OpinionWomen are still banging their heads against the ceiling

South Korea may have elected its first female president earlier this year but in the corporate world, it is still a country dominated by men.

Park Geun-hye made history in February when she reached the country's top political spot, but a recent report issued by the international headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles shows the vast majority of decision makers in South Korean boardrooms and in top leadership positions are men.

South Korea ranked at the bottom of a league table compiled for a McKinsey & Co report last year, with only 1 per cent of directors being women. There were no women executives running South Korea's biggest state-owned companies. There were only 13 female chief executives among the 1,787 listed companies on the Korean Composite Stock Price Index, just 0.7 per cent of the total.

While we complain Hong Kong has too few female directors with only about 9 per cent of places on listed companies' boards being taken by women, compared to South Korea, our ladies are not doing too bad.

So why does South Korea lack female business leaders?

The Heidrick & Struggles survey in March this year showed 83 per cent of female executives said there still remained an invisible barrier to their upward progression, while 60 per cent said there was a general lack of faith in the professional competence of women in South Korea.