Sun sued her former employer after the company suspended her upon learning she was pregnant. “The company’s illegal behavior incurred serious mental harm to me, resulting in me having a miscarriage on September 20, 2018,” Sun Shihan said in a court filing. This is not being trustworthy,” a representative of a company said to the newspaper Beijing Youth in April 2017, explaining why the company fined an employee for being pregnant. Numerous women have described, on social media, to the Chinese media, or in court documents, their experiences being asked about their childbearing status during job interviews, being forced to sign contracts pledging not to get pregnant, and being demoted or fired for being pregnant. Countless job ads specify a preference or requirement for men, or for women who have already had children. In December 2015, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress revised the law to allow couples to have two children, effective January 1, 2016.Īfter the two-child policy went into effect, a majority of women surveyed by various Chinese companies and women’s groups reported they had been subjected to gender and pregnancy-based discrimination in pursuit of employment. The one-child policy, however, brought about a rapidly aging population and a dwindling labor force. This report-based on a review of Chinese websites and social media, Chinese and international media reports, and a review of court verdicts-details the nature of workplace discrimination that took place immediately after the two-child policy went into effect in 2016, and the discrimination that Chinese women continue to face today.Ĭhina’s Population and Family Planning Law states that, “citizens have the right to reproduction, as well as the duty to carry out family planning according to the law.” For 35 years, from 1979 until 2015, for most couples in China, “the duty” was to only have one child. Liu Yiran’s story is just one of many stories of women in China who face egregious pregnancy-related discrimination in the workplace. In a July 2017 article on the Chinese news website The Paper, Liu said, “ just wanted an explanation, an apology, and just, fair treatment,” but found “the difficulty in defending rights has been beyond my imagination.” In March 2018, the labor arbitration board mostly denied Liu’s request, saying she had not proven her case and citing such things as her failure to properly document salary and regular work attendance prior to her termination, information that the company refused to provide her.īecause Liu had spoken out about her experience on Chinese social media platforms, her former employer then sued her for defamation. Liu then took the company to a labor arbitration board in Beijing, seeking past unpaid wages and overtime pay from the company. In July, a new employee assumed Liu’s position and the company stopped paying Liu’s salary. Soon thereafter, the company posted a job ad for a new position that had the same responsibilities as hers, never informing Liu. Liu immediately informed her employer of the pregnancy. In May 2017, doctors told Liu Yiran, a 34-year-old woman working for an internet company in Beijing, that she was pregnant. A popular saying on the Chinese internet describing the impossible position working women face under China’s two-child policy If you already have two children, you must be too busy taking care of the children so can’t focus on work. If you’ve had one child, you’re a “time bomb” likely to have a second child at any time. If you haven’t had children, employers regard you as an “extra-large time bomb” that will explode twice.
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