[Women’s Forum 10th Anniversary] MZ Generation Feeling the Glass Ceiling from the Start of Their Careers

'10th Anniversary of Asia Women Leaders Forum' Survey
"Women Find It Difficult to Become Leaders" 2030 Average Response Rate 93%
When Do They Feel Strong Gender Discrimination? 'Early Career' 43%

Source=Getty Images Bank

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] It has been revealed that female members of the ‘MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z, born between the 1980s and 2000s)’ who are early in their careers are feeling the glass ceiling from the very beginning of their working life. While many working women did not strongly feel gender discrimination during their school years, they have become more aware of it since starting their jobs. The MZ generation, known for their heightened gender sensitivity, feels that it is more difficult for women to become leaders in South Korea compared to other generations.

In this survey, when asked “Is South Korea currently a society where it is easy for women to become leaders?”, 95.5% of women aged 25-29 and 95.0% of women in their 30s responded “difficult.” Among all age groups, only women in their 20s and 30s exceeded the average response rate of 93.0%.

Women in their 50s were the most likely to answer that “it is easy for women to become leaders in Korean society,” with a response rate more than twice as high as that of the MZ generation. Overall, there is a common perception that it is not easy for women to become leaders, but early-career women seem to feel the glass ceiling more acutely than senior women who have been working for over 30 years.

This response from the MZ generation is interpreted as a result of their direct experiences of unfair treatment due to being women while currently working. In fact, the period when women feel the most severe gender discrimination throughout their lives is after starting their careers. Among all respondents, 43.0% cited “early career,” and 15.2% cited “after promotion,” meaning that 6 out of 10 women experienced greater gender discrimination after entering the workforce than during their school years. Specifically, 45.5% of women aged 25-29, who are in the early stages of their careers, reported experiencing the most severe gender discrimination during this period, which is higher than the average.

When asked if they have experienced unfair treatment at work due to their gender, the MZ generation answered “frequently experienced” more often than other age groups. Among female workers aged 25-29, 29.6% responded that they had experienced it very often or frequently. This is about twice the average response rate of women across all age groups (13.2%). Women in their 30s, who have longer work experience than those in their 20s, showed a lower response rate than the 20s group for the same question but still exceeded the average at 13.6%.

The MZ generation generally perceives women’s social status as low across most fields. In particular, regarding the culture and arts sector, 54.0% of all respondents evaluated women’s social status as high, whereas only 38.6% of women aged 25-29 agreed, significantly below the average. Compared to those aged 60 and above, the response rate gap for the same question was more than 30 percentage points.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.