The number of female employees at domestic banks is nearly equal that of their male peers, but only a few reach high-ranking positions, according to banks and news reports.

The reports said about 48.8 percent of workers at six major domestic banks were female but only 4.4 percent of bank executives were women.

Even at Hana Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and Industrial Bank of Korea ― whose proportion of female employees exceeded 50 percent ― female executives were scarce, fueling concerns that gender discrimination prevails in the financial sector.

As of the end of February, for instance, only one out of 8,095 female workers at Korea Exchange Bank ― regular workers and contract-based workers combined ―- became head of a division.

In the same period, Hana Bank had only 2 female division heads in its executive pool of 4,096 female regular and non-regular workers. The bank currently has the highest female ratio among the six domestic banks.

Banks countered that when their present female executives joined the banks, there were fewer female workers who wished to stay working after they were married.

“Getting a job after high school graduation and quitting their job after marriage used to be the social norm in those days. Now we lack female workers who have worked here long enough to become executives,” a KEB spokesperson said.

A Hana Bank spokesperson also denied that gender discrimination was the reason for the low number of female executives, saying, “We give longer leave of maternity than other workplaces to aid working moms. But still, I have seen many female colleagues who reached or nearly reached managers’ positions quit when their children entered elementary school.”

But banks agreed that the number of female executives would eventually rise, especially in the private banking and retail banking sectors.

According to Statistics Korea, about 62.9 percent of women in their twenties are economically active, surpassing their male peers for the first time in the nation’s history.

By Chung Joo-won  (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)