Korean Women Turn to the Government to Get Ahead - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Women are taking such a lead among new entrants to the South Korean government ranks that a quota system set up for women new hires is now being being applied to men.

• Women made up 55% of the 151 people who passed the country’s extremely competitive foreign service examination in the past five years — in 1992, only three women passed, which was already considered newsworthy.

• And the significant mass of women at the entry level is starting to affect the middle ranks. Women hold 10.8% of midlevel managerial government jobs. In the exam for eligibility for senior posts, women made up 47% of the midlevel officials who passed in 2009.

• But this rush for government jobs is the result of continued stymying women suffer at South Korean private sector companies. Educated South Korean women are the least likely to be working among the women of all highly developed economies. Women hold virtually no significant C-suite jobs. And the top government jobs remain the preserve of men.

• A (male) Foreign Ministry official may have revealed more than he meant to when he told the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times: “Managers come to us asking for men, complaining that they have too many women in their office. There aren’t enough men to go round. They’re in short supply.”

• And while women are increasingly the majority of employees in other developed economies, in South Korea 90% of jobs that were lost in the recent financial crisis had been held by women, in part the result of women often holding part-time or short-term jobs in the private sector.

• So the government might be the best solution. Park Ja-hye is preparing for the foreign service exam at the prestigious Seoul National University after finding that her business degree from there doesn’t open doors the way it would for a man. “Private companies don’t have great expectations from their female employees,” she said, adding, “Women flock to government exams, not just because they want to, but also because they have no alternative.”

The IHT/NYT report