What does it take to be considered a professional?
The list of keywords amassed for this article, such as 'female professional', 'judicial officer', 'architect', the 'law', and 'architecture', article reminded me of embarrassing anecdotes related to me by my seniors about 'toilets'. Why toilets?
The first story is a senior female lawyer’s experience of judicial examination in the 1970s, when the number of female lawyers in Korea was less than five. As so few female candidates were taking the examination, many of the male candidates used to use the women's restroom. This proved to be an awkward situation, as the female candidates were prevented from using thee facilities, until the senior lawyer, who couldn't wait any longer, pushed her way through the crowd into the lady’s room and other female candidates followed her.
Second, eight years ago I heard the story of another senior colleague, who is a Professor of law in a local university. Since the law school has only a few female professors, it provided no toilets for female professors. Moreover, toilets for female students were not provided on each floor, which also meant that she did not have ready access to drinking water, as it was inconvenient to walk all the way to another floor for the restroom. (The gender ratio of the law school at that time is not known, but as of 2019 there are 6 female members out of 35 full-time professors).
And here is another similar story from a distant country long time ago. The Massuchusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US admitted the first female student in 1873, but she is said to have had to go one mile (1.6km) to find a female restroom on campus.▼1
These anecdotes about toilets by our predecessors may seem to be mere trifles, even if they continue to happen to female professionals in our male-oriented field, but they actually reveal much more serious obstacles. A toilet is an indispensible facility to all, and, most of all, public toilets disclose the level of hygiene, safety and broader attitude to human rights in any society. This awareness is evident in the increasing number of toilets for the disabled and family restrooms, and the present issue of gender neutral restrooms.
Korea's National Finance Act dictates that the government is to prepare a 'gender-sensitive budget' report in advance of the impact that the budget is likely to have on both females and males, and that these documents should accompany the budget bill submitted to National Assembly. A typical example of explaining this budget bill preparation is to account for the planned number of gentlemen’s and ladies’ toilets in a building in order to check whether the budget has been compiled in light of gender equality. This must then necesssarly be adjusted when it doesn’t satisfy equality standards.
In general, women are exposed much more frequently to gender discrimination and sexual harassment in their workplace compared to men, and can find it difficult to maintain their careers in light of these difficulties. Although, professional women may appear to be in a better situation, they must struggle against the long dominant framework of male-oriented competition. One may think that professionals are judged solely on their skills, but barriers still exist for women performing at the highest levels.
The Fading Dreams of Female Students, and the Reality of Surviving Female Professionals
'Sometimes people ask how many female members there should be among the Supreme Court justices. When I say "all nine members", They are surprised. But when all of them were male, no one thought it strange at all', Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted, the second female Justice in US history. I think we have been amazed and, delighted by, and even marveled at the instance of, female success in this field, as so few special women participate in the system and we all taking it for granted that a male-oriented system has long dominated.
What is our present reality? First of all, the official figures suggest that women's economic activity is gradually improving. According to the 2019 Life of a Woman in Statistics, published by Statistics Korea in July 2019, the total employment rate in 2018 is 60.7%, 50.9% for females and 70.8% for males, and this difference is recently decreasing every year. The proportion of women in management roles at public institutions and companies with 500 or more employees is 20.6%, and this ratio is also increasing. Female lawyers accounted for 28.7% (29.7% of judges, 30.4% of prosecutors, and 28.5% of attorneys), increasing by 18.3% compared to 2008. In the medical field, the proportion of women is 26.0% for doctors, 27.3% for dentists, 21.9% for Korean Medicine doctors, and 64.6% for pharmacists.
The reality, however, is that women are in a tougher situation than it might appear. The proportion of non-regular jobs among male workers is 26.3%, and 41.5% among female, which when compared to the rate a decade ago has decreased for male non-regular workers but increased for women. Although more females have jobs than ever before, it is hard to say whether the quality of their jobs has improved. Women's employment rate by age group casts the present situation in a more dramatic light: in 2018, the female employment rate peaks for those in their late 20s, at 70.9%, followed by those in their late 40s (68.7%) and early 50s (66.8%). It is 62.5% for women their early 30s and 59.2% in their late 30s. The employment rate of women takes the shape of an M, decreasing in their 30s due to career breaks due to marriage, childbirth, and childcare, and then increasing thanks to reemployment in their 40s. The rapid decrease in the 30s can be found only in Korea and Japan among OECD members.▼2
Regarding the issue of natural career breaks, such as marriage, childbirth and childcare, the situation for female lawyers may be better than for that of women workers. However, I have frequently heard young female lawyers state that they were asked whether they are married or whether they have children in job interviews with law firms, and that parental leave can frequently mean retirement. Recently, a media outlet reported the case of an attorney who was asked about her plans for marriage, pregnancy and childbirth in ten different job interviews.▼3 The Act on Equal Employment and Support for Work-Family Reconciliation states that 'discrimination means that an employer applies different hiring and working conditions to workers, or takes any other disadvantageous measures against them without any justifiable reasons on account of sex, marriage, status within family, pregnancy, or child-birth, etc.' and forbids discrimination on the grounds of gender in recruitment and hiring, working conditions, and dismissal of workers. Even though lawyers are familiar with these laws, they don't seem to be able to speak up on these matters, affecting their own working conditions.▼4 It is unreasonable to ask young lawyers, who have just embarked upon their careers, to run the risk of being branded troublemakers to raise debate around these problems.
