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The lot of the female Chinese jobseeker
gets no easier.
Streaks of mascara trailed down her cheeks as Xiao Fei left yet
another miserable interview in Shanghai. With a top-class post-grad
in corporate finance and a relevant internship in a foreign bank,
Xiao Fei never imagined the competition could be so fierce. But
she never imagined that discrimination against females in the
white-collar job market could be so real either.
Though the social status of women in China has ostensibly been
equal to that of men since 1949, hundreds of thousands of female
graduates are still turned away from job opportunities every year
for no other reason than their gender. A clearly frustrated Xiao
Fei laments, "With my qualifications, I should be able to
find a decent job in the world's most exciting economic arena.
If I were male, I'd have been behind a desk long ago."
Marching Backwards
What's worse is that women's position has actually been weakened
in the wake of the country's breakneck economic expansion. The
old notion of female inferiority diminished significantly when
women were sent out to work en masse in the days of China's planned
economy, but now those regressive concepts are back. Female urbanites
are expected to conform to a subservient stereotype that unquestioningly
defers to men. And President Gu Xiulian of the All-China Women's
Federation is convinced that this "incorrect idea of female
inferiority that is ingrained in many people's minds" is
the "fundamental cause of [job market] gender discrimination."
It doesn't help that top jobs are becoming tougher to land - for
both genders. China has been churning out more graduates every
summer for years - but there has been no corresponding jump in
the job supply. "Competition for white-collar posts has become
white hot," says jobless graduate Su Peng. "And women
are losing out." The results of a survey published in the
Summer 2003 Harvard Asia Pacific Review support her assertion:
they showed that only 63.4 percent of female graduates found a
job shortly after graduation, while 72.1 percent of male graduates
quickly landed positions.
Unequal Opportunity Employers
Many of the justifications discriminating Chinese employers offer
today could once be heard in the West - but that was a long time
ago. Listing "Women have babies, and cost more to employ"
as a recruitment policy would land Western employers in court,
and it would be unimaginable these days to see "Only males
need apply" running across the bottom of a job ad.
Yet that is exactly what female job seekers have to put up with
in China, even though the law is technically behind them. Article
12 of China's Labor Law expressly prohibits "discrimination
based on race, nationality, gender or religious belief."
The trouble is no other laws or regulations exist to enforce these
provisions, and lawyers are reluctant to take such cases on. This
means companies can generally contrive their own rules.
Says 27-year-old Valerie, who works for a foreign media organization
in Beijing, "I searched hard for my ideal job on hot recruitment
websites. Sometimes, a position would be really attractive, but
the ad would clearly stipulate that applications would be accepted
from males only. I would feel deeply frustrated and embarrassed
at this situation." Meanwhile, plenty of stalls at job fairs
use the same discriminatory method to weed out the women before
they've even applied.
But the unnamed boss of a Beijing-based private Internet company
says it makes economic sense to recruit males for jobs that both
genders could do. "It might be unfair, but employers know
that most Chinese women want to have babies in their mid-twenties.
So after they graduate, that gives them a couple of years before
they start looking for maternity leave and related benefits, or
maybe even quit the job altogether." And since the bottom
line is everything to reformed and private Chinese companies,
they are reluctant to take on more "costly" female employees.
Play Both Fair and Foul
Some female graduates have decided to use their physical assets
to gain an advantage over their male competitors. Others plaster
on the make-up in the hope it'll make them stand out. They flaunt
their stuff by posing for CV photos in skimpy outfits, or by wearing
revealing dresses to an interview. But this strategy has its supporters
and detractors. Xiao Fei says, "Having been rejected from
about five interviews, I became totally frustrated. I complained
to my former classmates and they advised me to take such action.
So I bought a sexy-looking dress, and did my best to look pretty,
but even with all these efforts, I still have not found a job."
And though she understands the gambit, 24-year-old Beijing journalist
Wang Linye would not sacrifice her dignity. "I attached a
picture to my CV to give prospective employers an idea about whether
or not I could represent the image of the company, if the post
required it. But it would always be a formal, passport-type photo.
And I always dress respectably in interviews. I realize why some
girls try to look sexy in interviews, but I would never do it
myself. Firstly, I don't think the employer would really give
me the job based on my appearance alone, and secondly, if he did,
he might expect me to do more than just work in his company."
No one - not least the growing legions of unemployed female graduates
- expects things to change anytime soon. That males dominate Chinese
society, and the business world, is viewed as "the way things
are in China," whatever the Constitution may say. Wang Linye
says with regret, "As far as I see things, women need to
push their own abilities to solve this problem. When more and
more women become really competitive in the job market, employers
will realize the true value of female job seekers, instead of
merely labeling us all as 'female.' There is no point in relying
on men to fix this for us."
Valerie, meanwhile, hopes that the current laws and regulations
can be strengthened, and actually enforced. "Employer awareness
also needs to be enhanced," she says. "Awards need to
be set up to encourage employers not to discriminate against females
- these awards could then be used to help the company boost its
reputation and business. Surely that would be an incentive for
employers to change their attitudes?" Perhaps it would be.
But until discriminating Chinese bosses change their ways, they
are ultimately hurting themselves, as they throw all that potential
down the drain.
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