A year ago, China’s largest technology companies were lambasted for posting job ads seeking male employees by using “good-looking” female workers to try to lure coders. The giants scrubbed their posts in response.
Yet the next generation of China’s tech superstar wannabes apparently have not gotten the message.
On the country’s two largest job Web sites — Liepin (獵聘) and Zhaopin (招聘) — thousands of ads for Internet companies use language that suggests bias based on appearance, gender or age. That includes postings for US-listed online education site Laix Inc as well as UniCareer (職優你) and iZhaohu (愛照護).
Some ask candidates to “have presentable facial features” or be “under the age of 30.” More than 1,000 postings used beauty as bait, with many boasting that they employ “good-looking men and women.”
The prevalence of the posts, more than a year after the #Metoo movement became a global phenomenon, highlights the challenges China faces in enforcing fair hiring practices.
This approach to filling tech positions contrasts with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) pledge to fight against workplace discrimination amid a shrinking workforce, even as the country cracks down on feminist advocates and scrapes the Web of #Metoo content.
“Chinese tech companies are falling behind Western peers and need better awareness of equal opportunity and more clearly defined policies banning discrimination,” said Wang Yaqiu (王亞秋), a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a non-profit group that has conducted studies about the issue in China. “Discriminatory practices can be even worse at smaller companies because they lack the scrutiny that publicly traded companies are under.”
Liepin and Zhaopin do not generate the job listings, instead acting as conduits in publicizing positions.
Zhaopin said in an e-mailed statement that it does not allow discriminatory terms in recruitment ads.
It also said it has made efforts to check posted ads and to ensure that they do not violate the laws in China, adding that job seekers can flag violations.
The ads from the start-ups came after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) and Baidu Inc (百度), the powerhouses of China’s Internet, were criticized for posting jobs open only to men.
They removed the ads, with Tencent and Baidu apologizing. Alibaba said it implements strict policies on equal opportunity.
China bans job discrimination based on gender and stipulates the importance of equal opportunity. Yet a lack of enforcement means there is few repercussions to discriminatory hiring practices.
Many of the job posts are for positions where looks should be considered irrelevant — programmers, assistants or administrative staff.
Shanghai-based iZhaohu, a hiring platform for on-demand nurses, said it has attracted series A investment.
Its job postings requested that applicants have “presentable facial features.”
“Even though looks seemingly are irrelevant, Chinese Internet companies like to use these catch phrases a lot,” said Lion Niu, a Beijing-based senior consultant at headhunter CGL Consulting Group, which counts Alibaba and Meituan Dianping (美團點評) among its clients.
“In some divisions that are male-dominant, companies still think by hiring a woman, they can boost morale for the coders,” Niu said.
Companies still use beauty as bait. Laix, a US$600 million US-listed online education platform also known as Liulishuo (流利說), said in its ad that the company had “foreign and Chinese beauties and hunks” in trying to hire software engineers.
Laix said the language it used was in no way trying to discriminate based on looks, but to emphasize that the company is an international outfit with vitality.
The company also said it would change the language in its ads and has been working toward equal opportunity in the workplace.
UniCareer, an online education platform that has attracted C-round fundraising, said in its ads that it has so many beauties working there that “they were as numerous as clouds in the sky.”
UniCareer did not respond to queries to its general e-mail addresses.
It is part of human psychology to place importance on appearance when hiring, said Catherine Hakim, a professorial research fellow at Civitas, a London think tank and author of Honey Money: Why Attractiveness is the Key to Success.
According to her research, the #Metoo movement has not changed the significance that people place on looks when it comes to hiring, promotions and daily interactions at work.
Attractive men and women earn about 20 percent more than others, on average, Hakim said.
“It is a mistake to think that your appearance is not important in professional jobs,” she said. “I realize it sounds old-fashioned for employers to prefer attractive employees, but research shows that in the 21st century this is actually sound common sense.”
Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey, has another view.
She said the tendency to think that physically appealing people are more successful does not mean companies should incorporate such notions into hiring policies.
“Everyone enjoys looking at an attractive person, it’s rewarding. People refer to attractive people as eye candy,” Fiske said. Yet “judging people on any superficial feature is not only wrong, but dumb, because it’s a waste of human capital.”
Providing more job opportunities for women could result in economic benefits. China could add as much as US$2.6 trillion to its annual GDP by 2025, a 13 percent jump, by improving gender parity to match the best in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report published last year by McKinsey & Co.
While China has a relatively high female-to-male labor force participation ratio, the proportion of women in leadership positions remains low, the report said.
“Overall, there has been no substantial advance in women’s equality in recent years,” the report said. “China can build on its emerging strength in women’s entrepreneurship in the e-commerce and technology sectors to continue to encourage more women into professional and technical fields and into leadership positions.”
While gender equality has a long way to go worldwide — globally men hold 62 percent of management positions — it is the blatant bias in hiring in China that stands out.
Much is also rooted in culture. Even today, Chinese companies and investors bond over drinking in karaoke parlors accompanied by female escorts.
While bigger firms are starting to clean up their act and implement best practices, smaller companies — often fixated on growth and expansion — are unapologetic about age preferences, Niu said, adding that clients show greater preference for young men when it comes to coding and engineering positions.
“The more intense workload at smaller start-ups and lack of corporate governance are all reasons why gender and age discrimination is worse among start-ups,” Niu said.
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