South Korea (Korea, hereafter) has successfully transformed from a poor country in 1950 with a GDP per capita of less than 50 US dollars into a global economic power with a GDP per capita exceeding 25,000 US dollars in 2015 (The World Bank, 2016). The often-cited quote “Miracle on the Han River” (Kwon, 2016, Slide 1) refers to the remarkable economic success of the nation (Heo & Roehrig, 2014). Lacking typical material resources, only human capital, both men and women included, have played a critical role in economic development. However, women have never been fully integrated into the labor market or seriously considered for leadership roles in any segment of society (Kim, 2013).

Introduction

Organizational leaders are made up of middle managers and above, though this may slightly differ depending on sector. In this chapter, we operationally defined women leaders as those who have an impact on other people through their rank or position in the organization (Kim, 2006). The status of Korean women leaders is still considered to be token because only a small number of women are in leadership positions, not yet reaching 15%. For example, in the top 30 large companies (called chaebols), women executives make up only 1.8% (Park, 2015), and that number is even lower in other Korean companies, especially in small to medium-sized companies. As a result, Korea is among the lowest in women representation in senior roles, boards, and executive committees, both in Asia and in the world. Korea’s women representation occupies 1% on boards and 2% on executive committees, making the country the bottom among Asian countries (Heidrick & Struggles, 2013). According to the World Economic Forum’s (2016) Global Gender Gap Report, Korea ranks 116th of 144 countries surveyed. Korean women’s low status in global rankings is quite alarming given the nation’s prestigious status in economic power in the world.

Why has Korea’s remarkable economic success failed to translate into women’s corresponding status? We attempted to answer this driving question in this chapter. We reviewed literature on women in leadership in Korea and shared the study results from our recent research on women leaders in Korea in which we conducted interviews with a total of 87 women leaders (team leaders, executives, vice-presidents, and CEOs) in diverse sectors (Cho et al., 2015, 2016, 2017). In the following sections, we provide statistical analysis of women’s participation in the labor market, discuss challenges and opportunities women leaders face, and present research agendas for further investigation.

Women in the Labor Market

Despite Korea’s remarkable economic success, women’s status in the labor market is still poor, resulting in women’s low ranking globally.

Women’s Low Status in Global Rankings

Korea ranked 116th of 144 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index (World Economic Forum, 2016) in four combined categories of economic participation, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. This ranking is far below most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, including Iceland (1st), France (17th), the USA (45th), and Japan (111st), and still lower than many Asian countries, including the Philippines (7th), India (87th), China (99th), and Malaysia (106th).

Korea’s rankings in the Global Gender Gap Index have not shown notable improvement over the last 10 years by ranking 92nd of 115 countries in 2006 and 116th of 144 countries in 2016. This continued gender gap exhibits serious under-representation of women in Korea. Particularly, the gender gap index shows that women’s under-representation is manifested in Legislators, Senior Officials, and Managers in Economic Participation and Opportunity, indicating that women make up 10% of these leadership positions (WEF, 2016, p. 218). Women leaders’ status in politics, calculated by the proportion of Women in Parliament and Ministerial Positions, and Years with Female Head of State, also shows the same level of under-representation as that of the Economic Participation and Opportunity (WEF, 2016, p. 218). This clearly indicates Korean women’s token status in organizations in various sectors, including business, civil service, and politics.

Women’s Economic Participation

Women’s economic participation in 2015 makes up 42.3% of the labor market. When we only look at this figure, Korean women’s status in the labor market seems to be fine. However, when we consider women’s occupation types as shown in Table 6.1, women managers, including executives, make up only 10.5% of all managers. In contrast, women in services (65.6%), sales (51.4%), and elementary school workers (51.5%) outnumber men. In addition, 41.3% of women are employed as contingent workers, including temporary workers, daily workers, and unpaid family workers, while only 20.9% of men are contingent workers (Statistics Korea, 2015c). These figures indicate that women’s labor force participation is still unstable in Korea and the low quality of employment status may contribute to the small number of women in leadership.

