Md. Taqi Yasir
If we compare women’s rights in the U.S. with women’s rights in China is an exercise in apples and oranges. China’s very first gender-injustice case has taken place, with the government settling. A little over a year later and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a bipartisan advisory group, has found that: 87% of recent female college grads say there is still gender discrimination in the job search process. First, there’s the blatant nature of the discrimination. Job ads specify they want tall, single and young women for pink collar roles that are the secretaries.
“They don’t hide it. It’s explicit,” says Peter Kuhn, a UC Santa Barbara professor who did a study that showed 10 percent of job postings state a sex preference. Women also earn less and are required to have higher qualifications than men. China actually does have laws barring employment discrimination on the basis of gender. It just rarely enforces them. Indeed, in gender-equality rankings, China comes in at 87 out of 142 countries. It started with the government, the same one with those anti-discrimination laws. State-run media started using the term in 2007 as fears began to ratchet up over the country’s gender imbalance which was the result of selective abortions and infanticide during China’s three decade plus and one-child policy. Now there is an estimated 20 million male surplus.