November 25, 2024

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From left: Lee Bok-sil, chair of Lotte Card's ESG Committee; Citibank Korea CEO Yoo Myung-soon; International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva; Bank of Korea Monetary Policy Committee member Suh Young-kyung; and Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon take pose after a panel discussion at a forum hosted by Women Corporate Directors Korea on gender equality and women leadership held at the government complex in Seoul, Thursday. (The Bank of Korea)

Empowering women in economic activities is needed to help South Korea increase its national income and birth rate while making workplaces more equitable for women will result in higher growth and financial stability for businesses, the International Monetary Fund chief said during a forum held in Seoul on Thursday.

“Korea has recently made significant progress in increasing women’s economic participation, but it still has among the highest gender gaps for rich countries,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a forum hosted by Women Corporate Directors Korea, the Korean chapter of the world’s largest membership organization of women corporate board directors.

She said the gender gap is largely "due to perceived social norms and customs as well as the disparities in the dual labor market between workers with strong job protections and everyone else."

At the event, held during her first visit to Korea after taking the helm of the IMF in 2019, Georgieva shared her opinion on changes in the development and advancement of women in leadership positions globally, cases of increasing diversity within the IMF specifically and Korea's low birth rate problem.

"IMF research shows that with the right policies to reduce the gender gap in (terms of the) number of hours worked to the average across peer countries, Korea could increase per capita income by 18 percent -- a huge amount," Georgieva underscored.

She also stressed that having more women leaders and gender-balanced decision-making improves organizations.

"Research in the financial sector shows a higher share of women in leadership positions and more gender diversity on boards of financial institutions are associated with lower rates of non-performing loans and greater financial stability," she elaborated.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva gives a speech at a forum hosted by Women Corporate Directors Korea on gender equality and women leadership held at the government complex in Seoul, Thursday. (Yonhap)

Under the theme of "Empowering Women in Corporate Leadership: A Catalyst for Global Economic Growth," a panel discussion was held, moderated by Citibank Korea CEO Yoo Myung-soon

“For a society to prosper, both men and women must work together … We must become a gender-equal society that recognizes and utilizes individual talent,” Yoo said.

Yoo pointed out South Korea’s poor ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report. In this year's report, released in June, the country’s ranking fell six notches from last year to rank a low 105th out of the 146 countries in the gender gap rankings.

The WEF Global Gender Gap report examines the state and evolution of gender parity in four areas: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.

Reducing the gender gap will help "increase the potential growth rate by improving the low birth rate and expanding women’s economic participation," said Bank of Korea Monetary Policy Committee member Suh Young-kyung.

As key efforts that could be made for gender equality, Suh picked improving the child care environment such as expanding public child care facilities and flexible work systems as well as fair opportunities in companies.

Another disappointing figure regarding the state of gender equality here showed that Asia's fourth-largest economy still has a long way to go.

Only 2.4 percent of the CEOs of the top 1,000 companies in Korea are women, and among them, only 0.5 percent are women who are not related to the founder by blood, said Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of Naver, Korea’s largest portal operator.

“There is an atmosphere in which female CEOs are perceived as women before they are CEOs. To get out of this situation, we need to have more women in CEO positions,” Choi said.

By Park Han-na (hnpark@heraldcorp.com)