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The Korea Herald > Business > Economy
2012-08-27 20:25
By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)
Higher salaries, less male-dominant corporate culture lure career women
More women jobseekers prefer to look for employment at foreign-invested companies, hoping to avoid some of the barriers at Korean firms and seek a larger pool of opportunities.
More women candidates are emerging in the high-end human resources market, according to one executive recruitment firm.
“Now Korean conglomerates are looking at ideal business leaders from different angles,” said Kim Kuk-gil, chairman of Stanton Chase Korea.
“About 60 percent of our candidates are women who tend to be more flexible in managing difficulties than men. Once they are armed with strong, charismatic leadership, they make such powerful candidates ― here we are talking about high-end, chief-executive-level positions,” the chairman said.
Kim acknowledged, however, that some Korean conglomerates still implicitly ask for men, even if they do not mind, or sometimes welcome, foreign male leaders.
Women, both those at entry-level and with long careers, are fast to sense the male-preferences in Korea, and try to situate themselves in companies that make full use of their abilities while they can, he said.
Women working in foreign companies often lead their male counterparts in number, said Kim Jong-cheol, president of the Korea Foreign Company Employee’s Human Network, a non-profit organization founded in 1999.
“KOFEN’s female members take up about 60 to 65 percent of our membership,” Kim said. “And when you go to an offline socializing event, you will find two-thirds of the participants are actually women.”
KOFEN, an online recruitment service specializing in foreign companies, recently disclosed its research results that graduates of Ewha Womans University made up the largest number of staff in human resources divisions.
About reasons why women employees are left with less opportunity to display their abilities, Kim said that the cultural mindset of a company’s CEO tend to influence the company’s direction and culture of management.
“Korean firms, no matter if they are small or medium-sized companies or large conglomerates, have Korean owners and CEOs with a strong patriarchal mindset,” the KOFEN president said.
Foreign and multinational firms usually do not have owners presiding in the company, but instead have brand heads who tend to stay for about four years and leave the country for another branch or headquarters, Kim said.
“As a result, people working in these foreign firms have their own set of responsibilities and workloads. In other words, all they need to do is to mind their own business, without worrying about their colleagues’ jobs and responsibilities.”
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