Women are breaching Big Oil's business model, especially in Asia

Seoul

RYU Bok Young is confident that she can do anything that a man does in the sprawling Ulsan refinery in South Korea, be it scaling 100 m steel towers or working through the night when repairing the plant. The challenges that come with being a woman in the traditionally male-dominated oil industry have never stopped her.

But she is worried that a baby might. Newly wed, the 28-year-old engineer is now considering her options for when she has children. Taking a break would be inevitable given the safety concerns of an expectant mother climbing towers or the difficulty of staying away from her baby all night. "If I were a man, these are things I wouldn't have to worry about," said Ms Ryu, who joined SK Innovation Co, the nation's top refiner, in 2012.