KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Christine Lagarde, the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in sixty four years, mentioned “3 L’s” that women need against discrimination. She calls for opening the door to women’s learning, labor and leadership in the economy. In light of women’s learning, labor and leadership in Korea, their learning standard is high. The overall educational standard in generation of young women is as high as men’ standard because women’s college entrance rate has overtaken men’s since 2009. The reality of the two other L’s, labor and leadership for women in Korea, however, is different from that of learning. The employment rate of women, which is the basis of labor-related issues, is 54.9% between 15 and 64 years of age in 2014. This shows that the employment rate of women is 20.8%p lower than that of men, 75.7%. In addition to the wide disparity between women and men in the employment rate, the position of Korean women in leadership is so poor. According to “glass-ceiling index” in 2015 created by The Economist, South Korea ranked 28th in “women on company boards” and 27th in “share of senior managers who are women” among the 28 OECD member countries surveyed.

The women manager panel survey is crucial to come up with measures based on a recognition about the realities to improve the situation of Korean women in labor and leadership of learning, labor and leadership that IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde pointed out. The purpose and the need of the women manager panel survey is to trace the process that women workers pursue their careers without being interrupted and grow into a key within their companies and to continue to grasp and examine the role of companies and support from the country for women manager to build their careers.

In addition, the accumulated information from the women manager panel survey will be useful as the source of the basis for planning how to manage women workforce in order that companies can make use of women workers and they can play key roles in their companies. The purpose of the study is to investigate a lot of information and construct data according to time series about women managers so that women can pursue their careers without being interrupted by work-life balance and have major roles in their companies.

The women manager panel survey in 2015 completed the 5th wave survey in 2014 on sample management and carried out “the maintaining survey of the women manager panel survey” to continue to establish and maintain trustworthy relationships with women manager panel in 2015. The maintaining survey is to prepare for the 6th wave survey by surveying changes to the identities of panel, the preferred way, and the degree of cooperation in the previous survey. Besides this, the survey in 2015 was weighted by longitudinal section following that the 5th wave survey completed in 2014 was weighted by cross section.

For the analysis of the existing survey results, the results of the company survey by the HR managers from the first survey in 2007 to the 5th survey in 2014 were analyzed based on longitudinal section. This is the first attempt in the women manager panel survey in which the survey aims to provide an insight into the status of the management of women workforce, the attitudes of companies toward it, and the changes in the system of the utilization over seven years’ time.

The symposium on the panel survey with Korean longitudinal survey of women and families by Korean Women's Development Institute was first held in the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry with outside experts to release and share the results of the 5th wave survey on September 22, 2015. Outside experts as well as the women manager panel survey researchers presented a comparison of men manager's factors with those of women in achieving promotions, investment decisions on women manager’s job training, success in their career, and more in the symposium. After the analysis of some factors of being left out of the women manager panel and the results of the analysis of women manager’s promotion and continuous service that the women manager panel survey researchers had presented in the symposium were corrected and complemented through sample management and an in-depth analysis, they were published in 2015 women manager panel survey report.