U.S. second lady Jill Biden said Saturday that South Korean women have made tremendous strides at the workplace, but they still face challenges in the male-dominated Asian country.
Biden said that both the United States and South Korea face challenges, as young girls must be able to reach their full potential.
"Young girls and women in South Korea excel in terms of educational achievement but continue to face challenges in their workplace," Biden said in a reception hosted by Gender Equality Minister Kim Hee-jung in Seoul.
The reception came hours after the wife of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Seoul in her first trip meant to promote women's education and economic empowerment issues in South Korea.
"In the U.S. we have worked to empower women in the workplace so that their voices are heard throughout the society and to see those same efforts made in Korea shows how far we have come as a global community," Biden said.
"We are more successful when women have seats at the table," Biden said as she was looking at American and South Korean working women at an exhibition hall.
South Korean women saw their influence dramatically grow over the past decades as more women received college education and worked their way up the corporate ladder.
Still, women in general find it difficult to continue their careers after marriage and childbirth.
South Korea has taken a series of measures to bring stay-at-home moms back to work in recent years to boost female labor participation, which is one of the lowest among advanced countries.
Earlier, Biden met with female monks at a Buddhist temple in Seoul along with U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert, Ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Issues Catherine Russell and Biden's sister-in-law Valerie Biden.
"The sisters are educating, empowering women; we talked about that, which is the purpose of our trip here," Biden said after meeting with the monks.
On Saturday, Biden is set to leave for Vietnam, the second stop on her four-nation Asian swing that will also take her to Laos and Japan. (Yonhap)
