Male Workers Get 50% Higher Salary than Female Workers

According to recent report, male employees’ average annual salary last year was 86 million won, 1.47 times higher than that of female employees. (image: LGEPR/flickr)

SEOUL, Korea, April 15, 2014 (Korea Bizwire) – On average male employees of Korea’s top-20 largest companies receive 1.5 times more salaries than female counterparts.

According to a business report issued by top 20 companies (not including financial service firms), excluding SK Networks where the average annual salary by gender is not specified, male employees’ average annual salary last year was 86 million won, 1.47 times higher than the average annual salary of female employees. The differential by gender was practically the same as the previous year’s, where male employees took home 1.46 times more.

The disparity in average annual salary by gender was largest in Daewoo International (2.08 times), followed by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (1.83 times), S-Oil (1.78 times), and Korea Gas Corporation (1.71 times).

On the other hand, the differential was relatively smaller in KT (1.15 times), Hyundai Motor (1.22 times), Kia Motors (1.30 times), POSCO (1.36 times) and Samsung Electronics (1.38 times).

The company with the highest in average annual salary of male employees was Samsung Electronics (112 million won), and the company with the highest of female employees was Hyundai Motors (78 million won). Average years of employment by gender among the 20 companies were six years, although the numbers fluctuated between companies.

The gap in the average length of service by gender was largest in Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering with 13.3 years. The company explained that “Because of the characteristics of the industry, most of the employees at the site are men and many of them work until retirement age, whereas female employees only began to be recruited in earnest from 2007, which accounts for the salary gap.”

POSCO also had a large gap in average years of employment due to similar reasons. The ratios of female employees (including contract workers) of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and POSCO were 6.8 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively. Daewoo International was the only company among the top-20 list where the average employment years of females (9.4 years) were longer than those of males (7.7 years).

A company official said, “Many female employees with high school diplomas were recruited since early age, as jobs in trading companies often entail a lot of paper work, and they have been working ever since.” The ratio of female employees of Daewoo International was also relatively high with 27.0 percent.

The average employment years of female workers were also higher than those of male workers by two years in SK Networks as well, when only trading segment of the company was taken into account.

The disparity in average years of service by gender were meager with less than two years, in SK Hynix, LG Display, and Samsung Electronics, where the ratios of female employees are relatively high with 46.8, 29.4 and 26.8 percent respectively.

The company where the average years of employment were the longest was KT, also where the gap in average annual salary between genders was the smallest, in both males and females with 20.2 years and 17.9 years respectively.

Written by J. H. Kim (jhkim@koreabizwire.com)

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