Abstract

This article examines the employment patterns of women with law degrees, and the career experiences of those who succeed in entering the legal profession. It reveals that structural factors account for the rising number of female jurists, rather than any apparent changes in gender ideology in Korean society as a whole. Most notably, the government's expansion of the size of the field has benefited women, while at the same time aspects of the profession's structure, such as the gender-blind entrance examination and a seniority-based promotion system, have made the law increasingly attractive to career-oriented women. Further, the concentration of female legal professionals on the bench and their conspicuous absence in prosecutors' offices, suggests that traditional patriarchal attitudes about the proper role of women continue to dominate in the workplace, and that the increasingly equal access of the late 1980s has not necessarily assured equal opportunities for women in the 1990s.

pdf