Table 6.1 Korean Women Workers by Occupation (unit: person)
Full size table

Women Leaders in Various Sectors

Table 6.2 shows the proportion of women leaders in various sectors in Korea. In the business sector, the number of women executives remains very low (1.8%), while women employers make up 28.6% of all employers but most are self-employed. In politics, 51 women (17%) were selected in the 2016 parliamentary election. In the case of civil servants, 12.1% are women, but only 3.7% occupy senior positions. In the upper echelon of law, education (faculty), and healthcare (physicians), women make up more than 20% because more women have passed a bar exam or obtained a doctoral degree. However, women are still largely outnumbered by men, so their token status remains.

Table 6.2 Korean Women Leaders in Diverse Sectors (unit: person)
Full size table

Women’s Career Interruptions

Women’s career interruptions are one contributor to the small number of women leaders in Korea. The rate of women’s economic participation in their twenties was a bit larger than that of men, making up 64.4% and 63.0%, respectively, as shown in Fig. 6.1 (Source: Statistics Korea, 2015c). However, the rate of women’s economic participation decreases in their thirties (58.8%). This is partly explained by women’s careers being interrupted in the beginning of their thirties because of their commitment to family. According to the survey on economic activities of career-break women conducted by the Ministry of Gender Equality & Family (2014), 16.4% of married working women in their twenties and thirties intend to leave their work within 1 year, and 45.7% answered marriages, maternity, and children’s education as their retirement reasons. Furthermore, among women experiencing career interruption, marriages (63.4%), maternity (24.7%), children’s education (7.0%), and eldercare (4.9%) surfaced as the major reasons.

Fig. 6.1
figure 1

Gender differences in economic participation

Full size image

The data also reflect some increase in women’s economic participation as they enter their forties, suggesting some return to the labor force as children get older. These data imply that many Korean women leave their jobs and do most of the family and house chores after marriage, while men take comparatively little responsibility at home.

Women’s Challenges

As shown in the statistics on women’s participation in the labor market, Korean women’s status is still poor by global standards. In this section, we present major challenges women leaders face, including cultural constraints, the gender divide in family roles, and the gendered workplace.

Cultural Constraints

Understanding Korean culture provides a foundation for understanding women leaders in Korea. Culture is defined as shared values, norms, and customs that people learn in the process of socialization, which influences how they make decisions, treat others, and create their worldviews (Burke, 2011; Schein, 2004). National culture is a critical indicator to understand people’s life philosophy, attitudes, behaviors, and values in a nation. Korea may be distinctive in that Confucianism and military culture have had a lasting effect on the society and on the way organizations are managed (Cho & Yoon, 2001; Hemmert, 2012; Park & Cho, 1995).

Since the beginning of the Chosun dynasty in the late fourteenth century, Confucianism has become a leading state philosophy for value systems and social structures (Lee & Lee, 2014). Major principles of Confucianism are represented as respect for elders, loyalty to superiors, good human relations, filial piety, and a gender divide (Kee, 2008). The core value of Confucianism is based on the belief that “every individual has its own roles and responsibilities according to its identity and social class” (Kee, 2008, p. 4) with the goal of creating a harmonious community.

In the strict family hierarchy of Confucianism, women are expected to obey and respect men’s authority and perform multiple roles as mother, wife, and daughter-in-law. Married women should leave their own families and devote their whole life to their husband’s family. In contrast, men have magisterial authority as head of the family and assume roles outside the household (Kim, 2013).

Confucian values have significantly affected the Korean family and work culture (Kee, 2008; Park & Cho, 1995; Shim, 2005). Although women’s participation in economic and political arenas has promoted their social status and leadership, some cultural traditions remain unchanged. The roles of mother and wife have been strongly preserved as the fundamental duty of women in Korea (Kee, 2008). The term, glass fence, coined by Kim (2013), means keeping women from taking more active roles outside the home because there is a strong divide between women’s space at home and men’s space at work. For example, a Korean man introduces his wife as JipSaram, which means a person inside the home, and a woman introduces her husband as BagganYangban, which means a person outside the home.

Another cultural influence is associated with the military culture. Korea was ruled by military leaders between 1961 and 1992, at a time when a series of 5-year economic development plans were launched, resulting in the nation’s outstanding economic development (Heo & Roehrig, 2014). Korea’s success with military-led industrialization was based on its military command culture and sense of loyalty, working on clear-cut targets and having no tolerance for failure (Hemmert, 2012). Such a persistent military culture has solidified a patriarchal culture at national and organizational levels (Lee, 2002). In this context, building a team spirit for group harmony, which is built by eating, drinking, and singing together, is still encouraged in organizational life (Kee, 2008). Military service is mandatory for all Korean men, resulting in learning leadership skills and partaking in strong bonding and informal networks based on the military experience (Rowley, Kang, & Lim, 2015). In the process, women are excluded from networking and such leadership development opportunities.

