[Press release]

Republic of Korea joins “Ring the Bell” event for gender equality. Photo: UN Women/Jeong Jae Yeon

English | 한국어

Seoul, Republic of Korea — In the Republic of Korea, the stock exchange dedicated its opening bell-ringing ceremony to promoting gender equality in the technology and innovation sector, as part of the latest “Ring the Bell for Gender Equality” campaign.

The event was held to mark International Women’s Day, under the UN Women’s theme for this year: “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality.”

The event was hosted by the UN Women Centre of Excellence for Gender Equality in the Republic of Korea (the Centre), jointly with Korea Exchange (KRX), UN Global Compact Network Korea (UNGC) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) at the KRX building in Seoul.

“While digitalization has great potential to advance the well-being of societies, we need to provide women with safer and more affordable access to digital tools,” said Centre Director Jeongshim Lee. “We would like to encourage investments related to technology and innovation with the clear intention to generate positive, measurable impact on the wellbeing of women and girls.”

"Ring the Bell for Gender Equality" is a global campaign held each March on or around International Women’s Day. It involves a ceremony of ringing an opening or closing bell of financial markets to raise awareness about the role and opportunities for the private sector to advance gender equality and sustainable development. This year, more than 110 exchanges and central counterparty clearing houses in 90 countries joined in the campaign.

The Seoul event started with a video message from UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Anne Hathaway highlighting the critical importance of accelerating the progress for gender equality. “At the current rate of progress, it may take another 300 years to achieve gender equality,” she said in the clip first recorded for the B20/G20 Indonesia Summit in November 2022. “I hope we all agree that this is three centuries too long.”

The Korean event was attended by almost 100 people in Seoul. In addition to Lee, speakers included: Byungdoo Sohn, chairman of Korea Exchange; Yeonchul Yoo, executive director of UNGC Network Korea; Jiyeon (Janice) Ryu, head of IFC Korea; and Catherine Raper, ambassador of Australia to the Republic of Korea.

Stressing the business case for gender equality and women’s leadership, Raper mentioned the research by the Australian Gender Equality Council which found that increasing the representation of women across each of the key leadership roles in an organisation added market value of between AUS52 million and AUD70 million per year for an average-sized organisation.

In her address, Lee also encouraged participating companies to sign and implement the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) as a sign of their commitment. Lee further encouraged participating companies to promote gender equality through gender data disclosure and lead by example on important issues such as women’s leadership, equal pay between men and women, and prevention of sexual harassment.

The WEPs are a set of seven guidelines for private-sector businesses to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community.

In his support of the Ring the Bell campaign, KRX Chairman Sohn said: "As a capital market platform in the era of digital innovation and economic crisis, we will be responsive to the needs of companies and market participants who prioritize diversity and sustainable growth."

At the global level, the campaign is coordinated by the IFC, the Sustainable Stock Exchanges campaign, the UN Global Compact, UN Women and the World Federation of Exchanges. The campaign began in 2015. Exchanges that have participated in the past seven years of Ring the Bell events have made progress by:

• promoting women’s access to finance and encouraging women to invest in public markets;
• developing new products, such as sustainability-linked bonds with gender criteria and gender bonds;
• signing and adopting the WEPs; and
• promoting gender-equality listing criteria and gender data disclosure.