Women Pass 8% of Executives at South Korea's Largest Companies, but Management Power Remains Uneven

A record share, with few women in core management

Women accounted for 1,210 of 15,016 executives at 376 of South Korea's 500 largest companies by revenue in the first half of 2025, according to corporate tracker Leaders Index. Their share passed 8 percent for the first time, more than doubling from 3.8 percent in 2019.

The figures, reviewed as of July 8, 2025, mark a substantial change in who holds senior corporate titles. They also show how much of the increase has taken place outside the positions responsible for running companies each day. Just 52 of the 1,210 women were inside directors, and 15 of those 52 were related by blood to the families that own their companies.

Most female executives were outside directors or executives who were not registered as board members. Those positions can carry important responsibilities, but they differ from the internal management roles that control operations and put corporate strategy into practice.

South Korea's progress therefore has two parts: more women are entering corporate leadership, while access to the most influential management positions remains much narrower. Changes to board rules have helped open doors, but companies still face difficulties keeping women on the promotion track long enough to reach the top.

Hyundai Motor illustrates both the gains and the distance still to travel. Women held a record 7.9 percent of its executive positions in 2024, and their average earnings exceeded those of male executives when performance bonuses were included. The company has also set targets for increasing women's representation in management by 2030.

Across the wider economy, however, South Korea continues to trail most developed countries in the share of managers who are women. The challenge is extending the recent increase in appointments into a broader pool of women with responsibility for teams, budgets and business decisions.

How board rules accelerated appointments

South Korea revised its Capital Markets Act in August 2022 to prohibit boards composed entirely of one gender. The requirement applies to large listed companies, meaning large businesses whose shares trade on a stock exchange, and required many companies to appoint at least one female director.

Registered female outside directors increased from 38 in 2019 to 292 in 2024, a rise of nearly eight times. This sharp increase helps explain why the number of women holding executive positions has grown so quickly since 2019.

The legal requirement concerns the composition of a board. A board votes on major company matters and oversees management, while managers handle the business from day to day. Appointing a woman to the board changes who participates in oversight, but the route into internal management depends on recruitment, promotion and retention within the company.

Regulatory changes have worked alongside evolving corporate attitudes. Some industries now have much higher proportions of women in executive positions than others, suggesting that the pace of change also depends on the businesses involved and their existing leadership practices.

The main dates show how the increase developed:

• 2019: Women held 3.8 percent of executive positions in the companies examined, and there were 38 registered female outside directors.
• August 2022: The Capital Markets Act was revised to ban boards composed entirely of one gender at large listed companies.
• 2024: The number of registered female outside directors reached 292.
• First half of 2025: Leaders Index counted 1,210 women among 15,016 executives at 376 of the top 500 companies by revenue.
• 2030: Hyundai Motor aims for women to hold 15 percent of managerial and higher positions in Korea and 27 percent overseas.

What the different executive roles mean

Outside directors are people who are not company employees or shareholders. They have equal voting rights at board meetings, giving them a formal voice in decisions taken by the board. They generally have less influence over daily operations and the direction of work within the business than executives who manage it directly.

Unregistered executives hold senior titles but are not listed as directors in the official corporate registry. Their positions place them high in the company hierarchy, while their absence from the registered board limits their formal role in board decisions.

Inside directors combine board membership with direct responsibility for everyday management. Only 52 of the 1,210 female executives in the Leaders Index count held these positions. That is about 4.3 percent of the women counted, showing how small this group remains within the wider increase in female executive appointments.

Family connections also feature in the figures. Fifteen of the 52 female inside directors, about 29 percent, were blood relatives of company owner families. For women seeking advancement through a professional career, the central issue is whether companies develop more routes into these internal leadership positions.

Consumer industries lead, while heavy industry trails

Household goods companies had the highest female executive share among the sectors listed, at 19.5 percent. Pharmaceuticals followed at 19 percent, with services at 13.2 percent and food and beverages at 13.1 percent.

