China has been enlarging its university enrollment on a successive
basis since 1999 with 2.12 million (including 800,000 women
graduates) students graduating this year. However, prospects for
young women graduates have not improved in proportion to the
increase in their number and sex discrimination continues to be
found everywhere in the job market.
Despite the sharp increase in graduates, there is no significant
accompanying growth of need in human resources in China. By June
2001, 95 percent of the year's post graduate students, 80 percent
of undergraduates and 40 percent of graduates from 2-3 year
vocational schools had found their first jobs. If the story that
only 80 percent of graduates on average can secure a job upon
graduation occurs again this year, about 630,000 graduates will
face the grim reality of unemployment by July.
More than 400 companies offered 12,000 or so vacancies at two job
fairs held in Beijing, attended by nearly 50,000 graduates last
November. The ratio between jobs supplied and jobs sought was
1:5.
The ratio of young women college students has continued to rise as
university enrolment has enlarged. The figure has increased from
39.75 percent to 41.07 percent in 2000, attaining 42.14 percent in
2001. However, graduate career prospects for young women have not
been improving in proportion to their number increase.
A
poll recently conducted by the Women's Federation of the eastern
coastal province of Jiangsu
shows that 80 percent of those polled said that they had
encountered sex discrimination in job seeking and 34.3 percent
complained of repeated job refusals. Many pointed out that they had
frequently witnessed unfair recruitment terms such as "male
graduates only" or "male students enjoy priority in case of equal
competence." Some foreign invested companies disregard women
employees' interests and their labor contracts even include such
harsh terms as "no birth for five years". Facing high possibility
of unemployment, many female graduates submit to these terms and
sign contracts anyway.
Statistics from the Student Affairs Office under the Education
Department of northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province show that the province's employment rates for women
college graduates are commonly lower than those of male graduates.
The province has almost 70,000 college graduates and 2-3 year
vocational school graduates. Employment rates for the 11,402 male
undergraduates and 9,896 female ones were 83.29 percent and 80.08
percent, respectively. Similar figures were 53 percent and 46.24
percent for the year's 6.714 male vocational school graduates and
7,213 female ones, respectively. Overall employment rate for male
graduates is nine percent higher than that of their female
counterparts.
Another poll conducted by the Fujian Women's Development Research
Center affiliated with the Xiamen-based Xiamen University
shows that more than two thirds of the 1,068 graduates of 1998
thought that sex discrimination against female students existed in
the employment market and 87.8 percent of the women polled agreed
with the idea. The poll also revealed that male students in general
have 14 percent more job opportunities than their female
counterparts.
Another result of the poll showed that employment qualities were
not equal for both sexes. Eight point three percent of females
polled ascribed the gap between the jobs they found and their
career ideals to sex discrimination.
In
addition, the expected salary index for male graduates was 11
percent above that of their female counterparts. According to the
poll, 78.8 percent of the females polled -- 11.3 percent higher
than the percentage among the males polled -- got contracted
salaries below 3,000 yuan (US$362.88); and 64.8 percent -- 14
percent higher than the percentage among males polled -- got
contracted salaries below 2,000 yuan (US$241.92).
The Research Institute for Population and Development under the
Tianjin-based Nankai University has found in its investigations
that more than half of the employers, including some government
departments, public institutions and state-owned enterprises, claim
the condition of "male only" in their recruitment for graduates and
postgraduate applicants. Their claim results in young women
students being excluded from the opportunity to participate in
competition.
(China.org.cn by Chen Chao, April 22, 2003)