The long-lasting Confucian and military cultures have resulted in a hierarchical culture, patriarchal ideology, gendered organizational culture, and collectivism in the society (Lee & Lee, 2014). This unique Korean culture has been confirmed by Hofstede (Hofstede Centre, 2014) who evaluated the country as having cultural dimensions of high power distance, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. People easily accept hierarchical order regardless of inherent inequalities in the social structure and place a high value on strong commitments to their groups. In this context, people may have difficulty in speaking up with different ideas and changing existing cultural norms.

The combined effects of Confucian and military cultures have created a challenging workplace for women leaders. Due to the traditional gender divide and the gendered workplace, women have difficulties in entering the labor market and developing their careers (Lee & Lee, 2014). Cultural traditions in Korea have set a limit for Korean women’s career and leadership development.

The Gender Divide in Family Roles

In the traditional Korean family system, women assume a caretaker role for children and elderly members and manage housework, while men are breadwinners (Kim, 2013; Yang, 2008). This traditional gender divide is still prevalent in the society because it has been ingrained in women’s work and family roles, possibly leading to work–life conflicts, difficulties in career choices, and career interruptions.

Married women employees are often considered a vulnerable group due to a lack of time and energy to perform multiple roles at work and home (Oh, Kim, & Uhm, 2012). Despite the increasing number of dual-income couples, women employees are still considered secondary wage earners considering their responsibilities for domestic chores and family care (Lee, 2006). Married women’s multiple burdens are evidenced by the OECD’s (2015) well-being report; within dual-earner couples in Korea, men spend 40 minutes per day on domestic labor, while women spend 3 hours and 14 minutes, almost five times more than men. This result evidences gender differences in domestic labor and indicates possible work–family role conflicts.

The pressure of the gender divide has considerably affected women employees’ career choices. Gwak and Choi (2015) revealed that the most decisive domestic factor influencing married women’s economic participation was their husband’s preference in their employment. When their husband accepts their wife’s roles outside the home, women actively seek their jobs and manage their careers with psychological relief. Married women employees who do not have their husbands’ support are likely to experience work–family role conflicts and career interruptions caused by the gender divide (Ministry of Gender Equality & Family, 2014). Their failure in work–family balance leads to career breaks. The high rate of career-interrupted women is a major cause of Korean women’s low employment rate compared with other OECD nations.

Due to unfair treatment, many women professionals have delayed marriage or postponed having a child after marriage to maintain their careers (Lee, 2006). This may help to explain why Korea has nearly the lowest birthrate (1.21 children per woman in 2014) in the world (OECD, 2016). In addition, Korea has undergone the most extreme demographic change in the last few decades with the fastest growth rate of older people in the world (Yonhap News, 2014). A report of Statistics Korea (2015a) estimated that Korea would enter an aged society with 14% of the total population aged 65 and older by 2018, while the aging population was 13.1% in 2015. It also predicted that Korea would become a hyper-aged society as the percentage will increase to 20% by 2025 (Kim, 2016).

The low birth rate and aging population may threaten national development caused by the reduction of the productive population. These demographic trends have spurred the country to find alternatives, including family-friendly policies, to increase women’s economic participation and the number of women leaders (Lee, Lee, & Han, 2008).

The Gendered Workplace

Korea has a large number of highly educated women. As the rate of women students’ college entrance exceeded men’s for the first time in 2010, the gender gap of college entrance has gradually increased (Statistics Korea, 2015c). However, the high rate of educated women has not resulted in their employment and, on the contrary, has led to the lowest employment rate with the largest gender gap in the OECD countries (Kim, 2015). Although the employment rate of women has been reported as the highest in their late twenties, the overall employment rate has decreased by the rapidly decreasing employment rate in their thirties, due to the traditional gender divide, resulting in a large number of career-interrupted women (Shin et al., 2016). Women’s career interruptions imply that highly educated women are not effectively utilized in the labor market, let alone their potential to become leaders in the organization.

