KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

Abstract

 

Korean Women Manager Panel

 

Seung-hyun Lee

Min-jeong Kang

Ji-hyun Hong

So-young Kwon

Woo-ri Noh

Hye-bin Shim

Hee-jeong Yim

Keun-tae Kim

 

Korean Women Manager Panel was planned and initiated for the need of monitoring diverse situations and discriminations that women faced in the labor market and the legitimacy that women should take more managerial positions than they had. The panel survey is the only investigation in its kind not only in Korea but in other countries, in that it looks into state of labor conditions and career development, working conditions, organizational culture, and practices that promote women to managerial levels and obstacles that hinder them from assuming those positions, by exploring how women secure manager-level seats and further grow in work places. This panel investigation is particularly distinctive as other statistics, although they seem similar to it, cannot track the women mangers’ entry to and exit from the job market.

 

For the past 12 year, beginning from 2007, this study conducted a follow-up survey on state of women manager’s human resources, labor conditions, and others in the private sector. This examination on women managers has been widely used by many researchers, ranging from the academic community to research institutions to policy makers in the government departments and agencies, so that they can address glass ceiling issue, corporate and social roles in relation to women’s career interruption, and determinants on women promotion. To date, the women manager panel research has released survey data in hopes of sharing and disseminating the study’s outcomes; held seven symposiums and two academic conferences; posted annual analytic reports as well as papers and research with regard to the survey data.

 

The panel investigation on women manager panel research carries both academically and practically significant values as it not only performed surveys on firms of different industries and their women managers at the same time but also collated detailed data on their corporate overview, payroll size, HR policies, flexible working system, and others. In addition, it well exhibits the difficulty of Korean women continuing their career, shedding light on cases of their drop-out from the manager panel through the seven rounds of survey from 2007 to 2018. Put different, the women manager panel survey carries a critical meaning in terms of policy and will be employed to enhance the level of policy utilization, by giving implications to policy-making process designed to improve women representation.

 

The Korean Women Manager Panel carried out the first round of the second period investigation’s main survey that had been newly planned in 2019. The new study will trace career paths women managers choose and ways that lead them to success, while paying attention to the capability and role needed for managers in the changing labor market. The objectives of the second period review is to understand the state of women’s participation in the labor market, to gather underlying data for making policies for greater labor market diversity and to secure basic information for analyzing women labor with regard to social change.

 

The four distinctive points of this period’s investigation, compared with the first one, are as follows: First, this survey was designed to propose ways that can help women pursue a successful career, in consideration of women’s capability that directly influences career retention and success; second, a total of 5,000 managers (3,500 women and 1,500 men ones) were included into a new panel, so that comparison analysis between the two groups of managers is available; third, objects of the study were both mens and womens whose positions are manager or higher; fourth, annual surveys will be conducted to improve panel retention and to ensure investigation on a regular basis. Major tasks of the 2020 Korean Women Managers Panel are to hold workshops; have a kick-off report meeting; finalize the details to be surveyed; carry out two rounds of preliminary survey; host a meeting for interim report; receive the approval for change from Statistics Korea; establish a new panel of 5,000 people and conduct main sessions of the survey; hold forums and symposiums; build a new web site for the women manager panel; begin the standardization of the first round survey data.

 

This year's survey was designed to survey men and women managers working at businesses that hire 100 persons or more as steady workers. Since there was no sampling framework, a two-phase sampling method was done on the population of the Census on Establishments, drafted on December 31, 2017. Details of this new survey employed the questionnaires newly drawn and chosen this year.

 

This year's main survey revealed that respondents had stronger educational backgrounds and permanent positions. Also, as predicted earlier, most responses were found with gender difference. In addition, analysis uncovered that the data for the second period survey still keeps the good points of the first period survey data and can be used for gender comparison. In addition, the longitudinal analysis on the data of the first period survey came up with the characteristics and promotion determinants of women managers. To sum up, women managers have to earn higher degrees, work longer hours and build stronger human networking in terms of career development. For its part, businesses should ensure women representation and shape a fair corporate culture in recruiting and human resources distribution process, which deems necessary from a long-term perspective. As assistant-level women employees tended to spend longer-than-average years before being promoted, it was concluded that women at manager level or higher are suited for tracking career success in the investigation of the second period survey.

 

Data for this year's survey will undergo data cleaning and standardization process after the investigation is completed, before being released to users through the Korean Women Managers Panel in December 2021. The data for the first period survey will also be published when standardization process comes to an end.

 

Research areas: Panel, labor·employment, representation

Keyword: Women manager, men manager, women representation, women’s career development, panel survey