These industries have strong connections with consumers and show much higher female representation than several traditionally male dominated sectors. Construction recorded 3.7 percent, energy 3.6 percent, and shipping and machinery 3.3 percent.

The difference between household goods and shipping and machinery was 16.2 percentage points. Women represented nearly six times as large a share of executives in household goods, using the figures of 19.5 percent and 3.3 percent.

South Korea's national executive figure therefore brings together very different experiences. A woman pursuing senior leadership in pharmaceuticals faces a sector with a much larger female executive presence than a woman working in construction, energy, shipping or machinery.

Hyundai records gains in leadership and pay

Hyundai Motor, one of South Korea's flagship conglomerates, reported that women held 7.9 percent of its executive positions in 2024, the highest share in the company's history. A conglomerate is a large business group with several companies or activities under related ownership.

Female executives at Hyundai earned an average of 495.78 million won, about $362,000, when performance bonuses were included. Male executives earned an average of 462.84 million won on the same basis. The difference was 32.94 million won, or about 7.1 percent of the male average.

Performance bonuses are payments linked to results and come on top of regular pay. Their inclusion matters to understanding these figures: the comparison is between average earnings including those bonuses.

Women also became a larger part of Hyundai's global workforce. Their share rose from 8.6 percent in 2020 to 11.2 percent in 2024, an increase of 2.6 percentage points.

Hyundai's next stated milestone is 2030. It aims for women to hold 15 percent of managerial and higher positions in Korea and 27 percent overseas. These targets cover a wider range of jobs than executive positions alone, including the managers who form the pool from which future senior leaders can be promoted.

The company's figures bring together three measures that matter to employees: access to executive positions, average executive earnings and representation across the workforce. Its management targets add a deadline against which future progress can be assessed.

South Korea still trails most OECD countries

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recorded women as 16.3 percent of managers in South Korea in 2021. The average across the OECD countries examined was 33.7 percent, more than twice South Korea's share.

Only Japan, at 13.2 percent, ranked lower among the 36 countries surveyed. South Korea's figure had risen from 10.1 percent in 2011, a gain of 6.2 percentage points over a decade, but it remained 17.4 percentage points below the OECD average in 2021.

Managers are a broader category than executives at the largest companies. They include people responsible for supervising work and directing teams at different levels. The OECD comparison places South Korea's shortage of female corporate leaders within a wider shortage of women in management.

Grant Thornton's 2025 Women in Business report put the global share of women in senior management at about 34 percent. In the United States, women accounted for 29.2 percent of chief executives, while finance and technology were among the sectors experiencing rapid gains.

Sweden, Latvia and the United States have much higher shares of women in management than South Korea. Even in countries with stronger representation, women remain less numerous at the very top. Projections suggest that equal numbers of men and women in senior leadership globally could still take another generation.

The business case reaches beyond board seats

Bain & Company's analysis of South Korea's top 500 public companies found that businesses in the highest quarter for female executive representation had twice the enterprise value and growth rate of those in the lowest quarter. Enterprise value is a measure of a business's value that takes account of its debt and cash as well as its shares.

Companies with women holding more than 30 percent of executive positions were especially likely to have higher profitability. The analysis connects the discussion about representation with measures that businesses and investors watch closely: company value, growth and profit.

Leadership teams with more varied experiences can bring broader perspectives to decisions, support innovation and improve how problems are considered. For a company, that means drawing on a wider range of people when deciding what to sell, how to operate and where to invest.

South Korea also faces a shrinking population of working age. Making fuller use of women's skills matters to the supply of people available to work and lead businesses. Bain estimates that increasing women's participation in the economy could boost gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.7 percentage points. GDP measures the value of goods and services produced in an economy.

Why the promotion pipeline narrows

Korean women have high levels of education and participation in the workforce, yet their numbers thin substantially between entry and middle level jobs and senior leadership. The promotion pipeline is the sequence of roles through which employees gain experience and move towards management.

Bain found that the proportion of women in deputy and assistant manager roles in Korea was half that in other developed nations. Those positions matter because they help prepare employees for larger management responsibilities later.

