In China, women are increasingly expected to be career achievers and traditional homemakers. What aspirations do they truly hold for their lives?
Summer is the graduation season for Chinese colleges and universities. During this time, there’s a common lament among students about the difficulty of finding a job, and the majority of these voices belong to female students.
Despite the Chinese government’s repeated emphasis on “employment is the biggest livelihood” and “preserving employment is preserving livelihood,” the problems of employment difficulties and unemployment are not universally gender-neutral. Women often face these challenges more readily.
“Technical work requires a science-oriented mindset, so it’s suitable for men; sales require frequent travel, so it’s suitable for men; project management requires a holistic view, so it’s suitable for men.” These were the reasons that Li Xin, a graduate majoring in engineering, was rejected during her job search this year. She vented her frustration on her social media account, saying, “If you don’t want to hire women, you could just state it in the job posting. Why waste each other’s time like this?”
Her post quickly became a rallying point for many women who shared their own job-seeking stories. One woman’s experience stood out in particular; she recounted how an HR representative at a company she was interested in bypassed her qualifications and instead asked if she could recommend any male classmates. “In that instant, I felt completely ignored as a candidate, my potential and qualifications brushed aside because of my gender,” this girl replied to Li Xin’s post.
Li Xin says that if we want to trace the issue of employment discrimination against women due to gender bias, it goes back to her middle school days.
“I remember when we were transitioning from middle school to high school, there were vocational schools that would promise students free tuition and a job as a teacher after four years, luring parents into signing contracts for their children,” said Li Xin. “At that time, I had a friend who was doing very well in class, but her family was average and she had a younger brother. When her parents found out, they urged her to give up on college and go to a vocational school instead, so she could have a stable job after graduation, since her brother’s education would also cost money. She was ready to give in, but fortunately, our homeroom teacher was very responsible and took the initiative to talk to her parents. In the end, she successfully got into a good university.”
“People often think that women should find a stable job, but I believe this mindset is discriminatory in itself,” said Li Xin. “Although our major is engineering, there are many girls in our class, and they all have excellent grades. But at job fairs, many of the top-performing girls are not even notified for interviews, while the boys are invited. Why can’t women take on challenging jobs? Why should one’s abilities be judged by their gender?”
Discrimination against women in the workplace is not limited to the recruitment process.
According to the “2024 China Women’s Workplace Status Survey Report” released by Zhaopin.com, the proportion of women who have experienced unfair treatment due to gender in the workplace is significantly higher than that of men, with 54% of women reporting such experiences compared to just 6.6% of men. A staggering 33.1% of women have faced obstacles in promotions and pay raises due to their gender, a figure much higher than the 9.2% of men who have been affected by gender in these areas. Moreover, an alarming 48.8% of surveyed women said they were asked about marriage and childbearing during job searches.
Li Xin said, “I was also asked if I had a boyfriend during a job interview. Although not having a boyfriend might be a favorable answer, I still don’t understand why such questions are even relevant in a hiring process.”
“I’ve seen many people share similar experiences on social media,” says Lixin. “Many companies take into account whether a woman is unmarried, and if married, they consider child-rearing aspects. For women who have children, they consider whether they plan to have a second or third child within five years. I’ve even heard that some companies ask female employees to sign agreements promising not to have children in the coming years upon hiring. It’s really outrageous.”
In traditional Chinese culture, the role of women has always been to support their husbands and raise their children, taking care of the household. This also places an additional burden on working women, as they are expected to excel at work while also taking on more domestic labor at home.
Survey data from Xinhua News Agency shows that when asked “Who usually takes care of the children?”, nearly 70% of working mothers personally look after their children. Among them, 35.3% do so with the help of their parents during the day and take over themselves after work. These working mothers expressed in interviews that relying on their elderly parents is often a reluctant choice due to the nature or length of their work hours. Another 31.1% take full responsibility for childcare, while only 1.5% have the father in charge of the child’s daily care.
Li Xin used her colleague at the company where she is now practicing as an example, “She has to get up early every day to make breakfast for her husband and children, then after work she has to pick up the kids, and when she gets home, she still has to cook dinner, clean the house, and help the children with their homework. She herself said that she is as busy as in a fighting every day.”
At the same time, women still face the phenomenon of unequal pay for the same work as men in the workplace. The survey report on the status quo of Chinese Women in the Workplace released by Zhaopin.com shows that the pay gap between men and women in 2024 will be about 12.9%, which is roughly the same as the gap in the previous two years.
“So, the gender discrimination that women face in the workplace is still quite serious,” Li Xin said.
But women’s rights are not only violated in the workplace.
“The simplest example is the high-speed train sanitary pad incident,” Li Xin said.
The incident began with a female passenger who had an unexpected period and wanted to buy sanitary pads on the train, but the attendant said they had never sold them. So, she suggested online that since many women have unstable periods, could sanitary pads also be sold on high-speed trains in the future? The railway’s customer service responded that sanitary pads are not normally sold on high-speed trains as they are considered personal items. Regarding whether they would consider selling sanitary pads, the railway’s customer service stated that they had received and recorded the feedback on “selling sanitary pads on high-speed trains” and would pass it on to the relevant department for consideration.
“I remember some people said that there are few women who have emergencies on the train, so the demand for sanitary pads is low and the commercial value is not high. But later I saw news that on the Kunming Railway Bureau’s routes, sanitary pads were sold at 6 yuan per pack, with a total of 12,049 packs sold,” Li Xin said. “Is it possible that many people don’t see the daily needs of women, not because they don’t exist, but because these needs have been ignored?”
“Just like when discussing whether to build nursing rooms, many people also say that mothers can just breastfeed in the restroom,” Li Xin said. “These most basic needs of women are not being seen, let alone broader issues like domestic violence and sexual harassment. If we really want to increase the marriage rate and birth rate, then the most important task is to protect women’s rights.”
Li Xin mentioned a sentence she read in a previous article that explains this well: “From the contribution of childbirth to society, the pain and troubles that women bear are not just a matter for women themselves.”