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women's assignment - reflective discussion

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While Japan and South Korea are among the most developed countries in East Asia, they are two of the worst countries for gender inequality and traditional role attitudes. This website discusses whether the problem is a human capital gap or a glass ceiling, and goes into detail about their research and how they came to establish that it is, in fact, a glass ceiling. While it was impossible to determine the cause of the glass ceiling in these two countries, it was apparent that as women move up the corporate ladder into senior managerial positions, they face greater inequality and discrimination.

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Japan and South Korea are distinctive among developed countries for their gender inequality in managerial positions.This column looks at the 'glass ceiling' in the two countries.

After controlling for age, education, and employment duration, between 70% and 80% of the gender disparity is unexplained in both countries, with women appearing to face greater inequality as they move up to more senior managerial positions.

Although Japan and South Korea are among the most developed countries in East Asia, it is well known that traditional gender role attitudes and behaviours still exist in both countries. According to International Labor Organization statistics for 2015, Japan and Korea showed the highest gender inequalities in the proportion of managerial positions among OECD countries (ILO 2015). Figure 1 reveals that Japan and Korea are distinctive among OECD countries as having the highest gender inequalities.

Figure 1 Odds of men vs. women in managerial positions among OECD countries
Source: Adapted from ILO 2015. Values not available data in specific years were coded as zero.
Depending on the sources of the disparity, the strategy for improving gender inequality should be quite different. If human capital, such as education and experience, is the basis of the inequality, we should launch policies to improve the accumulation of the human capital of women. However, if the source is not a human capital gap but a glass ceiling, we want to examine and change promotion practices in firms.

The existence of glass ceilings?

The glass ceiling phenomenon refers to an invisible ceiling blocking the entry of women into high-level positions in firms or organisations. There have been many empirical studies examining glass ceilings in various countries. For the US, many studies confirmed that gender inequality does not increase as women advance to more senior positions in a firm, and thus could not find the existence of a glass ceiling (Morgan 1998 Weinberger 2011 Wright et al. 1995). Since the findings of Morgan's research in 1998 strongly suggested that the higher inequality among women in more senior positions (and thus among older women) resulted not from a glass ceiling but from cohort differences (i.e. higher gender inequality among older cohorts), many following studies have confirmed limited instances of a glass ceiling in the US. Weinberger (2011) concluded that the gender gap in earnings is determined by factors already present early on in careers. Also, Wright et al. (1995) found little evidence for the glass ceiling hypothesis - i.e. that barriers to promotions for women in authority hierarchies are greater than the ones they face in getting into hierarchies in the first place - in seven countries (the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Sweden, Norway, and Japan).

However, more recent studies show possible support for the glass ceiling hypothesis in Europe. Albrecht et al. (2003) successfully showed that even after extensive controls for gender differences in age, education, sector, industry, and occupation, a glass ceiling effect was persistent to a considerable extent in Sweden. Also, a study examining 11 European countries using the European Community Household Panel from 1995 to 2001 found that the gender gap in earnings typically widened towards the top of the wage distribution, which strongly suggests the existence of a glass ceiling (Arulampalam et al. 2007). We do not have consistent evidence for European countries yet, but more recent data and studies tend to confirm the existence of glass ceilings in Europe.

Measuring the glass ceiling in Japan and South Korea

How about Japan or Korea? Wright's et al.'s study in 1995, which examined the glass ceiling effect among seven countries including Japan, confirmed that gender inequality in workplace authority was highest in Japan. However, they could not test for the glass ceiling effect in Japan because there were no women in middle management positions or above among 823 Japanese respondents. There has been little research on a Korean glass ceiling using reliable data based on robust methods.

Our study tries to compare the extent of the glass ceiling in Japan and Korea based on a common statistical method (Youm and Yamaguchi 2016). First, we have to decide how to measure the glass ceiling. Previous studies have not all employed the same operational definition of a glass ceiling. For example, Barretto et al. (2009) examined the gender gap in only the most senior positions, while other researchers probed the slowing down of the entire career progress of typical working women (Padavic and Reskin 2002). Although the empirical criterion for more senior positions in organisations could be different, we believe the minimum proposition of the glass ceiling hypothesis is that after controlling for human capital factors, the gender gap becomes wider in more senior positions.

