My mom is a CEO
In Korea, there is a saying that when woman is deeply upset, it can snow on May or June. Comparing with oldtimes when the discrimination of woman is so harsh, one might think, what would they be upset about these days. But the thing the bars married woman nowadays is balancing a family life while doing something meaningful for their careers. This is not the only matter of business mom in Korea, but also in U.S. Despite these problems, there are women CEOs who take care of their own home but also a company as a CEO. Let’s see what happens when a woman has an idea not resentment.
Kyunghee Han from Korea VS. Marissa Mayer from U.S.
The Korean woman CEO to be covered is Kyunghee Han, CEO of Haan and Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo as its counterpart. There are 2 things in common about them. First, they are CEOs that represent each of their country. They were guest speakers in APEC WES in 2011 as a representative woman leader of Korea and U.S.. Second, they are covered in press worldwide like Forbes or Fortune. Han is chosen as Forbes Asia Asia Power woman entrepreneur 50 (2012) Wallstreet Journal The Top 50 Women to Watch (2008) President’s award on Invention day (2005), and Venture New intellectual (2004). Mayer was named to Fortune magazine's annual list of America's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. She was also listed in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women in 2012 and 2013. In September 2013, Mayer became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company. In 2013, she was also named in the Time100 and became the first woman listed as number one on Fortune magazine's annual list of the top 40 business stars under 40-years-old.
Let’s see how those two became woman CEO. Han Kyunghee, who's also known as Romi Haan worked in the press office of the International Olympic Committee’s headquarters, in Switzerland. Then she worked as a deputy director at the Ministry of Education. With her demanding job and two young sons to care for, Haan was inspired by her own dread of the chore and decided to manufacture and market a steam floor cleaner for housewives.
Mayer worked in Google more than 10 years, and with this outstanding work she has done in Google, she was chosen as a CEO of Yahoo. At that time more people were fired, Yahoo’s stock price was declining and Mayer was focused internationally as she hold the task of how she can give direction to Yahoo. Mayer married a venture capitalist, Zachary Bogue and bore a child in 2012.
How is it like for woman to work in Korea and U.S.?
Let’s compare business life of Korean business woman and U.S. business woman who try two catch 2 birds, home and work, with one stone.
In U.S., women’s participation in the labor force accounted for 46.9% of the working age women population in 2012, compared to 53.1% participation rate for men. In Korea, women’s participation in the labor force accounted for 41.9% of the working age women population in the same year, compared to 58.1% participation rate for men. This shows that women’s participation in the labor force is 5% more higher in U.S. than Korea.
First, how much is the salary for those countries? In U.S. median weekly earnings of women workers in 2012 was $691. In Korea, median weekly earnings of women workers was $385, which means women workers in U.S. recieve $306 more.
How is it different compared with man’s wage? The wage difference between woman & man is 37% in Korea, which means Korean women recieve wage 37% less than men. In U.S. it’s 18%, which makes it much more even than Korea.
How about education of employed women? In U.S., women participating in the labor force in 2012, 6.7% had less than a high school diploma, 25.3% had a high school diploma, no college, 17.5% had some college, 12.7% had an associate’s degree, and 37.8% had a bachelor’s degree or higher. In Korea, 14.9% had less than a elementary school diploma, 38.8% had a high school diploma, no college, 35.3% had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Therefore, employed woman in U.S. showed 2.7% higher ratio for those who have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
GMI Ratings released its annual report on Women on Boards. Based on data for almost 6,000 companies in 45 countries, It is said that there is ‘Glass Ceiling’, how big is it in each country? In case of Korea, the ratio of woman leader was 1.9%, and in case of U.S. it was 14%, which shows U.S. has 12.1% higher rate in Woman leader. This result was from GMI Ratings, comparing 5977 companies in 45 countries, researching number of woman leader in the board.
As a result we can see that the U.S. has better factor for business women in wage and ratio of the leaders. The low ratio of woman leader in Korea is largely due to cut of the working experience, for the birth of baby and child.
Korea: From cradle to fund, U.S.: From mom to dad
Government tries to support business women with many different kinds of laws. Especially in order to lessen problems that woman may have as they take care of work and child. Then how does government support women’s childcare when women give birth to a child?
In case of Korea, if the child is younger than 6, they can have rest for 1 year until the child enters the elementary school. In case of U.S., each state has is own law, recently 14 states out of 25 states changed their condition from ‘private company that has more than 50 employees’ to ‘private company that has more than 10 employees’, and 7 states are trying to longen the term of babyrest, in order to overcome less baby born problem. All public comanies and 50 private companies that has more than 50 employees give Unpaid parental leave for 12 weeks to their woman and husband.
In case of baby fund, Korea gives 10 ~ 20,000 to all the classes from March 2013, they can apply to hiring center after 1 month they did parental leave. You can have 40% of your wage(1000,000 utmost/ 500,000 at least) but 15% of baby rest wage will be given as a whole, if they have worked more than 6 months in corresponding company after the termination of parental leave. In case of U.S. under Family and Medical Leave Acts(FMLA) during the parental leave, you will not be paid.
Data source
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