‘Great Era’ for Women in Korea, Says First Female VP

[news]

‘Great Era’ for Women in Korea, Says First Female VP
By Rose Kim – Dec 25, 2014

When Choi Myoung Wha graduated from Korea University in 1988, many of the nation’s biggest companies didn’t hire women in their annual recruitment drives. Armed with a degree in French literature, Choi landed a job at Samsung Group through a special program thanks to her language skills.

Choi Myoung Wha, vice president of the marketing strategy group at Hyundai Motor Co., poses for a photograph next to a Genesis luxury sedan on display in the lobby at the company's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea

Today, South Korea’s first female president Park Geun Hye is pushing for more female managers in public service and calling for more measures to help working mothers. Women are hired fresh out of college by South Korea’s family-controlled conglomerates, though they still earn less than men on average. Job conditions continue to improve for women, says Choi, who heads Hyundai Motor Co. (005380)’s strategic marketing group.

“It’s definitely a great era for working women,” Choi, who was Hyundai’s first female vice president when she joined South Korea’s largest automaker in 2012, said in an interview. “Society is biased in women’s favor because there hadn’t been a balance until recently.”

South Korea didn’t pass a law guaranteeing equal employment rights until April 1988, the same year that Choi graduated from university. The country had just elected its first president, and the capital Seoul was preparing to host the Olympic Games that were regarded as a ‘coming out party’ for the country’s newly-industrialized and democratized economy.

Choi points to developments since that she says have skewed the employment environment in women’s favor, including a ban since 1999 to give preferential points to men applying for jobs in the civil service because they have to serve in the military. Women are exempt from conscription in South Korea.

Favorable Conditions

Given the more favorable working conditions now, it’s up to women to break free of the mentality that they are different from men and deserve special treatment, Choi said.

“There is nothing in the world that becomes more difficult just because you are a woman,” Choi, 49, said Nov. 27 at Hyundai’s headquarters in Seoul. “A successful person can ‘happen to be’ a woman; she isn’t successful ‘because’ she’s a woman or ‘despite’ being a woman.”

Boosting the number of female executives is essential to fully tap South Korea’s talent pool given its aging population, said Kim Yongah, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. in Seoul.

“While many more women are entering the job force, retention remains to be a huge challenge,” Kim said in an e-mail. “It is critical to address both recruiting women to fill the pipeline, and development and retention of talent to grow them as leaders.”

Park has called for more family-friendly steps to be adopted, such as increasing the number of day-care places for children of working mothers and boosting subsidies to companies to offer flexible working hours.

Still Trailing

The government also set a goal to have more female managers in public service, including increasing the proportion of women on government committees to 40 percent by 2017, from 25 percent in 2012.

Women made up 2 percent of executive committees at Korean companies last year, trailing the 8 percent average in 10 Asian countries that McKinsey researched in 2011, based on latest available data. They accounted for 10 percent in Europe and 14 percent in the U.S. at the end of 2011.

While the percentage of women who attained tertiary education has surpassed that for men since 2009, their pay hasn’t caught up. Women earned an average 68 percent of a man’s monthly salary last year, compared with 52 percent in 1988, the year Choi entered the workforce, according to government statistics.

Hyundai currently has two female vice presidents, including Choi. Cho Mi Jin was hired in August to head the company’s leadership develpment.

Priorities

While she welcomes having more female workers and executives, Choi says setting a target risks having some women taking up roles they aren’t fully prepared for. The mother of two teenage boys, who didn’t enjoy pro-family policies when she started out, says women need to prioritize what’s important.

Before joining Hyundai, Choi spent two decades in marketing positions at companies including McKinsey and LG Electronics Inc. (066570)

“As a working mother, there are going to be trade-offs,” Choi said. “To succeed, you have to accept that and make the appropriate adjustments.”

Choi’s choice was to hire help for the things she couldn’t attend to, including household chores, so she could maximize the time spent with her children outside work. For that, she has the support of her husband, an architecture professor she met in college and married upon graduation.

Although the family is close, Choi says she doesn’t have photos of her personal life on her desk and thinks only about work as soon as she sets foot in the office.

Corporate Cultures

The executive has experienced different corporate cultures through working at half a dozen companies, and says Hyundai is taking steps to embrace minorities including women.

Women make up about 30 percent of Choi’s strategy marketing group, compared with the 4.4 percent average for the rest of Hyundai.

The automaker understands the importance of diversity and is making efforts to hire more women, it said in an e-mail.

Korean employers who boosted the number of female managers in the five years through 2013 had better revenue growth and return on equity and sales than those that didn’t, according to the Korean Women’s Development Institute, which studied publicly traded companies with more than 500 workers.

Research published in 2011 by New York-based Catalyst showed Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. benefit from gender diversity as they achieved higher returns on sales and invested capital.

Choi, who’s also the vice chairman of government-backed Women in Innovation, says one of her key interests is mentoring female managers.

‘More Professional’

The executive frequently hosts meetings and luncheons for women at Hyundai, particularly with the four female team leaders based in the headquarters. The automaker said it usually takes 15 to 18 years to be promoted to lead a team.

“These female managers who started their careers here could probably sell refrigerators in the Antarctic,” Choi said. “That’s how great they are.”

The same can’t be said for some women who joined Hyundai fresh out of college, who Choi says may be more dependent on male co-workers and emotional when there are setbacks at work.

“My advice to women is to be more professional,” Choi said. “The person sitting next to you is your colleague not your boyfriend, and your manager is your boss not your father.”

