Women College Graduates Face Gender Discrimination in Job Hunt

December 4, 2013

Editor: Sun Xi

Women College Graduates Face Gender Discrimination in Job Hunt

Social discrimination against women should be eliminated by recognizing the physiological differences between men and women, says Professor Tan Lin, director of the Women's Studies Institute of China (WSIC) under the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF). [job.workercn.cn]

Zhang Xiaolin (alias), a graduate with a master's degree in finance from the prestigious Tsinghua University, has been struggling to find a job.

"It's not easy to find a job and even more difficult to find a good job as a woman," she says. She has applied to several banks and received no responses.

"Many male students from my class have already gone for several interviews, but only one or two of the female students have been called for interviews, despite the fact that we women excelled academically and personally as much as the men did," she said.

Zhang says that many of her male peers have an easier time finding finance jobs and that some advertised job requirements explicitly state that they only hire men.

"Some of the jobs are physically demanding, so I understand if they only want to hire men for that," she said. "But finance positions don't require physical labor at all so what's the difference between hiring a man and hiring a woman? I just don't understand. I guess the main reasons are women will have babies after getting married."

In 2012, China saw its first lawsuit case against apparent gender discrimination in job recruitment. The litigation was launched by a Beijing graduate named Cao Ju who applied to Juren School, a private training institute. The institute turned her down, saying that they only wanted to recruit male candidates for Cao's applied post.

Cao decided to sue the institute for gender discrimination after getting legal assistance from a local lawyer's office. In addition, several girls who had similar experiences also lent a helping hand to Cao's case and jointly called on women victims to protest against gender discrimination. She ultimately won the case.

Social discrimination against women should be eliminated by recognizing the physiological differences between men and women, says Professor Tan Lin, director of the Women's Studies Institute of China (WSIC) under the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF).

Tan made the statement while reviewing the work report presented by Vice President and First Member of the Secretariat of the ACWF Song Xiuyan at the opening ceremony of the 11th National Women's Congress of China on October 28, 2013.

Tan stated that women account for nearly 50 percent of employed people but that they tend to hold lower positions than men. To address this, a program has been carried out to study the development paths of women talents and how current policies can better facilitate women's development.

(Source: chinanews.com/Translated and edited by womenofchina.cn)

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