Library Dissertation Showcase

Chinese employers’ gender discrimination in recruitment: trends and causes

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2021

This dissertation studies the extent of and trends in gender discrimination in job advertisements in China over the past decade, as well as the main reasons for discrimination against women. It also explores measures acceptable to employers to support equal employment opportunities for women. The work drew on high quality data and employed descriptive and inferential analyses to answer the research questions based on a well-considered research design. It found that the rate of gender discrimination in job advertisements in China in 2021 is extremely low (0.4%) and has shown a downward trend over the past decade. For male and female employers, the main reasons for gender discrimination are different. Due to the more that it is perceived to be expensive for female workers’ childbirth and the adverse effects on work, female employers’ reasons for gender discrimination are more likely to relate to objective experiences. While for male employers, their reasons for gender discrimination include that females are less competitive, that some jobs are not suitable for women, and that the traditional Chinese culture, such as male-breadwinner and female-caregiver, impacts them. The reasons for gender discrimination are essential to social role theory including gender role theory. However, there are no significant differences among private-owned, foreign-owned, and state-owned firms. Based on the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of the three-child policy in China since 2021, both reducing taxes and increasing subsidies may be crucial to promote gender equality in employment. In addition, offering accessible public childcare services and communicating women’s competitiveness are helpful to eliminate gender discrimination. Several contributions which may end the previous arguments about the trends of gender discrimination in recruitments; broaden the research scope; and imply for policymakers, including the very large national sample, the two linked studies, and the unique nature of the investigation, are worth highlighting.

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