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By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
There are hundreds of chief executive officers in Korea's flourishing financial sector including banks, insurers, brokerages and asset management companies, who show diversity in ages, educational backgrounds, regions, religions and even ethnicities.
However, they lack diversity in the very important criterion of gender ― there are no female CEOs in the finance industry here.
Asia's No. 4 economy has 18 commercial or state-backed banks, 22 life insurers, 16 non-life insurers, 71 brokerage houses or futures firms, 68 asset management firms and four major accounting companies. Their CEOs are all men.
"Women play an increasingly important role throughout society. But the domestic financial segment is still overly underrepresented by females," said Kim Sang-kyung, head of the Korea Network of Women in Finance.
"It does not make any sense that an economy the size of Korea has no female financial CEO at all. The nation needs to come up with countermeasures to address this," she said.
The most prominent female in the private financial sector might arguably be Daishin Securities Chairwoman Lee Uh-ryung, the daughter-in-law of the brokerage's founder Yang Jae-bong, but the official CEO of the Seoul-based brokerage house is President Roh Chung-nam.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has 67 executives and 220 team managers. Only two of them are women. The Bank of Korea (BOK) currently doesn't have a single female executive or team manager.
Rep. Lee Sung-nam of the main opposition Democratic Party had worked as a deputy governor in the FSS and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the BOK. But as soon as she left there was a dearth of high-ranking female officials.
The FSS is the country's top financial regulator, which oversees and monitors all financial sector entities, headed by Governor Kim Jong-chang.
The BOK is the central bank, which takes charge of monetary policies such as deciding benchmark interest rates every month spearheaded by Governor Lee Seong-tae.
Things are similar among financial policymakers of the Financial Services Commission and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance led by Chairman Chin Dong-soo and Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun, respectively. Both have no females in executive posts.
"As far as I know, women have never assumed an important policy-maker's job in the government since it was set up in 1945," said a government official in finance, also male.
"Up until now, gender equality among financial officials has never emerged as a serious issue for some reason. It culd be one of the last sectors where sexism still remains strong," he said.
As a reason for the resilient sexism, the official claimed that the country's financial bureaucrats have been overwhelmed with too "serious tasks" to pay attention to gender equality.
"Financial bureaucrats masterminded the modernization of the country between the early 1960s and late '90s, as well as the recovery from the currency crisis and credit card bubble," the official said.
"During the past year, they pulled out all the stops to grapple with the global financial crisis. While they have been busy in carrying out such tasks, no one could hardly raise the issue of gender equality," he said.
'Glass Ceiling'
An FSS official of the personnel department said that the regulator had more males in senior positions not because of sexism but because of the lack of female talent.
"In the past, women were reluctant to work as regulators. Hence, almost all the early members are male. We have few options in our talent pool," the official said via telephone.
"We are working hard to give more opportunities to females to the extent that some males complain. More than 35 percent of new recruits are women. We do not buy the criticism on sexism," he said.
He added the ratio of high-ranking females is very low in other areas where women were unwilling to work in the past such as the prosecution. His logic: time will solve the inequality.
In comparison, Eunice Kim, deputy president at Hana Financial Group, said the window of opportunities remains elusive for even qualified female workers, suggesting that so-called "glass ceiling" be removed for the progress of female talent.
"Women have struggled over the past few decades to overcome stereotypes and sex-based biases to climb the ladder of organizational hierarchies. For example, 30 years ago, they were expected to resign when they got married," Kim said.
"Global financial services companies have come to consider diversity as a high priority and it has contributed to making them more efficient in terms of utilization of their human resources. But Korean companies are slow in embracing the diversity principle as a part of their corporate culture," she said.
As a result, she added, that Korean firms are currently lagging behind those of other countries in the development and utilization of female talent.
Rep. Lee Sung-nam of Democratic Party agrees that femininity is important to deal with problems of the hegemonic masculinity and the country needs to nurture female talent in a more proactive fashion.
"Ladies are perfect fit for finance. Their delicacy is a competitive edge but the reality is that they are underutilized. They need to make their presence felt in the sector," Lee said.
"I think president and his staff need to put the gender inequality issue in the financial sector on the front burner," Lee said adding she was able to work at the FSS thanks to former President Kim Dae-jung who fought against sexism.
Lee said that the financial regulators or companies might be able to sign up female experts from outside at the senior level for the time being if they lack in-house candidates.
Kim, head of Women in Finance, said the temporary introduction of a female quota system might be a viable option to address gender inequality.
Her idea: The public sector might ensure that a certain proportion of bureaucrats are females in the finance area.
voc200@koreatimes.co.kr
