Men Only: How Sexist Job Adverts Are Impacting Gender Equality In China

As we know from the ongoing discussion about what constitutes sexist advertising (see Beach Body Ready, Brew Dog’s silly Pink IPA stunt and dodgy meal replacement shakes), the content of a society’s adverts says a lot about it’s values and attitudes.

With this in mind, let’s turn our attention to a new report from Human Rights Watch which looks at gender discrimination in China’s workplaces. Titled Only Men Need Apply, reviewed more than 36,000 job adverts and found that they demonstrate the prevalence of sexist attitudes towards women in China’s workplaces. Alongside this, the report notes that gender discrimination was not only common but worsening in some areas of China’s public and private sectors.

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According to Human Rights Watch, only 63 percent of China’s female work force actually worked in 2017. That’s down from 65.5 percent a decade earlier. They’ve also noted a widening of the gender gap with the pay gap in urban areas also increasing. Indeed, according to a report by the World Economic Forum, China’s gender parity ranking in 2017 fell for the ninth consecutive year, leaving China in 100th place out of the 144 countries surveyed (in 2008 China had ranked 57th).

This is, they say, in part at least because of the way jobs are advertised in the country or, perhaps more accurately, the sexist attitudes belied in China’s job adverts. Human Rights Watch collected Chinese job adverts which clearly and explicitly state a preference for male workers.

One such ad, for the role of information feed reviewer at tech company Baidu listed ‘men’ as one of the job’s requirements. Another, this time for a role at world-renownedonline wholesale treasure trove Alibaba even advertised a key perk of the job as being the company’s ‘beautiful women’. The job post read:

[March 8, recruitment notice season 1: the call from goddesses] They are the goddesses in Alibaba employees’ heart—smart and competent at work and charming and alluring in life. They are independent but not proud, sensitive but not melodramatic. They want to be your coworkers. Do you want to be theirs? … (More job positions: [a link to Alibaba’s hiring website here])

In the public sector, Human Rights Watch looked at recent national civil service job listings in China and found that 13 percent (2017) and 19 percent (2018) of the job postings specified ‘men only’, ‘men preferred’, or ‘suitable for men’. Not a single advert specified ‘women only’ in 2017 and only one suggested a preference for a woman applicant in 2018. More than this, fifty-five percent of the jobs China’s Ministry of Public Security advertised in 2017 specified ‘men only’.

Chinese law does technically ban gender discrimination when it comes to hiring workers. However, Human Rights Watch say that the law is ambiguous and rarely enforced which means that companies who violate the law rarely face any consequences.

Concluding their findings, Human Rights Watch said that while some women have successfully challenged the discrimination they've experienced, ‘the Chinese government’s stringent media censorship and hostility toward grassroots activism pose a significant obstacle to Chinese women’s rights activists and civil society groups seeking to raise public awareness about the issue. Activists have pledged that they will continue to fight discriminatory job ads, but in China’s current climate they face increasing risks of reprisals for their activism’.

Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.