19. The rates of those receiving below minimum wages or short-time workers with less than 15 working hours per week have not changed in the past ten years. In 2015, the rates of women irregular workers and women workers receiving below minimum wages decreased over the previous year, but the rate of women working less than 15 hours per week has increased. In 2015, out of 100 women workers, 40.2 of them held irregular positions while 11.8 of them received below minimum wages and 4.9 of them engaged in short-time work positions. 20. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea conducted a fact-finding study on human rights situation of workers engaged in short-time work positions who work less than 15 hours per week in 2016. In many cases, short-time workers are not protected by social insurances as they are subjects of optional entry instead of mandatory entry for employment insurance, national pension and national health insurance with an exception of occupational health and safety insurance out of four major social insurances. They are excluded from paid holidays/extra pay and yearly paid holidays/stipend for unused annual leave under the Labor Standards Act and cannot receive severance pay even after working for the organization for more than one year. Moreover, they are excluded from candidates to become unlimited contract workers under the Act on the Protection, etc. of Fixed-term and Part-time Workers even if they have worked for the organization for more than two years. In 2002, the number of short-time workers was 1.8 times larger in women (120,279) than men (66,264), but as of 2015, the gap has grown to 2.4 times with 411,307 women (70.3%) and 174,146 men(29.7%). The annual growth rate on average was also higher in women at 9.9% than men at 7.7%. This means that more and more lower-quality jobs are taken by women and the increased number of short-time work positions leads to the deterioration of gender discrimination. 21. In order to improve the situation of gender discrimination in employment, the NHRCK recommended a policy to improve human rights situation of short-time workers to the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Ministry of Health and Welfare in November, 2017. The major content of the recommendation is to protect short-time workers through the constructive employment system defined