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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.

18 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. Alternate headline by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Other cultures are actually different, Euro and Euro derived cultures are shocked to discover!

    "This isn't the diversity we had in mind", activists quoted as saying ...

    1. Re:Alternate headline by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Other cultures are actually different, Euro and Euro derived cultures are shocked to discover!

      "This isn't the diversity we had in mind", activists quoted as saying ...

      I had a discussion with our diversity counselor about this very subject. She was promoting "cherishing" other cultures. My question was "Should we cherish all cultures?

      She said "Of course - all cultures are valid and must be cherished"

      My next question was "What about Saudi Arabia, where you wouldn't even be allowed t drive, much less have many other rights? Where your dress today might get you stoned?"

      She replied "Next Question - someone else?"

      I think it is massively wrong to have "men only" jobs. But do we abandon the dictates of diversity and attempt to impose our cultures dictates on the very cultures we have been told to cherish?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    2. Re:Alternate headline by orlanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry, but your Diversity Counselor was ill-prepared on the topic or just didn't care for your question. Your question is very common and asked all the time. She should have faced that question in almost ALL her sessions. Its not an invalid question, nor one without a simple answer. A co-worker asked a similar question and got a pretty good response.

      "Of course - all cultures are valid and must be cherished"
      "What about ...?"

      Just because we say all cultures should be cherished doesn't mean we must accept all aspects of their cultures. The statement appears extreme because the alternative is more dangerous. With the statement, there is an attempt to understand the other culture. With the goal, one culture can more effectively compare & assess their own practices/norms. This leads to an evolution where we incorporate the highlights of the other culture. Eventually, with open doors, both cultures benefit by influencing the other with the best of what they have and removing their worst practices.

      The alternative is to easily dismiss the entire culture based on a few known horrible practices. This is very natural for humans. But it results in siloed societies where each thinks they are the best there is and the rest are barbarians. There is no will nor reason to objectively assess each other and themselves. This results in misunderstandings, and conflicts that only hurt the standard of living of all involved.

      For Saudi Arabia, its a cultural norm to wash your hands before eating (even at restaurants). Families are very important and very big. Their country really puts their citizenry first and well in front of all others. Of course they have a ton of bad practices, but those don't devalue the good. Some of which we can use in the US.

    3. Re:Alternate headline by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because we say all cultures should be cherished doesn't mean we must accept all aspects of their cultures.

      If we don't accept all aspects of their cultures, then we don't cherish them. Cherish means "protect and care for (someone) lovingly", "hold (something) dear", or "keep (a hope or ambition) in one's mind". If you want to change it, you're not protecting and caring for it in its current state. If you hold it dear, you don't want to change it. If it's your hope or ambition, you don't want to change it — you want to implement it.

      We should not cherish cultures which are abusive. And we should cherish our fucking dictionaries so that we can have meaningful conversations.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Alternate headline by orlanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Dictionary.com: Cherish
      -to hold or treat as dear; feel love for
      -to care for tenderly; nurture
      -to cling fondly or inveterately to

      Note there isn't anything about "all" or "everything" or anything synonymous to that. Cherish doesn't mean blind love of all good and bad. That would be idiotic.

      An example: A mother can cherish her children, but that doesn't mean she condones, nor approves their drug addiction or gang membership.

  2. what? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    That's crazy talk; no way do men like being surrounded by beautiful women!

  3. Hooters by unixcorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Hooters by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

      Because nobody wants to look at guys with hugs boobs?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Hooters by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Funny

      almost nobody.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  4. Re:Communist party reeducation by sinij · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What this point demonstrates that it is Liberalism, Freedom of Speech, and strong protections of Personal Rights that allow SJWs to exist.

    You seem to imply that this is a bad thing.

    You misunderstood my point. What I said is that SJW couldn't exist without certain set of values in the society, and SJWs are against some of these values.

    That is, SJW when taken to a logical conclusion would change society in a way that would make SJW impossible.

  5. Nobody complains about all-women companies by K.+S.+Van+Horn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Case in point below. The founder eventually concluded that it was a bad idea from the standpoint of productivity, but it never seems to have occurred to her that her policy was deeply sexist.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem...

  6. Not just tech, not just women by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    This isn't really news to anyone who has lived in China. Someone has found a tech angle to grab headlines, but a more accurate encapsulation would be, "Labor market discrimination is legal and open in China." I lived in China for four years; I'm white, my wife is Indian. There were all kinds of "hire-a-foreigner" jobs (mostly teaching English but a range of other things) that were open to me but not to her, and they were advertised as such. (As opposed to the West I guess where they just don't call you back -- but still, it's worse.) If you want to see some of these postings. go to thebeijinger.com and scroll through the help wanted ads. Some of these postings are for US-headquartered companies, which possibly makes them a violation of US labor law, if anyone wants to pursue that. In the Chinese-language job boards, things can be even weirder. Even the train system openly said that they were looking for women in their 20s as train attendants for the high-speed railway. And that's the government doing the hiring. There isn't any kind of social consensus that discrimination is a bad thing (though plenty of people think it is), so don't expect it to change soon.

  7. Re:They just want to decrease sexual harassment by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  8. Re:SJWs should welcome this by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    While the fickle finger of blame has always been pointed at men and the patriarchy, my experience and my wife's experience have been very different. The rumor mills, the jealousy, and the general hatred of women toward other people has been breathtaking. Since I'd be accused of mansplaining for my own experiences, I'll talk for my wife.

    She rose to the number two position in her company, and was the highest paid employee there. She had teams of mostly men working for her. There were of course women in her workplace. While there are always personnel issues, the only people that had a problem with her were the women. "Oh, she must be fucking the owner to have got her position. "I wonder if Doggy style is the position she used to get her position?" And on and on. Pleasant to her face, but active undermining the second they walked away. and an unhealthy obsession with sex. Outside of the sexual innuendo, she is tall and slender. So if people think fat shaming is bad, you ought to see the shit women sling at other women if they think a woman is not fat enough.

    The men overwhelmingly just loved her.

    Meanwhile, here was a place trying to get things done in the construction and home design industry, and had some troublesome employees that were not hard to identify. In a bit of irony, my wife became very reluctant to hire women because of all of the workplace drama.

    Her view is that as long as every problem is considered to be the fault of men, the problem will never be fixed. Women need to take some responsibility. Because what they are doing now is a crab bucket. pulling each other down.

    I saw this in my own workplace as well, but since I'm a guy, no one would listen to my description.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  9. Gender hypocrisy from the Ministry of Truth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The news over the last few days has reported on a women-only co-working space in the Bay Area called "The Coven." Women-only and themed after witchcraft.

    If men created a men-only workspace and called it "The Monastery," it would be hated on 24-7 by the self-appointed intelligentsia. Hypocrisy abounds.

  10. Re:The paradox of tolerating intolerance by swillden · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  11. Re:SJWs should welcome this by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > When has that ever been a good idea?

    Most of the time.

    Leave regulated non discrimination to governments and monopolies. Let normal people have freedom of association.

  12. Re:SJWs should welcome this by eaglesrule · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?