After sending their children to school, many women try to reenter the labor market in their late thirties and older. Women’s late economic participation has shown an M-curve pattern (Fig. 6.1), found mainly in Korea and Japan, as compared with developed countries having an inverse U pattern (Han, 2012). When reentering the workplace, women tend to work as temporary, irregular, or at lower level jobs. Women, thus, make up a low rate of regular employees and a high rate of temporary employees (Oh, Kim, & Um, 2012).

Combined with lower positions of women employees in the labor market, the widest income disparity between men and women surfaced as a gender issue in the workplace (Statistics Korea, 2015d). This may be a result of the high rate of irregular women employees, devaluing women’s labor (Lee, 2006). In addition, women have often been primary victims of layoffs during the restructuring process in organizations. This has to do with people’s unconscious bias that women are not a primary breadwinner or are less productive because they lack time and effort caused by childcare at home (Gwak & Choi, 2015).

As Korean women’s career paths are considerably affected by gender roles, successful women leaders who have achieved a top position in an organization are likely to undergo difficulties in work–life balance, networking, and finding mentors who can guide their careers (Lee, 2006). Women leaders’ double burden of work and family contribute to forming their career identities with ambivalent attitudes for career aspirations. Kang (2016) revealed that many Korean women professionals with managerial positions have dual attitudes toward their careers, with a strong desire to continue employment but also to be less interested in career advancement. These professional women tend to seek modest level (low or mid-level) positions with less pressure for multiple role performance rather than higher positions with more responsibilities and duties. Women leaders’ concerns about work–life conflict, therefore, limit their career choices.

Opportunities

Based on our review of literature and recent research on Korean women leaders (Cho et al., 2015, 2016, 2017), we provide three possible opportunities for women leaders, including women leaders’ strengths as leaders, the government’s role, and roles of Human Resource Development (HRD).

Women Leaders’ Strengths

We found that women leaders are committed to their professions and careers, are loyal to their organizations, and have a strong sense of responsibility for both their work and family. They spoke of how their experiences as women in organizations significantly contributed to their career achievement. We found from our research that as the women leaders interviewed were both goal-oriented and performance-driven and soft and communicative, they were effective in working with men counterparts, resulting in outstanding performance in the organization.

In addition, it seems that women leaders’ token status in the organization gave them opportunities to play a moral compass role (Agrawal & Kets de Vries, 2006), meaning that they were more transparent in doing business than men. As one woman executive stated:

We need more women executives in organizations because they are transparent and work-oriented, whereas men are people-oriented and are tangled with relationships so they make decisions based on personal interests and connections. From an organization perspective, women’s way of doing business is better and brings more to the table.

Women leaders interviewed, however, spoke of the importance of having both men and women mentors. As they lack having women mentors, meeting their needs in this regard would be helpful for their leadership development. To strengthen opportunities for women leaders’ leadership development, organizations should provide challenging and high-profile work assignments, diverse business experiences, and development programs that are tailored to meet their developmental needs.

The Government’s Role

The government has played a pivotal role in enacting several laws and policies to increase women’s participation in the workplace and gender inequality over the last 30 years. Particularly, the Women’s Development Act that was enacted in 1995 provided a crucial institutional foundation for guiding women’s policies in Korea. Following the Act, the responsibility for planning, implementing, and evaluating women’s policies on a 5-year basis was given to the government (Kim, 2010). The detailed policies include several strategies to promote women’s economic participation, welfare, and gender equality in the workplace. Another achievement is the adoption of the Employment Quota System for women public officials in 1996, which has contributed to increasing women public administrators and congresswomen (Yang et al., 2012).

The government’s initiative for work–life balance is also encouraging. The Ministry of Gender Equality & Family’s (2011) meta-analysis of work–family conflict revealed that the most critical piece in resolving work–life conflict is a family-friendly organizational culture. The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (2016), in collaboration with the Ministry of Employment and Labor, has recently delivered 35 strategies for work–life balance that could be implemented in the corporate sector. It includes three focus areas including women leaders’ development, work–life balance, and corporate culture for gender equality.

It is laudable for the government to provide information on legal protection and corresponding policies and programs for the benefit of women. However, as government’s strategies are not punitive and lag behind the implementation of policies and programs, the government should find ways to distribute its strategies to all parts of the society. To that end, practitioners working for women in leadership should take full advantage of a close partnership between the government and the private sector that has proven to be an effective strategy for the nation’s economic development.

