Women seek equality in job market

Female employees called for equal opportunities in the job market as surveys by recruitment firms showed bias against married women or those with children has led to stagnation in their pay and chances for promotion.

A report by Zhaopin, an online recruitment platform based in Beijing, shows the average salary of Chinese women was 23 percent lower than men's last year, with the income disparity seeing a 1 percent increase in 2018 compared with 2017.

Also, women have fewer opportunities for promotion than men. The report said that among the companies surveyed, women occupied an average of only 18.7 percent of board seats while men occupied 81.3 percent.

"Marriage and raising children are the main reasons for the unfair treatment of women in the job market," said Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin.

"The stereotype is that women shoulder more duties in a family, such as doing chores and raising children, which distracts them from their jobs and hurts their chances for promotion as a result of unsatisfying work performance. It's just unfair," he said.

The Zhaopin report surveyed 86,510 people across the nation.

Another report focusing on the situation of Chinese women in the workforce by Linkedln, an employment-oriented website based in Sunnyvale, California, shows that one-third of the surveyed Chinese women registered with the site changed jobs or chose to freelance after having a baby, and 46 percent said they either turned down job offers or failed to get a job because of pregnancy.

The LinkedIn report covered 1,100 Chinese women who gave birth within the past two years.