By Kang Shin-who
Employment of women at government agencies and state-run enterprises is lower than that of private companies, the Ministry of Employment and Labor said Sunday, releasing a survey result on women employment at public and private companies.
The survey showed the average employment rate of women at 255 government organizations and public companies stood at 30 percent, while that of privately-run companies was 35 percent.
Also, the rate of women managers and high-ranking officials at public companies took up 10 percent, much less than 16 percent at private companies.
The ministry surveyed 225 public and 1,321 companies, which were subject to “Affirmative Action.” As part of efforts to boost women’s employment, the ministry has adopted the system that mandates public and private companies with more than 500 full-time workers to submit their workers’ payroll annually.
If the employment rate of women workers at a certain company is below 60 percent of the average rate of the same industry or that of women managers is below 60 percent of the industry average, those companies are required to submit employment management plans to improve their level of women’s employment.
In the case of companies employing more than 1,000 employees — 66 government-funded and 592 private companies, the women employment rate stood at 29 percent for public ones, while at the private ones it was 36 percent.
Public companies showed a lower ratio of women managers and high-ranking officials with 11 percent, compared with 17 percent at private companies.
Among the 658 large-scale companies, 16 percent or 108 companies — 99 private and nine public — had no management-level female workers.
However, the rate of women’s employment overall has increased 0.11 percentage points to 34.12 percent and that of high-ranking female officials also rose 0.96 percentage points to 15.09 percent.
The ministry plans to encourage companies that showed a low percentage of women in their payrolls to hire more female workers and require them to submit management plans to meet the minimum ratio of women employees by the end of March next year.