Roles of HRD

HRD can play a role in bringing in family-friendly culture by promoting work–life balance for both men and women in the organization and in implementing mentoring programs for women in the leadership pipeline. First, there must be a cultural shift in organizations that are based on long work hours and working late and during the weekends. Working at home with children should not be viewed as under-performing as long as outcomes are delivered. Given the changing nature of work with technology’s assistance, the notion of working should be as flexible as it can be, so that both men and women can balance work and family/life. To that end, some Korean companies make an effort to educate employees by regularly distributing documents concerning what to do and not to do when drinking in after-work gatherings. This small but worthy effort is contributing to less drinking and after-work gatherings for both men’s and women’s work–life balance.

Our research indicated that many women leaders did not find women mentors because there are no or only a few women senior leaders. Women leaders who did not benefit from formal mentoring programs addressed a strong need for the development of their leadership skills through such mentoring programs because mentoring is a psychosocial intervention that helps women see others having similar struggles in the process of developing their leadership skills (Cho et al., 2015). HRD scholars and practitioners need to encourage women in the leadership pipeline to project their career paths through behavior modeling in collaboration with existing women leaders in mentoring programs.

Research Agenda

We present two research agendas for further investigation for women leaders in Korea, including contextual factors that might influence women’s leadership development and comparative analyses of countries and sectors.

Contextual Factors

Given that HRD interventions for women leaders cannot be achieved without changing organizational work culture, discussions should be geared toward macro-level contextual factors that would increase the number of women leaders and meet their personal and professional needs in their leadership development. As we found from our research (Cho et al., 2015, 2016, 2017) that the most difficult challenge the women leaders face is the very challenging nature of their gendered workplace, we feel a strong need to pay more attention to research on organizational factors that promote or hinder physical and social infrastructures for women leaders in Korea. The organizational level of research on women in leadership requires investigation into the contextual factors that contribute to a non-discriminatory atmosphere in the workplace (Gress & Paek, 2014). For instance, in line with tokenism theory (Gustafson, 2008; Kanter, 1977; Yoder, 1991), which explores how women’s proportional representation in work groups affects their workplace experiences, Korean women leaders’ token status can be tested to see how they are coping with the gendered workplace.

Comparative Analyses

Given the predominant western influences in studies on women’s in leadership, there is a need to take cultural differences into account in research on the topic. As many of the challenges women leaders face are deeply rooted in traditional culture, we need to undertake critical inquiry into uniquely Korean contexts. In this way, it will be possible to identify which western approaches to women in leadership are and are not applicable to Korea. Representative examples include comparison studies between Korea and western countries (e.g., O’Brien et al., 2014), between Korea and Asian countries (e.g., Cho et al., 2015a), and between sectors (e.g., private and public). These comparative analyses will eventually contribute to develop indigenous research (McLean, 2010) on women in leadership that aptly fits into uniquely Korean contexts.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we reviewed statistical data on women leaders in the labor market and analyzed reasons of their low status based on unique Korean national and organizational cultures. Numerical evidence indicates that many women are still employed as non-regular employees and leave their jobs in their mid-career stage due to the burden of family duties and difficulties they face in the gendered workplace, thus only a small number of women remain in senior level positions. Although women’s educational attainment reaches as high as that of men to date, women are poorly represented in leadership positions of almost all sectors, including business, government, and education. The lack of women leaders can lead to the delay of Korean economic growth with the loss of a human capital and also lead to social inequality in the deployment of family-friendly policies and programs.

Korean women’s difficulties (i.e., work–life conflict, a threat of potential career interruption, income disparity, low representation, the pressure of traditional gender role performance) addressed in this chapter were deeply associated with the negative functions of traditional culture. Given that the culture was constantly pointed as a major sticking point for the growth of Korean women leaders, a variety of strategies should be called for to break unfavorable practices for women. The process of finding the ways needs to be achieved with a goal for a major shift in the male-dominated traditional culture. The good news is the government’s increasing interest in creating family-friendly policies and programs. It should be noted, though, that the real impact of family-friendly culture is made possible only in collaboration with all involved parties, organizations and society at large as well as individuals including husbands and families.