By Kim Sang-kyung
It may be hard to believe, but banks in the 1970s had a system requiring female employees to sign a written promise stating that "only unmarried women can work here."
Back then, foreign banks allowed women to keep working after marriage, but their counterparts at domestic banks struggled with severe gender inequality. Bank employees were hired separately ― men as "regular bank clerks" and women as "female bank employees" ― and gender discrimination in the promotion process and wages was rampant. "Female bank employees" were able to become "junior clerks" only by passing a required test after 10 years of service.
The written promise system that targeted only female employees was relegated to the history books after some brave female workers at domestic banks came forward and brought the issue into the spotlight in 1976. The "female bank employee'' system was abolished in 1993, one year after the Labor Standards Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act were enacted.
Nevertheless, discrimination against female bank employees didn't end. As banks began hiring regular clerks and tellers separately after the currency crisis in the late 1990s, wage discrimination between regular clerks who are mostly men and tellers who are mostly women has widened. This discrimination disappeared only after the labor ministry demanded no discrimination against women without reasonable cause in 2006 and banks adopted the "occupational group system."
In January 2003, I joined forces with about 30 female banking executives to establish the Korea Network of Women in Finance (KNWF) with the aim of building a better world for women in the financial sector. Having now reached the status of an incorporated association under the Financial Services Commission, it is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The KNWF has exerted every effort to break the glass ceiling hindering female workers in finance.
As the number of women in managerial positions who remain in banks after age 40 has declined markedly, the KNWF had to overcome a string of crises. But discrimination has disappeared at least quantitatively thanks to all-out efforts to improve treatment for female bankers and remove discrimination against them. Now similar numbers of men and women enter banks, and job security in finance seems high, compared with other industries.
However, there's a long way to go qualitatively. In managerial positions or above, there are five times more men than women and naturally, the ratio of high-earning males to females is more than double, indicating that male dominance remains intact among high-ranking bankers.
The new Capital Markets Act that went into effect last August stipulates that any listed company with assets of 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) or more should have at least one woman on its board of directors. But most companies feign compliance with the rule by increasing the proportion of women among its outside directors rather than promoting women from within the organization Even as some female executives parachute in from outside the organization, the issue of gender diversity within organizations has not been fundamentally solved.
Across the world, male-dominated cultures have existed in the financial industry for a long time. However, after the global financial crisis in 2008, regulatory bodies in the European Union, United States and Britain adopted gender diversity as their major supervisory policy line. That's because such organizations as banks that create credit are at a higher risk of groupthink unless armed with gender diversity. Because women have relatively less behavioral risks, gender diversity is becoming the top concern in reshuffles of banking executives everywhere.
Gender diversity should be pursued more aggressively if banks and other financial firms want to win the war for talent and achieve sustainable growth. It's necessary to understand that any organization formed by people of the same gender and the same culture cannot avoid failure, as it will be stuck in groupthink. It's also difficult to attract foreign capital if gender discrimination is still rampant and gender diversity has not been achieved.
BlackRock, the world's top asset management company, which invests heavily in listed firms here, has an investment stewardship principle in which its investment target companies are required to ensure gender diversity. If our financial regulator takes gender diversity in the financial sector as one of its major supervisory issues, positive changes will spread throughout the financial industry here.
The writer is the CEO of the Korea International Finance Institute and chairperson of the Korea Network of Women in Finance.
It may be hard to believe, but banks in the 1970s had a system requiring female employees to sign a written promise stating that "only unmarried women can work here."
 |
The written promise system that targeted only female employees was relegated to the history books after some brave female workers at domestic banks came forward and brought the issue into the spotlight in 1976. The "female bank employee'' system was abolished in 1993, one year after the Labor Standards Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act were enacted.
Nevertheless, discrimination against female bank employees didn't end. As banks began hiring regular clerks and tellers separately after the currency crisis in the late 1990s, wage discrimination between regular clerks who are mostly men and tellers who are mostly women has widened. This discrimination disappeared only after the labor ministry demanded no discrimination against women without reasonable cause in 2006 and banks adopted the "occupational group system."
In January 2003, I joined forces with about 30 female banking executives to establish the Korea Network of Women in Finance (KNWF) with the aim of building a better world for women in the financial sector. Having now reached the status of an incorporated association under the Financial Services Commission, it is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The KNWF has exerted every effort to break the glass ceiling hindering female workers in finance.
As the number of women in managerial positions who remain in banks after age 40 has declined markedly, the KNWF had to overcome a string of crises. But discrimination has disappeared at least quantitatively thanks to all-out efforts to improve treatment for female bankers and remove discrimination against them. Now similar numbers of men and women enter banks, and job security in finance seems high, compared with other industries.
 |
| gettyimagesbank |
However, there's a long way to go qualitatively. In managerial positions or above, there are five times more men than women and naturally, the ratio of high-earning males to females is more than double, indicating that male dominance remains intact among high-ranking bankers.
The new Capital Markets Act that went into effect last August stipulates that any listed company with assets of 2 trillion won ($1.6 billion) or more should have at least one woman on its board of directors. But most companies feign compliance with the rule by increasing the proportion of women among its outside directors rather than promoting women from within the organization Even as some female executives parachute in from outside the organization, the issue of gender diversity within organizations has not been fundamentally solved.
Across the world, male-dominated cultures have existed in the financial industry for a long time. However, after the global financial crisis in 2008, regulatory bodies in the European Union, United States and Britain adopted gender diversity as their major supervisory policy line. That's because such organizations as banks that create credit are at a higher risk of groupthink unless armed with gender diversity. Because women have relatively less behavioral risks, gender diversity is becoming the top concern in reshuffles of banking executives everywhere.
Gender diversity should be pursued more aggressively if banks and other financial firms want to win the war for talent and achieve sustainable growth. It's necessary to understand that any organization formed by people of the same gender and the same culture cannot avoid failure, as it will be stuck in groupthink. It's also difficult to attract foreign capital if gender discrimination is still rampant and gender diversity has not been achieved.
BlackRock, the world's top asset management company, which invests heavily in listed firms here, has an investment stewardship principle in which its investment target companies are required to ensure gender diversity. If our financial regulator takes gender diversity in the financial sector as one of its major supervisory issues, positive changes will spread throughout the financial industry here.
The writer is the CEO of the Korea International Finance Institute and chairperson of the Korea Network of Women in Finance.