‘Great Era’ for Women in Korea, Says First Female VP
By Rose Kim – Dec 25, 2014

When Choi Myoung Wha graduated from Korea University in 1988, many of the nation’s biggest companies didn’t hire women in their annual recruitment drives. Armed with a degree in French literature, Choi landed a job at Samsung Group through a special program thanks to her language skills.

Choi Myoung Wha, vice president of the marketing strategy group at Hyundai Motor Co., poses for a photograph next to a Genesis luxury sedan on display in the lobby at the company's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea

Today, South Korea’s first female president Park Geun Hye is pushing for more female managers in public service and calling for more measures to help working mothers. Women are hired fresh out of college by South Korea’s family-controlled conglomerates, though they still earn less than men on average. Job conditions continue to improve for women, says Choi, who heads Hyundai Motor Co. (005380)’s strategic marketing group.

“It’s definitely a great era for working women,” Choi, who was Hyundai’s first female vice president when she joined South Korea’s largest automaker in 2012, said in an interview. “Society is biased in women’s favor because there hadn’t been a balance until recently.”

South Korea didn’t pass a law guaranteeing equal employment rights until April 1988, the same year that Choi graduated from university. The country had just elected its first president, and the capital Seoul was preparing to host the Olympic Games that were regarded as a ‘coming out party’ for the country’s newly-industrialized and democratized economy.

Choi points to developments since that she says have skewed the employment environment in women’s favor, including a ban since 1999 to give preferential points to men applying for jobs in the civil service because they have to serve in the military. Women are exempt from conscription in South Korea.

Favorable Conditions

Given the more favorable working conditions now, it’s up to women to break free of the mentality that they are different from men and deserve special treatment, Choi said.

“There is nothing in the world that becomes more difficult just because you are a woman,” Choi, 49, said Nov. 27 at Hyundai’s headquarters in Seoul. “A successful person can ‘happen to be’ a woman; she isn’t successful ‘because’ she’s a woman or ‘despite’ being a woman.”

Boosting the number of female executives is essential to fully tap South Korea’s talent pool given its aging population, said Kim Yongah, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. in Seoul.

“While many more women are entering the job force, retention remains to be a huge challenge,” Kim said in an e-mail. “It is critical to address both recruiting women to fill the pipeline, and development and retention of talent to grow them as leaders.”

Park has called for more family-friendly steps to be adopted, such as increasing the number of day-care places for children of working mothers and boosting subsidies to companies to offer flexible working hours.

Still Trailing

The government also set a goal to have more female managers in public service, including increasing the proportion of women on government committees to 40 percent by 2017, from 25 percent in 2012.

Women made up 2 percent of executive committees at Korean companies last year, trailing the 8 percent average in 10 Asian countries that McKinsey researched in 2011, based on latest available data. They accounted for 10 percent in Europe and 14 percent in the U.S. at the end of 2011.

While the percentage of women who attained tertiary education has surpassed that for men since 2009, their pay hasn’t caught up. Women earned an average 68 percent of a man’s monthly salary last year, compared with 52 percent in 1988, the year Choi entered the workforce, according to government statistics.

Hyundai currently has two female vice presidents, including Choi. Cho Mi Jin was hired in August to head the company’s leadership develpment.

Priorities

While she welcomes having more female workers and executives, Choi says setting a target risks having some women taking up roles they aren’t fully prepared for. The mother of two teenage boys, who didn’t enjoy pro-family policies when she started out, says women need to prioritize what’s important.

Before joining Hyundai, Choi spent two decades in marketing positions at companies including McKinsey and LG Electronics Inc. (066570)

“As a working mother, there are going to be trade-offs,” Choi said. “To succeed, you have to accept that and make the appropriate adjustments.”

Choi’s choice was to hire help for the things she couldn’t attend to, including household chores, so she could maximize the time spent with her children outside work. For that, she has the support of her husband, an architecture professor she met in college and married upon graduation.

Although the family is close, Choi says she doesn’t have photos of her personal life on her desk and thinks only about work as soon as she sets foot in the office.

Corporate Cultures

The executive has experienced different corporate cultures through working at half a dozen companies, and says Hyundai is taking steps to embrace minorities including women.

Women make up about 30 percent of Choi’s strategy marketing group, compared with the 4.4 percent average for the rest of Hyundai.

The automaker understands the importance of diversity and is making efforts to hire more women, it said in an e-mail.

Korean employers who boosted the number of female managers in the five years through 2013 had better revenue growth and return on equity and sales than those that didn’t, according to the Korean Women’s Development Institute, which studied publicly traded companies with more than 500 workers.

Research published in 2011 by New York-based Catalyst showed Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. benefit from gender diversity as they achieved higher returns on sales and invested capital.

Choi, who’s also the vice chairman of government-backed Women in Innovation, says one of her key interests is mentoring female managers.

‘More Professional’

The executive frequently hosts meetings and luncheons for women at Hyundai, particularly with the four female team leaders based in the headquarters. The automaker said it usually takes 15 to 18 years to be promoted to lead a team.

“These female managers who started their careers here could probably sell refrigerators in the Antarctic,” Choi said. “That’s how great they are.”

The same can’t be said for some women who joined Hyundai fresh out of college, who Choi says may be more dependent on male co-workers and emotional when there are setbacks at work.

“My advice to women is to be more professional,” Choi said. “The person sitting next to you is your colleague not your boyfriend, and your manager is your boss not your father.”

[Author]

December 29, 2014 at 11:04 AM