Chinese Tech Companies Post Men-Only Job Listings, Report Finds (theverge.com)
Major Chinese tech companies like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent discriminate against women in their online job listings, a new report from Human Rights Watch found today. Some job postings directly state they are for men only, while others specify that women must have attractive appearances and even be a certain height. The Verge reports: The Human Rights Watch report reveals gender discrimination amongst major tech companies, as in the rest of Chinese society, is common and widespread. Search engine Baidu listed a job for content reviewers in March 2017 stating that applicants had to be men with the "strong ability to work under pressure, able to work on weekends, holidays and night shifts." The conglomerate Tencent, which owns WeChat, the massive game Honor of Kings, and a majority stake in League of Legends, was found to have posted an ad for a sports content editor in March 2017, stating it was looking for "strong men who are able to work nightshifts."
And Alibaba, despite Jack Ma touting the company's inclusiveness, merited an entire case study from the Human Rights Watch report. The report noted the e-commerce giant came under fire in 2015 for posting a job ad on its site for a "computer programmer's motivator" seeking women applicants with physical characteristics like Japanese adult film star Sola Aoi. Alibaba removed the reference to Sola Aoi after media reported on it, but kept the ad on the site. As recently as January this year, Alibaba still mentioned "men preferred" in job listings for "restaurant operations support specialist" positions. Tech companies also often tout the attractive women they've hired as incentives for more men to come on board, according to the HRW report. Both Tencent and Baidu were noted to have posted to their social media accounts interviews with male employees who cited having beautiful women around them as an incentive for working there.
And Alibaba, despite Jack Ma touting the company's inclusiveness, merited an entire case study from the Human Rights Watch report. The report noted the e-commerce giant came under fire in 2015 for posting a job ad on its site for a "computer programmer's motivator" seeking women applicants with physical characteristics like Japanese adult film star Sola Aoi. Alibaba removed the reference to Sola Aoi after media reported on it, but kept the ad on the site. As recently as January this year, Alibaba still mentioned "men preferred" in job listings for "restaurant operations support specialist" positions. Tech companies also often tout the attractive women they've hired as incentives for more men to come on board, according to the HRW report. Both Tencent and Baidu were noted to have posted to their social media accounts interviews with male employees who cited having beautiful women around them as an incentive for working there.
And yet, the US has Hooters. Hooters gets away with only hiring women as servers because of BFOQ. That's Bona Fide Occupational Qualifications. While they were sued many years ago, they only agreed to put men in other positions but they never agreed to hire men for server roles. How is this different?
That sheds an even worse light on chinese programmers than on chinese companies....
It's a sad life if the best thing about your job is the gorgeous.... whatever an software developer motivator is.
It's bad for men to want beautiful women around them?
They didn't say it was the best thing about their jobs (though so what if it were?)
interviews with male employees who cited having beautiful women around them as an incentive for working there
Women are not aggressive and competitive? Are you kidding? They may be more subtle, but if you want to see backstabbing that could teach George R. R. Martin a few things even he didn't imagine possible, watch a few women try to outdo each other for a high level position.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Women are not aggressive and competitive? Are you kidding? They may be more subtle, but if you want to see backstabbing that could teach George R. R. Martin a few things even he didn't imagine possible, watch a few women try to outdo each other for a high level position.
And heaven forbid some woman ever gets added to an office that already has a queen bee.
They don't care about workplace sexual harassment or the wage gap in China. This is driven purely by old fashioned ideas about women. You know the sort of thing - meek, emotional, distracting, take a week off every month to menstruate, will probably get pregnant and drop out completely etc.
I know some Chinese women are turning to doing contract work over the internet, software development and that kind of thing, using fake male names. When it's time to get paid they just say "sent it to my wife" and give their real WePay account.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So let me get this straight, the AC who promotes gender-segregation gets modded up and the progressive feminist who says nothing more than the non-controversial statement that doesn't want gender segregation gets modded down?
Who gets to define what constitutes progress?
Wrong question, you're making an appeal to authority, an assumption that some *person* should be doing the deciding. That's a bad approach. Of course you're not really asking the question, you know it's a bad approach and you know that anyone reading it will know it's a bad approach, so you're asking the question rhetorically in an effort to discredit the notion that any decision is right. That's underhanded argumentation. Say what you mean.
The right question is what *principles* should be used to decide. Obviously, not everyone will agree on the principles, which is why we fall back on democratic ideals. To avoid tyrannies of the majority, we use democratic processes to decide broad, high-level principles rather than to answer specific questions. Then we apply reason and debate to those principles.
In this case, the core principle is that of freedom. Cultures are free to do what they want, but that freedom ends where it begins infringing on the freedom of individuals (of course, we make exceptions where to allow too much individual freedom causes bad outcomes for society as a whole -- there's a balance to be found. Yes, this is hard.). The notion that women are morally equal to men (which isn't saying they're the same as men) means that they should have the same opportunities to compete for the jobs based on their ability to do the job.
I argue that this freedom for women trumps the freedom of Chinese culture to restrict their role in society. Do you actually disagree? On what basis?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
On the opposite extreme is gender quotas. Lowering requirements in hiring for one sex, yet still calling it equal opportunity while enforcing a double standard.
The issue with the physical requirements for NYC firemen is an example, with women failing the exam but still being given the job. So in theory, a person can burn to death in a house fire because of political correctness that put people unsuitable for job in a position to rescue them, due to some unwritten formula for the ideal combination of genitals among firemen.
That seems just as counterproductive and detrimental to the society as unfettered capitalism. If jobs exists that are unsuitable for the disabled, or women who lack the physical strength do a fireman carry, why should laws exist to enforce their participation?