It is not simply a question of birth and childcare. Prejudices still exist over whether female lawyers are not adept at operations due to the long-established male-oriented culture and hospitality cultures involving alcohol and golf. Many women experience difficulties in adapting themselves to such cultures, and the illegal practice▼5 of engaging young female lawyers only the purposes of interviews and ,exploiting their disadvantages in employment have led to the widespread discrimination and exclusion of women. Only one in ten partner lawyers or ,executives of law firms are women,▼6 and there are only three female chief prosecutors, the top executives in the Prosecutor's office, which shows that the glass ceiling in the legal profession is still thick and impenetrable.
The statistics reveal an even worse situation for female professionals in the construction industry. The Construction & Economy Research Institute of Korea have analysed data from the Statistics Korea, which shows that as of June 2018, female workers in the construction industry account for only 11%, and it decreases especially at the high level of technology (as of the end of 2017, women account for only 9.8% of registered architects, 10.55% of certified technicians, and 1.88% of professional engineers). According to 2015 education statistics, the number of female students in the engineering field is increasing year on year, and the proportion of female students in architecture is about 37%, the third highest in the engineering field, and female students tend to prefer architecture as their major in the engineering field. Where are the female students of architecture now? I think that gender discrimination, prejudice, and the difficulty of reconciling work and family in the industry is actually not that different from other professions.▼7
Possible Solutions
I specialised in Labour Law. At the present moment, there are about 60 full-time professors of labour law in Korea, of which only six are women. Standing in the position of a minority, in particular the jurisprudence world which has only a few female professors, I naturally began to pay attention to women’s issues. Based on the thoughts and experiences learned during the process, I would like to briefly discuss talk about what interventions must be made.
First, women should recognise the problems themselves, and seek to expose and discuss them collectively. I have to pay my attention to my own obstacles, and women also have to attend to their own problems, otherwise no one will. It is necessary to build a community of women and to establish a foundation for women to grow together, especially for future generations of women. There is widespread prejudice that assumes women are not able to cooperate or that they are draw into petty jealousies. Envy and jealousy, however, are one aspect of human nature and are not unique to women. Professional women are also under significant pressure to become so-called 'honorary men'. I feel very bitter when I hear that the best compliment a female prosecutor can receive is that 'she is like a man'. Female professionals do not choose their jobs simply so that they may succeed as men; they have to encourage each other and move forward together so that they can demonstrate the unique strengths, personalities and abilities of women.
They also need to interact and communicate with men in the same field. The primary reason for the pursuit of gender equality is to create a society in which everyone can live happily without discrimination and prejudice. To this end, it is necessary to form a consensus to solve women's problems based on trust through communication with male colleagues in everyday life.
Finally, professional women should be sympathetic to the pain of the underprivileged or minorities from their field. They are also beneficiaries in terms of opportunity. If they take on a sense of social responsibility and try to have a good influence on the whole of society rather than just focus on their own unique professional interests, their status will be naturally strengthened.
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1. Kim Hyejung, Difference and Discrimination: Existence and Hope of Architecture, SPACE, 2006, 48.
2. Park Jinhee et al., 2017 KEIS Labor Market Analysis, Korea Employment Information Service, 2017, 141.
3. "In large law firms, only one out of ten partners are women.… They reluctantly hire even that number of female partners" (Dark side of the era when females count for more than 50% of successful candidates.), Kyunghyang Daily News, 13 Aug. 2019.
4. The Supreme Court judges that attorneys employed by law firms are also a worker subject to the labor law (the Supreme Court's decision, 13 Dec. 2012, 2012da77006).
5. It is a violation of Attorney-at-law Act for an attorney to interview a prison inmate for non-lawyer purposes, and some rich prison inmates hired young female attorney only as a 'interview attorney', which raised the issue of women's sexual targeting and gender discrimination.
6. "In large law firms, only one out of ten partners are women.… They reluctantly hire even that number of female partners" (Dark side of the era when females count for more than 50% of successful candidates.), Kyunghyang Daily News, 13 Aug, 2019.
7. Despina Stratigakos, Translated by Kim Daeun, We are female, architect, Nulwa, 2018, 36.