Also, in order to control for human capital such as age, educational level, and employment duration, we adopt the counter-factual decomposition method of DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux (DFL) proposed in Yamaguchi (2016, 2017). We used the Occupational Wage Survey (OWS) to examine the glass ceiling in South Korea. The OWS is an annual business establishment survey conducted since 1970 by South Korea's Ministry of Employment and Labor. We included multiple-year cross-sectional data over a 24-year period from 1990 to 2013 to examine the trend for a glass ceiling in Korea. The International Comparative Study of Work-Life Balance conducted by RIETI in 2009 was employed to examine the Japanese gender gap. Unlike the 20+ years of data for South Korea, we analysed one year of data of 2009 for Japan.

The glass ceiling in Japan and South Korea

In Japan, even after conducting a counter-factual treatment with age, education, and employment duration, the unexplained portion of gender disparity still remains at between 70% and 80% for 2009. Also, as we move from kakaricho (task unit supervisor) position to kacho (section head), we can see a roughly 10% bigger unexplained portion. Although we could not examine the bucho (department director) position since we do not have enough female bucho in the data, the current result implies a possible glass ceiling or pipe leaking even from the middle manager positions among regular worker in Japanese firms.

Figure 2 illustrates the trend for a glass ceiling in Korea over 24 years.

Figure 2. The trend of glass ceiling among regular workers in Korea from 1990 to 2013
Notes: * duration at the current workplace: five categories. a) < 1 year, b) >=1 year & < 3 years, c) >= 3 years & < 5 years, d) >=5 years & < 10 years, e) >= 10 years; ** educational level: four categories. a) junior high or lower, b) high school, c) vocational college, d) college or higher; *** age: seven categories. a) 19 or younger, b) 20 to 24, c) 25 to 29, d) 30 to 34, e) 35 to 39, f) 40 to 49, g) 50 or older; **** We included duration, education, age, duration by education, duration by age, and education by age for the covariates for counter-factual treatment.
Three facts are revealed from the figure. First, the unexplained portion after a counter-factual treatment for human capital including age, duration of employment, and educational level, the range of unexplained gender inequality for managerial positions falls between 75% and 85%, except in 2007 when the portion was 62% (yellow line). This is corresponds somewhat to the Japanese unexplained portions, which are 70% for kakaricho and 80% for kacho. Since Korean managerial positions include bucho and higher, the numbers seem strikingly similar.

Second, as women reach higher positions in a firm - from kakaricho (grey line) to kacho (orange line) to bucho (blue line) - they face a higher unexplained portion, just like Japanese women. This fits the glass ceiling picture quite closely, although we do not have data for very senior managerial positions.

Although we have only one year of data for Japan and are thus not completely confident in the comparison, the extent of unexplained gender inequality seems to be strikingly similar in the two countries. Furthermore, in both countries, women seem to face greater inequality as they move up to more senior managerial positions (i.e. glass ceilings). Based on multiple cross-sectional data over 24 years, we can also conclude that the extent of the glass ceiling tends to remain the same in Korea. We suspect that this is not due to simple cohort differences as argued by Morgan (1998), but to an actual glass ceiling because our data ranges over 24 years and show little changes (i.e. little difference between cohorts).
Editors' note: The main research on which this column is based appeared as a Discussion Paper of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) of Japan.
-Yoosik Youm, Kazuo Yamaguchi

http://voxeu.org/

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The glass ceiling in Japan and South Korea

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Japan and South Korea are distinctive among developed countries for their gender inequality in managerial positions.This column looks at the 'glass ceiling' in the two countries. After controlling for age, education, and employment duration, between 70% and 80% of the gender disparity is unexplained in both countries, with women appearing to face greater inequality as they move up to more senior managerial positions.

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Learn about the triumphs of various women and the Women’s Liberal Rights Movement. It is unbelievable the horrible treatment that women have endured. Rape is often used as a weapon of war, stripping women of their basic rights and dignity. It is a complete disregard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But there is hope for women in several countries, thanks to things such as micro credit schemes. Little by little, women are raising the glass ceiling. This video shows the progress we have made on the global issue of inequality.

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Raising the Glass Ceiling - World - December 2008

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In many countries, today's young women haven't had to struggle for equality and on many levels women can do anything a man can. But is it safe to rest on our laurels? We chart the major triumphs of the Women's Liberation Movement and examine women's rights worldwide.

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This is a simple visual representation of gender equality.  It is a tic-tac-toe game - played with male and female symbols instead of exes and ohs - that resulted in a tie game. The tie game symbolizes what feminists around the world want to achieve. Equality among men and women is desired. If achieved, women won't have to face the sad reality of the global glass ceiling any longer.

