Hong Kong – Several Chinese unions have issued notices to companies to stop asking employment applicants about their marriage and maternity state, since women concerned with work discrimination resist government supplications to boost the national birth rate.
Require that employment applicants declare their matrimonial and maternity state has been seen for a long time as a way for Chinese employers to avoid hiring women who plan to marry or have children in the near future.
Employers “will not investigate or investigate the marriage and maternity status of women’s requesting women,” he read a union notice backed by the state of the province of Hunan in the center of China that was published last week around the International Women’s Day on the Chinese Wechat Social Network Platform.
The notice also said that employers should not limit recruitment to men, stipulate a preference for male employment applicants or require pregnancy tests as a job condition.
Similar notices were published by Unions at the Southern Industrial Center of Shenzhen and the Northwest Province of Qinghai.
The notices have been widely shared in recent days in Chinese social networks, where users discussed the challenges that women face when requesting jobs.
“Employees are expected to lie when employers ask about personal privacy during the job search process and give the employer a satisfactory response if they really like work,” said a user on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as Rednote.
As much as some employers would prefer that their workers remain single, women receive the opposite instructions of the Chinese government, which has been pressed to marry and have children to help address the population in decline and rapid aging.
Women are encouraged to adopt more “traditional” roles in society as wives and mothers, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has personally asked women who promote a “fertile culture.”
Some have rushed to adopt the Beijing line.
Last month, a company in China retreated a policy that threatened employees never married and divorced with termination if they were still single at the end of September after public uproar.
The company’s notice had criticized individual employees for “not responding to the national call.”
Despite the women who advance in the workplace, achieving gender equality has been a uphill battle in China.
It was only in 2012 that the State Council, the Chinese cabinet, prohibited employers from reducing the salary of employees or finishing their contracts due to pregnancy and childbirth.
In an effort to encourage motherhood, Chinese officials have implemented a series of measures that include subsidies, better child care and a longer maternity leave.
These measures have had a limited impact on Chinese women, who cite the fear of being left behind in their careers among the reasons why they hesitate to have children.
A third of women in the country still take less than 98 days of maternity leave to which they are entitled, according to a survey last year by the Institute of Women’s Studies of China.
Although some notices of the unions were praised by some as a step forward for women, others questioned whether companies would take them seriously.
“Will there be any punishment for violating the rules? Most likely not, “read a comment about Xiaohongshu.
