Practices of Gender Inequality and Preference for Better Appearance Still Exist

Many new recruits have found that gender inequality and physical appearance both seriously affect their employment status.

According to a survey conducted by ToU, an Internet-based newspaper for college students, on responding personnel managers from 50 large corporations, 44 percent answered that they preferred male applicants to female applicants if qualifications were equal.

On the contrary, none replied that they preferred female applicants. Meanwhile, 56 percent said that they didn’t care about the gender of the applicants.

Another survey conducted on 529 job seekers indicated that 68 percent of respondents believed if scores were similar, male applicants would have a better chance to get a job.

Also, more than half of the responding personnel managers replied that if qualifications are equal, the better-looking applicants are preferable. About 94 percent of job seekers replied that appearance is a significant factor affecting their employment, indicating that many job seekers are paying a great attention to their appearance.

However, the survey shows that the preference over applicants from prestigious universities is not that serious.

When questioned if they would prefer applicants from prestigious universities when qualifications or scores are equal, 74 percent of responding personnel managers said that they wouldn’t care much. In addition, when questioned if they see any noticeable differences in work performance between workers from universities in the metropolitan area and those from universities in local provinces, 76 percent said no.

Sang-Soo Kim ssoo@donga.com