SAN FRANCISCO — The glass ceiling at many large public companies in California remains unbreakable, but the glass offices of one Los Angeles bank are dominated by women.
Nara Bank, a subsidiary of Nara Bancorp Inc. that caters to Korean Americans, ranks No. 1 in the state in terms of the number of women in positions of leadership, a new UC Davis study has found. Women hold five of its six top executive positions, and a woman sits on its seven-member board. Of the bank's 408 employees, about 70% are women.
Min Jung Kim, 48, chief executive of the parent company and the bank, said it was difficult to break into the male-dominated Korean American banking world.
When she became a loan officer 20 years ago, most of the customers, who were mostly men, refused to talk to her about their financial situation, she said.
When she became a branch manager in 1993 at another Korean American bank, she was told that it was on a trial basis -- and that if she failed, it would hurt other women coming up the ranks.
And by some accounts, when it was time for her to become chief executive, she waited in the wings for a couple of years while the company went through two others. She finally became CEO last year.
"I always carried on my shoulders the pressure of being a pioneer in the Korean banking world," she said.
But it's not only in the Korean banking world that Kim is a trailblazer. The UC Davis study of California's 400 biggest public companies, released Tuesday, found that only 13 had a female chief executive, and that in the last year, there had been little change in hiring of women for executive ranks and board positions.
Among these firms, female directors hold 9.4% of board seats, up from 8.8% last year. Of the 304 directors hired for public companies in the last year, 48, or 16%, were women.
There was no change in the percentage of women in executive suites, which stands at 11.6%. There are 199 companies with all-male executive teams, five more than in 2006, the study said.
"Companies are not prioritizing gender equity," said Katrina Ellis, associate professor at the graduate school of management at UC Davis and the study's lead author.
Companies often say they would like more women in leadership positions but claim the pool of talented and experienced women is simply not large enough.
