Government has implemented measures to select and focus growth on national strategic industries that will lead national economic growth during the 21st century. One of the national strategic industries supported by the government is nurturing experts in innovation technology. Discussion on nurturing of professionals for the strategic industry of the government has been mainly focused on supply-related issues and a corporate perspective of has been highlighted in the discussion. Corporations dealing with innovation technology require employees who have diversity, creativity, and flexibility.
Standardized way of thinking from the past cannot be used for maintaining competitiveness corporations anymore and there are many limits to male-centered labor market. Korean corporations had employed relatively few female professionals than other developed countries. The female professionals, can be seen as a potential for creating a new basis for enhanced competitiveness.
This research attempts to develop suggestions for fostering employment of women in strategic industry sector by examining female employment structure of businesses in national strategic industry and analyzing correlation between demographics of corporations, human resources management system, and utilization of female workforce.
Key findings from the research are as follows. Employment status of female workforce for different job categories in strategic industries including IT, BT, CT, and ET from the primary data from "Census on Basic Characteristics of Establishments", shows lower employment ratio of women in strategic industries than the overall industry (40.5%). In 2004, IT field had the most number of female professionals (255,000) followed by CT (207,000), ET (187,000) and BT (95,000). Industries with were CT (38.3%) followed by IT (34.1%), BT (26.6%), and ET (19.1%). Considering the size of each industry and number of businesses in each industry, female workforce was best utilized in IT and CT while BT utilized the female workforce least unlike the prediction. Industry with under-utilized female workforce in comparison with the size of industry was ET, which needs support in utilization of female workforce in the future.
Characteristics of female professionals for each strategic industry showed that the ratio of female professionals was higher for smaller businesses except the IT industry. In case of IT, number of female professionals grew with the size of the business. Female workforce in ET industry comprised approximately 20% of the whole but the ratio dropped to 9.2% for businesses with more than 500 employees. Status distribution for employment, which can be used in determining employment performance of strategic industries, shows that both female and male workforce have relatively higher rate of full-time employees and lower rate of temporary employees except CT. From this data, it could be inferred that employment stability was higher for workers in strategic industry than those in other industries. Comparing male with female workforce, female workforce had lower rate of full-time employees and higher rateio of temporary employees than male workforce, similar to other industries. In addition, businesses in each strategic industry of which CEO is woman had 20 - 40% higher female employment rate than entities with male CEOs. This showed that gender of a CEO is an important influencing variable for female employment.
According to the survey research conducted in this study on correlation between characteristics of an entity within strategic industry and employment of female workforce, there is weak relationship between size and history (years since an entity was founded) of an entity and ratio of female workforce. This information, which is based on existing research result, proves that the employment of female workforce does not increase naturally just because more highly educated female professionals become available in the labor market. As for the entities whose CEOs are women, the employment ratio of female professionals was significantly higher than that in the entities with male CEOs. This indicates that there is a need to create support measures for corporations to createwith high more female employmentjob creation effect. Flexible working hourstime, telecommuting program, nurturing-related system, and maternity protection system such as limited night shift for pregnant women appeared to have no significant relationship with employment of female workforce. This indicates that policy support of the government is not generating positive results on corporate level and the government needs to design a new policy to foster utilization of female professionals.
One of the important findings from the survey research is that the ratio of female workforce at the time of starting business started is similar to the current ratio of female workforce of the same entity. This shows that the ratio of the initial female employment from an employment design at the establishment of an entity can have considerable influence on the formation of organizational culture and system. It is also evident that history of an entity does continue and survive social changes. Thus, this is a proof that social changes such as increase in education level of females and increase in participation of women in economic activities do not lead to the increase in the employment of female professionals. Observing this phenomenon from a perspective of organizational culture of a corporation, we could confirm that higher perception of gender equality and better formulation of task assignment led to significant increase in the ratio of female workforce compared to the initial ratio of female workforce when the entity was found. In a systematic perspective, there was no significant difference in wages for women but selection and promotion of female workers were different significantly. In other words, corporate entities with less where there are not much discrimination against women in the processes of selection and promotion had the increased ratio of female employees. These results imply that system and culture of an organization influences the employment of females for that organization.
Cases of corporations with excellent cultural and systematic basis were analyzed in the research for utilization of female workforce. These corporations appeared highly attentive to relevant systems, and also paid careful attention to create gender-equal culture. For example, higher ranked positions in Amore Pacific were mostly occupied by men and to cope with male-dominant corporate culture, employe were asked to be called by "nim" (a Korean word used for referring others with a sign of respect) instead of their title. In addition, Amore Pacific created a policy to have two or more female employees per office (if there was a female employee in the office originally). Moreover, mentoring program was provided to assist male managers in charge of female employees. IBM Korea recently implemented diversity program for women, the handicapped, and sexual minorities under a world-class human resources management system. Diversity policy adopted by global corporations has a strong implication for the domestic corporations since various experiences and view points obtained from the program can enhance value added to the corporation.
Proper level of government intervention is necessary for increased female employment at corporations in strategic industry, which will lead to increased participation of women in economic activities. First, the government should help corporations in adopting ‘graduated female employment policy’ for regular industries and strategic industries. Second, proper degree of government intervention during the employment design stage is necessary for the strategic industries with low utilization of female workforce. The government should monitor whether nurturing of female workforce is reflected in ‘long-term national engineering & science workforce supply plan’ and ‘next generation growth engines industry plan’. Third, the government should suggest a blue print of the female employment for each growth stage of corporations in strategic industries. Fourth, there should be a strict regulation for gender discrimination in systematic practices of a corporation. Fifth, the government should support family-friendly system and maternity protection system to foster utilization of female workforce. In addition, it is important for corporations in strategic industry, which deals with innovation technology development, to adopt advanced human resources management strategy and provide guidelines to the employees for a successful outcome.
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