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There has been progress on women’s empowerment in developing countries, but there is still much work to be done. Challenges remain large in countries such as the Middle East, South Asia, and South Sahara. Women still have difficulties accessing education, health care, technology, and income. This website discusses the lack of basic human rights for women in these countries. Violence against women and gender discrimination are part of their everyday life, and as long as these things are allowed and tolerated, women will continue to be restricted by the invisible barrier, keeping them weak and dependent.

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Over the last several decades, it has become accepted wisdom that improving the status of women is one of the most critical levers of international development. When women are educated and can earn and control income, a number of good results follow: infant mortality declines, child health and nutrition improve, agricultural productivity rises, population growth slows, economies expand, and cycles of poverty are broken.

But the challenges remain dauntingly large. In the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, large and persistent gender gaps in access to education, health care, technology, and income -- plus a lack of basic rights and pervasive violence against women -- keep women from being fully productive members of society. Entrenched gender discrimination remains a defining characteristic of life for the majority of the world's bottom two billion people, helping sustain the gulf between the most destitute and everyone else who shares this planet.

Narrowing that gulf demands more than the interest of the foreign aid and human rights communities, which, to date, have carried out the heavy lifting of women's empowerment in developing countries, funding projects such as schools for girls and microfinance for female entrepreneurs. It requires the involvement of the world's largest companies. Not only does the global private sector have vastly more money than governments and nongovernmental organizations, but it can wield significant leverage with its powerful brands and by extending promises of investment and employment. Some companies already promote initiatives focused on women as part of their corporate social-responsibility programs -- in other words, to burnish their images as good corporate citizens. But the truly transformative shift -- both for global corporations and for women worldwide -- will occur when companies understand that empowering women in developing economies affects their bottom lines.

The majority of global population growth in the coming decades will occur in those countries where gender disparities are the greatest and where conservative religious traditions and tribal customs work against women's rights. As multinational corporations search

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Governments and international organizations recognize that empowering women in the developing world is a catalyst for achieving a range of policy and development goals. It is time for multinational corporations to come to the same realization -- funding education and training female business leaders is good for business.

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Video: 3 Lessons on Success from an Arab Businesswoman

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Video: 3 Lessons on Success from an Arab Businesswoman

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Leila Hoteit, a successful Arab businesswoman, shares her story and the difficulties she encountered making her place in the professional world. She was one of very few girls of her generation to pursue studies and a career, and she has always been in male-dominated environments. She has never found a role model she could identify with because men could never understand the difficulties for women in the industry. Arab women have had to become their own role models, and have stories and useful lessons to share with every woman wanting to strive in the modern world. Leila shares three of her lessons on breaking the glass ceiling.

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Leila Hoteit: 3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman

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Professional Arab women juggle more responsibilities than their male counterparts, and they face more cultural rigidity than Western women. What can their success teach us about tenacity, competition, priorities and progress? Tracing her career as an engineer, advocate and mother in Abu Dhabi, Leila Hoteit shares three lessons for thriving in the modern world.

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This photo is a chart that compares the average earnings of men and women.  As you can see, women under grade 9 got paid $6,290 less than men in 2006.  In the same year, women with master’s degrees earned $33,820 less than men with the same.  It is shown here that women’s pay is significantly lower than men’s.  This is a perfect example of how women face a barrier to advancement – also described as, the “glass ceiling.”

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A sustainable world and a stronger economy won’t be possible until there is women’s equality worldwide. It has been proven that empowering women in the workforce would boost global economies enormously.  This website goes on to explain the many advantages of women around the world having their full rights, and makes it clear that global progress and global prosperity will continue to have its own glass ceiling until equal rights is established.

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"Women's equality is the moral imperative of the 21st century." Melanne Verveer's words rang true at the Center of American Progress, where Neera Tanden moderated a special conversation on July 23 with Verveer, the current U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. Verveer, who has championed women's rights for decades, discussed the status of women globally, the significance of women's economic empowerment in global growth, and why leveraging the skills and leadership potential of women and girls is the smartest investment a country can make for the future.

"Until women around the world have their full rights, global progress and global prosperity will have its own glass ceiling," said Verveer. She went on to say that millions of women worldwide are still unable to find a meaningful place for themselves in the formal workplace because of the web of restrictions that limit their potential. These limitations on women hinder communities, as Verveer said that female wage-earners disproportionally spend more of their income on food, health care, their home, and education - all factors that can have positive ramifications for the future generation. Many global women remain an untapped reservoir of creativity, dynamic energy, and knowledge.

