By Li Yuan
China's tech industry has long taken Silicon Valley's lead, from
products to business models to office design. But it has paid scant
attention to the scandals that have rocked Silicon Valley this
year, based on allegations of gender discrimination and sexual
harassment.
In the U.S., large companies have been caught up in the furor,
from allegations of frat-house culture at Uber Technologies Co. to
a debate about women's roles in tech sparked by a software engineer
at Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Separately, there has been a spate of
resignations at venture-capital firms over alleged sexual
harassment.
The torrent of news is barely registering as water-cooler talk
in China. The indifference stems from the fact that such problems
are so prevalent in Chinese society, many people don't recognize
certain behavior amounts to sexual harassment or discrimination,
which is illegal in China--though generally the laws aren't
policed. Job ads sometimes say only men need apply.
Take the suggestion by the now-fired Google engineer that men
are genetically better at tech jobs. Such concepts are widespread
in China: Parents often tell their daughters they won't be good at
math or physics or coding. And just like in the U.S., some Chinese
companies are reluctant to hire or promote women because of
concerns about pregnancy and child rearing, employee advocates say.
About 20% of engineers in China's internet and telecommunications
industries are women, according to Boss Zhipin, a Beijing-based
online recruiting company.
And there's a pay gap as well. Women were paid 30% less than men
in China's internet industry last year, ranking among the most
discriminatory lines of work with medicine, media and
entertainment, according to Boss Zhipin, which surveyed more than
365,000 pay samples nationwide.
Of the 24 board members at China's big three internet
companies-- Baidu Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent
Holdings Ltd.--only one is a woman. That's Wan Ling Martello at
Alibaba, the Nestlé SA executive who also sits on Uber's board.
China's tech industry needs to confront the lack of
opportunities for women because, as my colleague Christopher Mims
argues, it's good business to have leadership diversity.
The industry and its leaders need to acknowledge that gender
discrimination and sexual harassment are real. I spoke to women in
China's tech industry and they revealed recurring problems.
Even though China has comprehensive labor and women's-rights
laws, enforcement is spotty at best.
As a result, about 22% of women have experienced severe or very
severe discrimination when seeking employment, according to Zhaopin
Ltd., an online recruiter. It surveyed nearly 130,000 people in
2017. That percentage rose to about 43% for women with graduate
degrees.
When Qiao Mingzhi, a top student in her 197-member automation
class, went to a recruiting event two years ago, a tech company
refused to take her résumé. She was told it was because she is a
woman. She now works for a petrochemical company.
A trawl through job listings on Boss Zhipin, the recruitment
site, showed some tech companies state explicitly that positions
are just for men.
An e-commerce marketing job at NetEase Inc., one of the largest
internet companies in China, recently stated that only male
candidates need to apply because "the job is tough and
stressful."
Ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing Technology Co. recently said
it wanted men only when advertising two web engineer jobs and a
customer-operations position. Meituan-Dianping, a group-buying
website, advertised a client-operations director position by saying
it preferred men.
A Didi spokeswoman said some jobs require employees to lift
heavy servers and machinery, so they fall into categories that
Chinese laws deem inappropriate for women. She added that the
company is revisiting those requirements. Didi and Meituan-Dianping
removed or amended listings to withdraw the male-only
specifications after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal;
Meituan said it is an equal-opportunity employer.
NetEase didn't respond to requests for comment, though it
changed its posting's language to delete its men-only call after
being contacted by the Journal.
Gender discrimination isn't just a problem for junior employees.
Wang Yijie moved back to Beijing in 2015 to co-found data security
startup Cloudfort Inc. after spending 16 years in Silicon Valley
working as a software engineer and senior business-development
executive.
When she meets potential investors, she says, they regularly
pepper her with questions that her two male co-founders would never
have to answer. These include: "Does your husband approve of you
starting a business?" and "How are you going to balance work and
life?" A couple of potential backers also told her they liked her
project but they don't invest in companies founded by women, she
said.
Lewd jokes in Chinese offices are so commonplace that it's tough
for women to escape, says Feng Yuan, the founder of women's-rights
nonprofit Equality. Many women don't know that harassment, as
legally defined in China, can be verbal as well as physical, and
that it doesn't have to be targeted at an individual, she says.
A midlevel executive in her mid 30s at one of China's leading
startups said she used to tell male colleagues she didn't like them
telling sexual jokes in front of her. Her confrontation got her
labeled as "difficult," she says.
Chinese law doesn't clearly define clearly how victims can seek
redress and what responsibilities employers have when sexual
harassment occurs, said Ms. Feng, the activist. So it is up to
companies to make sure their employees are empowered. Action by a
top management can make a difference.
Jane Sun, co-founder of online booking site Ctrip.com
International Ltd., has set up areas for pregnant women to lie down
and they can expense daily commutes, in addition to bonuses and
subsidies for childbirth.
Didi's President Jean Liu started a women's initiative to train
future leaders at the company.
But as Didi's man-only job postings show, even with a woman at
the top, much needs to be done to overhaul a culture that is deeply
rooted not only in the tech industry, but Chinese society as
well.
Write to Li Yuan at li.yuan@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 17, 2017 08:43 ET (12:43 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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