Zhang is a telephone operator in a chemical factory. In the small town she lives in, her job is seen as admirable.

She has a harmonious family life with a 3-year-old son.

But Zhang finds herself getting increasingly annoyed these days with the advances of one of the deputy factory managers in charge of her department.

At first, he casually patted her on the shoulder and held her hands. Then he insisted on kissing her and even asked for sex.

The 50-year-old man, who has two grown-up children, threatened to have her transferred to the workshop to do the dirtiest and most dangerous work if she refused him.

Zhang telephoned the Maple Women's Psychological Counselling Centre in Beijing for help.

Since 1992, staff and volunteers at the centre have received countless calls from women telling similar stories.

"These are clear cases of sexual harassment," said Wang Xingjuan, the centre's founder and president of the centre's council.

In fact, of the calls the centre received between 1992 and 2004, half of the complaints of sexual harassment were directed at bosses or colleagues.

"This illustrates the urgent need to protect women from sexual harassment," Wang said.

Zhang and other victims at last have far more than a glimmer of hope.

The Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, passed the amendment to the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women (Women's Law) yesterday.

The amended Women's Law will take effect on December 1 this year.

Article 40 of the draft amendment stipulates that sexually harassing women is illegal and punishable by law.

An odyssey

Wang Xingjuan and her colleagues have worked hard for more than a decade to get this article in the country's legislation.

When Wang opened China's first telephone hotline in September 1992 to offer women psychological assistance, volunteers began hearing complaints of this nature.

One researcher who analyzed 40 cases found that sexual harassment happened more often in the workplace with half of the perpetrators being bosses, colleagues and friends.

In October the same year the Women's Law took effect, but it made no stipulation on sexual harassment.

Wang and her colleagues began to raise the issue with legal experts.

In 1995, Tang Can, an associated researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published the country's first report on sexual harassment in China. She based her study on interviews with 169 women migrant workers.

Her study showed that 36.8 per cent of the women interviewed encountered sexual harassment in the workplace. Tang's research was criticized for probing into a topic still considered a social taboo, even though the Hong Kong news media picked up her study.

Despite the setback, Wang and her colleagues at the Maple centre discussed the issue at the international NGO forum during the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September the same year.

They drew attention from NGO participants from abroad.

But Wang said that at the time, sexual harassment was considered to be too minor a problem to warrant social, legal and government attention.

In 1998, Chen Kuizun, an NPC deputy from Jiangxi Province, raised the issue at the annual session of the NPC in proposed legislation concerning the draft Law of Licensed Doctors.

On March 4, 1999, Chen united 32 other NPC deputies and submitted the similar proposal "About Drafting the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law of the People's Republic of China" to the NPC.

The two proposals attracted tremendous media attention, but they did not bring any changes to the law.

But women's rights activists and women's NGOs such as Wang's centre and legal experts pushed hard to get the clause into draft amendments of various laws, particularly the Women's Law. The draft was revised several times.

They succeeded and the NPC started deliberating in June this year.

The passage of the amended Women's Law signals a major step China is taking to ensure women's human rights and gender equality.

"It helps to change a situation where there was no legal base to tackle sexual harassment," said Yang Dawen, law professor with Renmin University and vice-chairman of the China Society of Family and Marriage.

Still a long way to go

But a lot more work should be done to create a legal and social environment in which sexual harassment will be curbed and punished by law.

Wang Xingjuan said the issue was not merely a matter for women, and that men were victims too. Thirty-six per cent of phone calls to her centre from 1992 to 2004 were about female bosses harassing male employees.

Anti-sexual harassment should be written into relevant laws.

Professor Yang Dawen was more specific and said other laws should also be adjusted to keep up with the amended Women's Law.

For example, articles forbidding sexual harassment at workplaces or in schools and hospitals should be included in the Labour Law, the Teachers' Law and the Doctors' Law, Yang said.

How to enforce the law also needs careful work, Wang said.

Women's organizations are not law enforcement organs, and she suggested a special committee be set up to deal with sexual harassment cases.

Debate goes on

Despite the passage of the anti-sexual harassment article, debates will go on about what sexual harassment is.

Professor Wu Changzheng from the China University of Political Science and Law, also leader of an experts' group of the drafted amendment of Women's Law and Family Law, developed her own definition of sexual harassment.

She said sexual harassment was "obscene behaviour that is harmful, coercive and sexually provocative. This includes touching, embracing and kissing."

"It can also be verbal or facial expressions hinting sexual desire or exposing sexual organs to flirt.

"Such behaviour infringes on the other party's human dignity and humiliates her or him."

Professor Yang took the view that the definition should also include relations involving employer and employee, guardians or even foster care.

A detailed explanation will strengthen the power to implement the law, Professor Yang said, adding that it is necessary to stipulate age limits for perpetrators (over 16 or 18 years old).

As the definition is not included in the amendment, it will be put into a judicial explanation of the law, Yang said.

(China Daily August 29, 2005)