About a quarter of big-company employees are women

Female workers account for nearly a quarter of all employees with major Korean companies, with their pay amounting to nearly 70 percent of that for male counterparts, data showed Monday.

The country's 150 key companies hired about 199,700 women workers as of end-2020, or 24 percent of their combined workforce at 831,100, according to corporate tracker Korea CXO Institute.

The data is based on their 2020 business reports, and the companies cover top 10 companies in 15 industries in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

The distribution industry had the highest ratio of female workers at roughly 54 percent, followed by financial firms with some 50 percent and the food industry with about 44 percent.

Steelmakers had the lowest rate of 4.7 percent, trailed by automakers with 5.5 percent and the machinery sector with 6.1 percent.

The institute also said the average pay of female workers at those leading companies amounted to 68 percent of the median wage for male employees.

Companies in the textile industry registered the lowest gender wage gap with the ratio reaching 86.6 percent, with construction companies having the highest difference with the percentage coming to 57.4 percent, according to the Korea CXO Institute.

Yonhap