Family expectations can interrupt that progression. Traditional views about the responsibilities of women and men often place more family duties on women, restricting career advancement after marriage or childbirth.

Limited flexible working arrangements and insufficient childcare support can make it difficult to combine employment with caring responsibilities. A woman may have the qualifications for promotion but face practical difficulty staying in a demanding role or accepting greater responsibility.

Promotion decisions present another barrier. Unconscious bias in performance assessments and decisions about advancement can disadvantage women, particularly in industries where most leaders are men. Unconscious bias means assumptions that influence a decision even when the person making it does not deliberately intend to favour one group.

Some companies are also wary of adopting strong gender diversity policies because they fear backlash or accusations of reverse discrimination. That concern can slow changes to the recruitment and promotion practices that determine who reaches senior management.

Companies and government look beyond appointments

The Capital Markets Act provides a legal requirement for representation on the boards of large listed companies. Corporate initiatives focus on the longer process of helping women enter, remain in and advance through management.

Companies are introducing mentorship programmes, flexible work policies and more transparent promotion criteria. Mentorship gives employees access to advice from more experienced colleagues. Transparent criteria make the requirements for advancement easier to understand and assess.

Recommendations for further action include mandatory reporting of gender representation and pay gaps, along with quotas for women in executive talent pools. A talent pool is the group of employees being considered or prepared for future leadership roles.

Expanding parental leave for men is another proposed measure. Giving fathers greater scope to take leave can help distribute caring responsibilities and reduce the career interruptions that fall disproportionately on women.

Industry leaders and advocacy groups argue that these measures need to be sustained and expanded. An unnamed executive described female leadership as a requirement for businesses competing in today's environment, using the phrase:

necessity for survival

The practical objective is to connect board representation with changes inside companies: clearer routes to promotion, support for employees with family responsibilities and a larger pool of women ready to take senior roles.

Public support has yet to become equal representation

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 80 percent of Koreans believed men and women make equally good political leaders. That response points to broad public support for equal leadership ability.

South Korea has had a female president, but women remain underrepresented in the National Assembly and in the highest corporate offices. Public acceptance of women as leaders has therefore advanced further than equal representation in many positions of power.

Changing social expectations takes time. The increasing visibility of successful female executives, together with the business case for broader leadership teams, is helping to shift perceptions about who can lead.

For businesses, the immediate challenge is turning that acceptance into everyday decisions about hiring, retention and promotion. Women need opportunities to accumulate the management experience that companies use when selecting their most senior leaders.

What international experience offers Korea

Companies in the United States and parts of Europe have seen the fastest gains when they combine clear targets for female representation with investment in mentorship, professional networks and retention programmes. Retention means keeping employees in the business rather than losing their experience before they reach more senior roles.

Investors and clients can also press companies to change. Public disclosure of diversity figures gives them information about who holds management responsibilities and whether representation is improving.

The experience of countries with higher female management shares points to a combination of legal requirements, corporate commitment and changing cultural expectations. South Korea's rise from 3.8 percent to more than 8 percent female executives shows that appointments can change considerably within a few years.

The next task is widening access to internal management while maintaining those gains. Board appointments, workforce participation, promotion opportunities and support for parents each address a different part of that process. Countries with stronger representation also need continuing attention to prevent progress from slipping backwards.

Key Points

• Women held 1,210 of 15,016 executive positions at 376 of South Korea's top 500 companies in the first half of 2025, passing 8 percent.
• Female executive representation was 3.8 percent in 2019.
• Only 52 female executives were inside directors, and 15 were blood relatives of company owner families.
• The August 2022 Capital Markets Act revision helped increase female board appointments.
• Household goods and pharmaceuticals led the sectors listed, while construction, energy, shipping and machinery lagged.
• Hyundai recorded 7.9 percent female executives in 2024 and has management representation targets for 2030.
• Women held 16.3 percent of management positions in Korea in 2021, compared with an OECD average of 33.7 percent.
• Childcare support, parental leave, promotion practices and access to management experience remain central to further progress.