The Korean sectors that keep their workers longest employ the fewest women
Line up Korea's main listed sectors by how long people stay and by how many are women, and the two run opposite: a −0.68 correlation. Materials keeps people 8.6 years and is 13% women; health care keeps them 4.9 and is 40%.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed sourcing. Figures are pulled programmatically from the official sources listed at the end of this article and checked by an editor before publication.
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Two facts about a Korean sector’s workforce turn out to be almost the same fact: how long its people stay, and how many of them are women. Put the main sectors on both axes and they line up along a single downward slope.
The longer they stay, the fewer are women
Across the eight sectors large enough to measure, median tenure and median female share correlate at −0.68. At one end sit the industries that hold onto people — materials at 8.6 years, a median 13% women. At the other, the ones with shorter tenure and far more women — health care at 4.9 years and 40%, communication services at 4.7 years and 35%.
| Sector | Median tenure | Median female share |
|---|---|---|
| Materials | 8.6y | 13% |
| Consumer discretionary | 7.1y | 30% |
| Consumer staples | 6.9y | 33% |
| Information technology | 6.5y | 21% |
| Industrials | 6.4y | 14% |
| Financials | 6.2y | 35% |
| Health care | 4.9y | 40% |
| Communication services | 4.7y | 35% |
The same old line
None of this is a mystery, but the −0.68 puts a number on it. The sectors that keep people longest are Korea’s older, heavier industries — chemicals, metals, machinery — built decades ago around a mostly male workforce, and they still are. The sectors that turn people over faster are the newer service and care industries, where women are close to half the staff.
So a single slope carries two of the workforce’s oldest features at once. It says nothing about pay — a sector can be 40% women and still pay them less, and that is a different column. What it maps is where women work in Korea’s listed economy, and it is the same map as where people leave soonest.
Data & Verification Notes
- Data as of
- Sources
- FSS DART (annual reports) — Average tenure and employees by gender, filed by each listed company
- Cross-checks
- For each of the eight main sectors — the ones with dozens to hundreds of listed companies — we took the median company's average tenure and the median female share. Across the eight the two correlate at −0.68: the longer a sector keeps people, the fewer of them are women
- At the ends: materials keeps people a median 8.6 years and is 13% women; health care keeps them 4.9 years and is 40%. Communication services, at 4.7 years, is 35% women
- Both figures come from companies' own annual filings, across 2,644 listed companies sorted into our own sector scheme from the statistical industry code. No GICS data is used
- Excluded figures
- Energy and utilities, whose 5 and 13 listed companies are too few to place a median sector point on the correlation, though both fit the pattern — long tenure, few women
- Any causal claim. Long-tenure sectors are the old male-dominated ones (heavy industry, chemicals); this shows the two facts move together, not that one causes the other
- Pay. This is who is employed and how long they stay, not what they are paid — the gender pay gap is a separate column in the panel
The full dataset behind these figures — every listed company, every row — is available to license. SeoulMarkets data for licence →
Not investment advice. SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.
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