This paper analyzed girl students entering science and engineering fields, their possibilities of going into technology jobs and the opportunities that women with associate and undergraduate degrees in these fields have in the labor market. (Source: Youth Panel 2001- established the Work Information Center affiliated under HRDSOK (Human Resources Development Service of Korea).
Girl students avoid science and engineering fields more than boys. Even so, girls from professional (especially industrial) high schools, or girls who want to enter a vocational college prefer science and engineering fields more than other girl high school students. Even if they choose to study these fields, only two of five desire to make it a career.
In fact, only 10% of young female workers who studied in these fields, at a vocational college or university, actually have a job in the science and technology sectors. They have higher employment rates in the management-accounts-office related job sectors, like their schoolmates in human and social sciences. We have no evidence that girl students who studied science and engineering have better results in the transition into the job market. They appear to be in a disadvantageous position compared to their male schoolmates in the same fields or their female schoolmates in the other fields. We expect follow-on research to explain the main cause of our findings, which would be probably found not only in gender discrimination in the labor market but also in the scholarly world.