The persistence of gender discrimination in China – evidence from recruitment advertisements

Abstract

In this paper we present an analysis of recruitment advertisements that suggests that Chinese employers frequently discriminate on gender grounds, both directly and indirectly. We illustrate how employers continue to use entrenched stereotypes and perpetuate highly segregated expectations of men and women's roles at work, predominantly to the detriment of women and hindering their progress in the labour market. The paper concludes that while employers’ recruitment practices are not the only cause of women's continued labour-market disadvantage – and are in themselves a function of the wider of economic, socio-cultural and ideological factors that underlie it (Kitching 2001; Patrickson 2001; Leung 2003; Cooke 2005) – a change to employer behaviour in this area is a necessary and potentially achievable step forward towards greater equality.

Keywords:

• China
• Chinese recruitment advertisements
• equal opportunity
• sex discrimination
• women

Notes

1. 1954 amended 1999, Section 2, Article 48.

2. Law Safeguarding Women's Rights and Interests of the People's Republic of China (1992).

3. Labour Act (1995).

4. Jobs were categorised differently for the purposes of our analytical tests found in the tables in the text.

5. This number and percentage varies in the tables in the text due to missing data.

6. Itself a matter of debate, as that author notes.

7. This finding would be significant if we were using a less stringent level of confidence (i.e. p ≤ 0.1). Many social scientists find a less stringent confidence level acceptable.

8. This within-activity comparison contains insufficient observations in each cell to perform statistical analysis. It is offered as descriptive data only.

9. And there are marked differences among these in the propensity to ‘export’ gender equality in employment, as both Lawler (1996) and Leong et al. (2004) note.