Women still vulnerable in job market despite progress

With China's gender equality being continuously optimized and women's social status improving in recent years, women may still be vulnerable in the job market due to marriage and pregnancy, which requires the government to give more practical and humanistic policies to secure them a sustainable career.

Official figures show that in the past 10 years, more females joined the job market despite carrying the main responsibility of taking care of the family, according to a report by the All-China Women's Federation and the National Bureau of Statistics in late 2021.

The report said that so far, nearly 70 percent of the nation's 690 million females have jobs. And among the nation's employed from the ages of 18 to 64, females account for 43.5 percent.

However, females bear the main responsibility of taking care of the family, though the nation saw more equal family status between husband and wife in the past 10 years. According to the report, females take up 76.1 percent of the responsibility of caring for children up to age 17.

The report said that married women spend an average 120 minutes doing household duties per day, and nearly 64 percent of them have to take care of a child under three years old at the same time due to the lack of public childcare services.

Under such circumstances, some experts said that females may face greater challenges in their careers compared with males, especially those of child-bearing age.

Lu Jingbo, director of the Shanghai River Delta Law Firm, said that the challenge comes from companies' pursuit for lower labor costs and higher working efficiency, which may, in turn, reduce women's willingness to give birth and may affect the implementation of the third-child policy.

A 28-year-old woman surnamed Zhou, who serves as a brand manager in Shanghai, said that some headhunters ask about her marital status during interviews, which offends her.

"Usually, the company will have the understanding that a female worker has the possibility of delivering three kids, whether or not she plans to. I can understand that the third-child policy is good for the nation's future, but so far the cost and risks of delivering the third child are mostly borne by women themselves," she said.

"Society has quite high standards for a woman, who may be blamed as a terrible mom if she chooses to work after giving birth to a baby. When she chooses to become a housewife, she may be beset with gossip that a housewife is not a real job as delivering babies is a duty to women. Bearing a child, for a woman, will bring risks and costs of physical changes, losing a job or increasing living costs."

Liang Jian, a professor and associate dean at the Advanced Institute of Business at Tongji University in Shanghai, said that it's common to see that females usually have shorter careers than males, though bearing children is not the fundamental reason for gender discrimination in the job market.

"The discrimination has a close relationship with our gender education. We've been taught what a boy can do and what a girl should do, which will spontaneously affect the females' and males' choices for careers," he said.

He said that to help women secure sustainable careers, it's necessary for the government to guide the public to know a woman's real power and let women themselves show their working capability and independence to eliminate the public's prejudice.

To balance the possible risks and side effects that bearing children brought to female workers, Li Qiang, vice-president of Zhaopin, an online recruitment platform, said that it's necessary to use the nation's finances and policies to ease companies' burdens.

"We've called for the government to use public finance to somehow ease the problem," he said. "Giving male workers paternity leave is also a good idea."

The government has stepped up efforts to protect the female workers' rights and secure them sustainable careers after bearing children.

For example, northeast Liaoning province released a plan last month focused on women's development, which clarifies that it will enhance supervision of companies and employers to stop any illegal behaviors encroaching on women's rights.