Naver CEO, Canadian envoy discuss women in the workplace

Diplomacy

Published: 30 Nov. 2023, 18:36 Updated: 30 Nov. 2023, 19:10

Naver CEO, Canadian envoy discuss women in the workplace

From left, Canadian Ambassador to Korea Tamara Mawhinney and Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon engage with Canadian and Korean female entrepreneurs and scholars at Ewha Womans University in Seoul on Thursday. [PARK SANG-MOON]

Glass ceilings are a reality for many working women, said a group of top female entrepreneurs, diplomats and academics from Canada and Korea in Seoul on Thursday.

“My own experiences of trying to be both a woman and a successful professional drive my philosophy as a CEO,” said Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of Naver, in speaking with Canadian Ambassador to Korea Tamara Mawhinney before an audience of entrepreneurs and academics at Ewha Womans University on Thursday.

Choi, who last year became the second woman to take the helm of the Korean IT giant, said maintaining a work-life balance has been hard for her.

However, she is trying to change that for the next generation of women leaders at the company.

In recent years, the IT giant has pioneered policies on flexible working hours and remote work. Aided by the effects of Covid-19, Naver began to roll out work-from-home options in 2021, which have outlasted the pandemic.

As a result of the flexibility, Choi said, 98 percent of female employees at Naver who became pregnant in recent years have stayed on and worked through their pregnancy and childbirth.

Korea, a country with the lowest fertility rate in the world at 0.78 as of last year, also has one of the highest rates of women leaving work in their 30s after childbirth.

Representatives of over 30 Canadian companies traveled to Korea and Thailand this week for a women-only business mission to discuss innovation and inclusivity.

“Since we are working on large AI, ChatGPT, LLM, we need to think about what can be done by AI, and [to craft] standards, we need to have very different perspectives from different backgrounds,” said Bae Soon-min, senior vice president at KT, a telecommunication conglomerate of Korea. “That is why it is important to have both female and male [employees] equally contribute to that research.”

The active co-participation of spouses in housework and child care also helps promote gender equality at work.

“My husband was a stay-at-home father for 15 years, enabling me to have the career I’ve had,” said Sara Wilshaw, assistant deputy minister and chief trade commissioner of Global Affairs Canada. “We’ve been partners, and that’s how we went all the way through.”

Canada’s fertility rate was 1.4 in 2020 — about twice that of Korea’s, but still lower than the 2.1 replacement level.

The gender wage gap in Korea was also comparatively higher than in other OECD nations, including Canada. It stood at 31.2 percent in 2022, which means women earned 31.2 percent less than men, while it was 17.1 percent in Canada.

“By offering gender equitable access to capital, women founders, startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises will be encouraged to startup and scale-up significantly, increasing the potential for economic growth in Canada,” said Christine Nakamura, vice president of Central Canada Office of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Some experts on the panel said that inclusivity extends beyond gender.

“Canada has an interesting immigration policy, based on a points system, that positively selects young, well-educated, highly skilled immigrants to come to Canada,” said Ito Peng, professor of sociology at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy of the University of Toronto.

Citing Canada’s highest rate among OECD nations on the proportion of the population aged between 24 and 65 with postsecondary education — 63 percent — Peng added that the country is, however, struggling to keep highly educated immigrants in their system, as many lawyers and doctors have trouble getting professional accreditation necessary to work in Canada.

Korea’s Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon, in his recent meeting with students at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, said that he’d like international students in their 20s in Korea now “to stay until they are in their ’70s” to continue to work and research in the country.

Immigration is a solution often put forward by the Korean government to address its dwindling labor force, but one that the society as a whole may be less ready to discuss, said Naver CEO Choi.

“Korea may look very dynamic, but it is a country that has nevertheless traditionally been a homogenous one in terms of its ethnicity and language,” she said.

Discussions on immigration are less active on the community level, Choi said, even though increased immigration would raise direct questions about how the country and its people identify themselves.

“These discussions are crucial because, without them, I am afraid Korea does not have a future,” she said.

Some experts have estimated that Korea’s population of some 50 million today will halve by 2100 due to low birth rates. More recently, the country’s statistical agency projected that the number of people aged between 19 and 34 in the country would halve by 2050.

Further exchanges between the two countries, especially between young people, is a way to move forward as both Canada and Korea grapple with similar demographic issues.

“There is a lot of interest for young Canadians to come and work and study here,” said Mawhinney, citing recent agreements between Korea and Canada to expand their work-and-study programs. “How citizens of the world can come to Korea and feel at home here, and what they can contribute, is one of those interesting debates, and it’s certainly one that is an essential part of the Canadian perspective on the world.”

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]