Jobs For The Boys Under Fire In South Korea

In her year-long quest for a job, South Korean college graduate Casey Lee has faced a barrage of personal and contradictory questions

Seoul, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Nov, 2018 ) :In her year-long quest for a job, South Korean college graduate Casey Lee has faced a barrage of personal and contradictory questions.

"One company asked if I had a boyfriend and when I'd get married," she told AFP. "Another asked why I didn't have a boyfriend and wondered if someone like me who had no plan to get married soon was trustworthy enough or had a personality issue." Women often struggle to find a foothold in South Korea's male-dominated corporate culture and a series of firms have now been caught allegedly using sexist recruitment targets to keep it that way.

Lee's first interviewer complained that women tended to quit their positions once they had a child, while the other launched a tirade against "irresponsible young women" like her -- she is 25 and single -- for abandoning their responsibility to have children "for the country's future".

"I wanted to scream out loud, 'I'm only here to get a job!'" she told AFP, adding male applicants in the same group-interview sessions were rarely asked similar questions.

Lee is still looking for work, despite a degree from Seokyeong university in Seoul.

She is not an isolated case, and evidence points to some firms in the world's 11th-largest economy systematically discriminating against women.

Three of South Korea's top four banks have been embroiled in accusations they set ratios for male and female recruitment, lowering women's test and interview scores and raising men's to hit the target.

A total of 18 executives have been charged or convicted, including the chairman of Shinhan Financial Group, the country's second-biggest lender.

And last week the Supreme Court upheld a four-year jail sentence given to the former CEO of state-run Korea Gas Safety Corp (KGS) for offences including bribery and violating equal opportunities laws.

Despite its economic and technological advances the South remains a patriarchal society, and has one of the world's thickest glass ceilings for women.