticsKorea

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0

2000 05 10 1915

OECDaverage Sejong

Seoul

National

T

he aboriginalflag has been an em-

blem of pride and protest for half a cen-

tury. Its colours—black, red and yellow—

represent Australia’s first people, their

connection to the land and the life-giving

sun. It is hoisted over schools and waved at

sporting fixtures. It flies periodically over

Sydney’s famous Harbour Bridge. Yet Ab-

originals fear its very existence is under

threat.

The issue is copyright. Australia’s gov-

ernment has officially adopted the flag, but

its design is still owned by the man who

created it, Harold Thomas, an Aboriginal

artist. He conceived it in the 1970s as a ban-

ner for the campaign to allow Aboriginals

to reclaim their traditional lands. The im-

age was reproduced fairly freely until 2018,

when he sold exclusive rights to its use on

apparel and “digital and physical media

products” to wamClothing, a private firm.

wamhas since chased down many firms

and charities for royalties. The Victorian

Aboriginal Health Service was told it would

have to pay to use the flag on t-shirts, a re-

cent Senate inquiry heard. These were sold

at cost to patients to encourage them to at-

tend check-ups. Diabetes Victoria, another

non-profit, had to stop using the flag on its

website because wamdemanded payment.

“How could one company have a mono-

poly on an iconic symbol?” wonders Laura

Thompson, an indigenous health expert.

She started a campaign to “free the flag”

after her charitable enterprise was given

three days to “cease and desist” from print-

ing it on clothing. To some, it seems doubly

insulting that the firm commercialising

the banner is owned by white Australians.

Worse, critics argue, its co-founder, Ben

Wooster, has a record of exploiting indige-

nous culture. Another of his companies,

Birubi Art, was fined A$2.3m ($1.65m) last

year for selling fake Aboriginal art.

The danger, says Linda Burney, the

country’s first indigenous mp, is that the

emblem could be forced out of use. It is al-

ready disappearing from sport. The Austra-

lian Football League (afl), of top Aussie-

rules teams, normally prints the flag on

pitches and players’ jerseys for an annual

“indigenous round”, which celebrates its

Aboriginal athletes. It stopped doing so

this year after wamthreatened legal action.

Australia’s national cricket and rugby un-

ion teams and the National Rugby League

have all followed, saying they will not pay.

The national government is trying to

defuse the row by buying the rights from

Mr Thomas, wamClothing and two other

licensees. This should allow the flag to be

used freely. But not everyone likes the idea

of handing custodianship of the image to

bureaucrats. The Senate inquiry recom-

mended that an independent Aboriginal

committee should be in charge of it. Labor,

the main opposition party, fears that things

are moving rather too slowly. “The impor-

tance and history of the flag is being lost,”

two of its senators have warned. If negotia-

tions are not resolved by January, they sug-

gested, the government should forcibly

commandeer the design. 7

SYDNEY

A copyright dispute ensnares a

national symbol

The Aboriginal flag

Take down or

cough up

A copyright infringement