By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
It’s the age of feminism and gender equity but still many women face the ``glass ceiling’’ while trying to climb the corporate ladder.
In Mexico, among the top 100 corporations, only one percent of senior executives are women. According to Kim Hyang-sook, president of the Business Professional Women (BPW) Korea, the figure is the same in Korea.
``If you see the glass ceiling, don’t try to break it, try to change the building,’’ Chonchanok Viravan, president of the BPW International, said.
The leader of the 30,000 working women of 80 countries worldwide said that the most important thing is to change the culture of the workplace, not to aggressively react against discrimination.
The 44- year-old former vice president of the United Overseas Bank in Thailand said that she had also suffered from the invisible barrier between her and her male co-workers. ``We say women have to do twice the amount of work than men to achieve what we want. Do I think it unfair? In a way, I don’t think so, because in the end, we have twice the amount of knowledge and skills than men,’’ she said.
She said that more qualified women are coming to the market place, their progress is visible and more companies are changing, slowly, but visibly.
She said that among Fortune’s top 500 companies, the higher the number of female executives, the greater the profit. The gap between the companies widened up to 30 percent depending on the number of female executives hired.
``Now more companies are listening to men’s straightforward ideas and women’s intuitive and alternative ideas in decision making. Our goal is equity between the two sexes in decision-making,’’ Viravan said.
She said that the organization plans to ask some companies to disclose the number or the ratio of women executives and their profits. The former banker said that the stock market is a good starting point. ``I hope the companies’ providing the information would affect customers’ investment choices, and that more companies would consider hiring women,’’ she added.
BPW is a world-renowned lobby organization comprised of women working in professional fields. The group that was first founded in the United States more than six decades ago, is now one of the most influential women’s group in the world. It has consultative status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and participatory status in the Council of Europe.
Its Korean branch, which hosted the 4th Young BPW International Meeting on May 10-13, is organizing the BPW Asia Pacific Regional Conference on May 13-15 for the first time in Korea.
The theme for the first conference was “Preparing Young Leaders for the 21st Century” while the second touches on concepts of “New Dimension of Leadership” at the Prima Hotel and Grand InterContinental Hotel, respectively, in Seoul.