By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter

After graduating from college, a woman identified by her last name Kim was hired by a heavy industry company.

She was ambitious in wanting to join the overseas sales department or work at international branches. That was two years ago.

The now 26-year-old only lasted one year at the company due to the "glass ceiling." After leaving, she applied for a position in human resources - an area considered more viable for females.

"I realized that it is almost impossible for a woman to be successful, especially one desiring to be stationed in overseas marketing or on an operations team. So I thought it would be better to start again in a field where I can achieve more regardless of my gender," she said.

The Ministry of Labor conducted a survey on gender equality in workplace on 1,000 people who were over 20 years old and 81 percent said sexual discrimination on the job had improved.

However, 48 percent still thought gender bias was a severe problem in Korea, while 45 percent thought it was not serious.

More than 57 percent of men thought sexual discrimination was not a serious issue, while 60 percent of women considered it still grave.

More than one third (37 percent) of females surveyed said they were sexually discriminated against at work.

Thirty-five percent experienced job discrimination, 26 percent inequality in promotions and 15 percent in matters dealing with assignments handed out by department heads.

In Korea, some 1,400 companies with more than 500 employees, both public and private, filled only 6 percent of their executive positions with females.

This is relatively low compared to women's employment rate of 33 percent. More than 70 percent of companies did not have any female executives.

The trend is similar overseas.

The Chicago Network, an organization of professional women in the area, surveyed the male-female ratio of executives in 50 major companies in 2008 and 14.1 percent of them were women, a 1 percent drop from the previous year.

Career consultant Cho Yeon-sim said females should consider males at work as their personal "connections," not rivals.

"Corporations realize the power of diversity in making decisions and now they want employees who have both masculine and feminine traits," Cho said.

Korea has long been considered as a male-dominated society on the basis of its Confucian traditions.

However, there have been a debate as to whether there is great upheaval to this tradition as the result of societal changes such as the low birthrate.

For instance, many families no longer have multiple children, meaning that they are less likely to prefer sons over daughters.

In addition, Koreans' conventional thought of having sons succeed their family names is no longer as prevalent as before, with the advent of Western egalitarianism.

meeyoo@koreatimes.co.kr