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发帖数: 5093 | 1 China's biggest tech companies are promising to make changes after being
named in a report detailing discrimination against women in job advertising
in the country.
Entitled "Only Men Need Apply," the report published Monday by Human Rights
Watch says that discrimination in hiring by Chinese government authorities
and private companies is contributing to a widening gender gap in the world'
s second largest economy.
"Nearly one in five job ads for China's 2018 national civil service called
for 'men only' or 'men preferred,' while major companies like Alibaba have
published recruitment ads promising applicants 'beautiful girls' as co-
workers," said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.
The group said it analyzed more than 36,000 jobs ads. Besides Alibaba (BABA)
, the report highlights sexist ads from other top Chinese tech firms,
including Baidu (BIDU), Huawei and Tencent (TCEHY).
Alibaba
Human Rights Watch said that its review of Alibaba's job ads found "a
troubling pattern of gender discrimination, including ads that openly state
a preference for male applicants, use female employees' appearances to
attract male applicants, or highlight only males as examples of high-
performing employees."
Alibaba, China's biggest e-commerce company, said that its recruitment
policies "have clear and well-defined guidelines on providing equal
opportunity regardless of gender" and that it "will conduct stricter reviews
of the recruiting advertisements to ensure compliance with our policy."
The company argued that it "exemplifies one of the best practices in our
industry when it comes to gender equality," noting that women account for
one-third of its management positions.
Related: Microsoft received 238 gender discrimination and harassment
complaints
Tencent
Human Rights Watch also called attention to posts by Tencent, which runs
China's biggest messaging app.
It cited an October 2016 social media post by Tencent promoting the company'
s recruitment fairs in the United States in which an employee was quoted as
saying, "The reason I joined Tencent originated from a primal impulse. It
was mainly because the ladies at human resources and that interviewed me
were very pretty."
A Tencent spokesperson said the cases highlighted by Human Rights Watch "
clearly do not reflect our values."
"We have investigated these incidents and are making immediate changes," the
spokesperson said. "We are sorry they occurred and we will take swift
action to ensure they do not happen again."
Related: YouTube CEO says gender discrimination still hurts
Baidu
Baidu, which runs China's biggest search engine, was criticized for several
ads. They include a video posted on an official Baidu social media account
in September 2016 in which a male company employee said that one of the
reasons that he was "so happy every day" was because he could "go to work
with beautiful girls."
The report also mentioned a March 2017 job ad for content reviewers at Baidu
that said applicants should be "men" and have "strong ability to work under
pressure, able to work on weekends, holidays and night shifts."
Related: Google hit with revised gender pay lawsuit
A Baidu spokesperson said, "We value the important work that our female
employees do across the organization, and deeply regret the instances where
our job postings did not align with Baidu's values."
The company identified and removed the offending job postings before the
release of the Human Rights Watch report, the spokesperson said, describing
them as "isolated instances that in no way reflect our company's dedication
to workplace equality."
Baidu said that 45% of its employees are women and that the ratio "is also
reflected in mid and senior positions."
Huawei
According to the report, Huawei posted a message on social media promoting a
job fair in 2015 that asked, "Do you want your wages to increase at a rate
faster than housing prices, and to marry a fair-skinned, rich, and beautiful
[woman] and enter the peak of your life?"
A December 2013 post encouraging prospective applicants to tour the company'
s campus said, "No matter how beautiful the scenery [on Huawei's campus] is,
beautiful girls are needed."
Huawei, one of the world's biggest smartphone makers, said that it "respects
gender equality and it is a company policy."
"We will review the allegations brought to our attention in the report and
also work to ensure that in all recruitment publicity material is fully
sensitive of gender equality," a spokesperson said.
Related: Australian company apologizes for job ad seeking 'Anglo Saxons'
Call for change
Human Rights Watch said the current legal framework in China isn't up to the
job of dealing with sexist ads.
"Although Chinese laws ban gender discrimination in hiring and gender
discriminatory content in advertising, the laws lack a clear definition of
what constitutes gender discrimination, and provide few effective
enforcement mechanisms," the report said. "As a result, the level of
enforcement is low and Chinese authorities rarely proactively investigate
companies that repeatedly violate relevant laws."
Human Rights Watch is calling for the Chinese government to carry out a
series of changes to improve the situation, including a new comprehensive
employment anti-discrimination law. It's also urging companies to "adopt and
enforce company policies prohibiting all forms of gender-based
discriminatory job ads." |
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