Men still being favoured over women for Chinese government jobs, study warns
- A data analysis of civil service recruitment adverts found thousands more posts are earmarked exclusively for men
- Campaigners warn that even ‘women-only’ posts often come with a catch because they are matched by an equal number of ‘men-only’ jobs
A data analysis by the Inspection Squad for Workplace Gender Discrimination looked at the annual recruitment drive for the national civil service and found more government positions were reserved for men than for women.
The report, first published earlier this month, looked into the job requirements for all government positions advertised in October, a month before the annual civil service exam all candidates must pass if they want a permanent government job.
The team found that of the nearly 40,000 jobs being advertised many specified that they were “men-only” or “women-only” jobs – but there were 10,981 jobs earmarked for men compared with only 7,550 for women.
The difference between the two sexes of 3,431 equates to nearly 8.7 per cent of all the jobs being advertised.
A further analysis of the data found that gender discrimination is worst in the provincial bureaus of central government agencies, such as the Ministry of Railways or the People’s Bank of China, where more than 40 per cent of the positions have gender preferences.