Verveer highlighted how the economic empowerment of women is absolutely essential in bolstering economies and ensuring the progress of nations. "Barriers erode women's ability to participate in their economies and support their families," Verveer stated. She discussed the obstacles women encounter, such as accessing finance and markets in order to grow their capabilities and services. She describes how many women don't have access to crucial technologies, as 350 million women do not have a cell phones - an essential for acquiring information, learning about the status of the market on any given day, or providing mobile banking. Verveer also mentioned training and mentorship as vital to the development of emerging businesswomen and entrepreneurs.

Unleashing the economic potential of women would boost global economies enormously: a Goldman Sachs report states that a reduction in barriers to women in the labor force would increase American GDP by 9%, the Euro-Zone GDP by 13%, and the Japanese GDP by 16%.

Verveer explained that there is a proven correlation between higher degrees of gender diversity in business leadership and the profit of a company. Verveer cited the inclusion of women in the G20 agenda as an important step forward, but said that there is still much progress to be made.

Furthermore, Verveer stated, women play key roles in the peace and security of a nation, and are vital to conflict prevention. "Countries are more peaceful and prosperous when women have more rights," said Verveer, asserting that the most dangerous places for women are the most dangerous places for everyone. The oppression of women is indicative of the instability of a nation, she said. Verveer alludes to Northern Ireland and Liberia as two nations where women have been key to negotiating processes and peace-building, and highlighted the three female 2011 Noble Peace Prize Laureates as exemplary and inspirational peacekeepers. "We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence all levels in the development in society."

Although women can hold key positions as peacemakers, they also are most heavily affected by violence, Verveer said. She cited the purposeful and strategic execution of rape as a weapon of war, and stated that it is of utmost importance that we protect women from such brutalities. Verveer also mentioned the importance of providing women with resources to reconstruct nations ravaged by war or poverty and transition them into peace and prosperity.

Verveer's message is an urgent reminder that women and girls are critical in global development, and their rights must be safeguarded for the world to progress. "When women are silenced or marginalized in these processes, the prospect for peace is likely to be subverted," Verveer stated. This is why, she said, Secretary Clinton made the decision that the advancement of women and girls should be the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Verveer stressed we must not victimize women, but realize that "they have a critical role that they need to play."

As a compelling illustration of the power that women wield, and of the potential that they hold, Verveer left those in attendance with the words of a group of Afghan women fighting for their rights: "Please do not look at us as victims, but look at us as the leaders that we are."

To learn more, watch a live-stream of this event via Center for American Progress.
Allegra Hobbs and Ariella Steinhorn are interns for Vital Voices' Online Communications team.

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The Glass Ceiling of Global Prosperity - Vital Voices

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"Women's equality is the moral imperative of the 21st century." Melanne Verveer's words rang true at the Center of American Progress, where Neera Tanden moderated a special conversation on July 23 with Verveer, the current U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. Verveer, who has championed women's rights for decades, discussed the status of women globally, the significance ...

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Video: Forward Thinking: Smashing the Glass Ceiling 

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Video: Forward Thinking: Smashing the Glass Ceiling 

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Learn about examples of inequality, the gender gap, and what prevents women from breaking the glass ceiling. This video explains that we, as a society, should get used to seeing men as the primary caregivers of young children. Changing our perspective on perceived gender-specific “jobs” would greatly help conquer the inequality women face every day. Learn how some countries have managed to combine work and parenthood and kept everyone happy. This video helps us understand why we live in a patriarchal society, and what we can do to help fix it.

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Forward Thinking: Smashing the Glass Ceiling

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Using Bloomberg experts and prominent global thinkers, this six part series Forward Thinking will help make sense of the global problems of tomorrow. In this episode, we'll ask what's preventing women from closing the gender gap in the world of work?

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Photo: MEN OF QUALITY DO NOT FEAR EQUALITY

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Photo: MEN OF QUALITY DO NOT FEAR EQUALITY

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The woman in this photo is protesting against inequality. She is holding a sign that reads, "MEN OF QUALITY DO NOT FEAR EQUALITY." Basically, what she is saying is that decent, well-rounded men who have their heads on straight will encourage equality among both genders.  It is the men who are immature and the men who lack quality who feel they are superior to woman.  This woman is protesting against those men.