Women Outnumber Men in Seoul and Busan Gov't Jobs

Women made up over 45 percent of the workforce in provincial governments last year for the first time and now outnumber men in the Seoul and Busan city administrations.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on Thursday, 136,071 female civil servants worked for 243 provincial government bodies as of last year. In 2011 there were only 82,439. That means they account for 46.6 percent of all local government staff.

The Busan city government had the highest proportion of female civil servants at 52.6 percent, followed by Seoul's 50.1 percent, Incheon's 49.4 percent and Gyeonggi Province's 49.1 percent.

The gender shift is accelerating as more than half of newly hired civil servants are women across the country while more than 70 percent of those who retire are men. But the number of women in higher ranks rose only 2.8 times since 2011 to 5,165 or 20.8 percent.