In China, laws are apparently limited to paperwork rather than being effectively enforced.
Although gender equality is fundamentally accepted in China and even enshrined in its Constitution, however, in reality, the Chinese government laws and regulations bear vague wording that has resulted in weak enforcement of workplace norms as well as gender positive hiring practices.
Recently, a company in Hangzhou held a job fair for women during which a female applicant from China’s Chongqing municipality was asked to quit her job once she gets pregnant raging public concern over workplace gender discrimination.
While also indicating that the company does not care about its employers right and interest as well as a clear violation of labour security laws and regulations of female employees.
One of the most significant challenges in China that many female employees face is getting pregnant means losing their jobs.
More precisely to say that when a woman goes for an interview her professional skills are of no importance as her marriage and fertility status do.
The foremost question a female job applicant face is whether she is married or has any plans to have children, turning it into a decisive factor whether she will get a job or not.
One cannot fail to think that somewhere or the other the traditional inferior status of women in Chinese society still exist. In other words, the Chinese government cannot tolerate an ascending female role. and a descending male role.
Thus, the Chinese government and their companies tactfully and illegally terminated labour contract for someone who potentially requires leave for several months on the basis that female applicant was absent from work and as a result, no extra paid maternity incentive is granted to them.
There is a paradox in China’s approach. On one hand, China being the world‘s second-largest economy needs more children because of its ageing population and wants women to work but at the same time it offers few incentives resulting in a widening pay gap and it’s clear that China does not subsidise maternity leave and uses women’s rights as propaganda.
If women go to labour arbitration, the composition or the committee is set up in such a way that it clearly makes it difficult for the women job applicant to win. It involves one representative from the company, one from the labour union and the third is from the government making it evident the government wants to protect the company.
Because of the barriers and loopholes within the legal and court system, the judicial department of China will always fail to provide judicial and legal aid to eligible women, subsequently making it difficult for China to fight gender discrimination against female job seekers including setting restrictions as a condition of employment.
It is clear that China needs to do more to address the needs of women’s right in the workplace as efforts to outcast gender biases has done very little to weaken or completely erode the discriminatory practices in China.
The incentive policies of the Chinese government must encourage childbirth as the workplace environment is not friendly with female job applicant or working mothers.
In China, it is totally false to say that “women hold up half the sky” as proclaimed by Mao Zedong because the reality in China’s workplace environment is totally different.
