Fighting Gender Discrimination in the Chinese Workplace
![handle is hein.journals/bctw20 and id is 351 raw text is: FIGHTING GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN
THE CHINESE WORKPLACE
CHRISTINE M. BULGER*
This Note analyzes the avenues available to Chinese women in their strug-
gle for workplace equality. While China has enacted a number of laws that
appear to afford women equal opportunity in employment, the ineffective-
ness of these laws is quite apparent.There are many reasons for this, includ-
ing the inherent inadequacies of many of China's statutes and of its Consti-
tution, barriers and failures within the legal and court systems, and the
traditional inferior status of women in Chinese society. Howeve?; as young
Chinese citizens are becoming less dependent upon their government, they
are also becoming more willing than earlier generations to challenge the
inequalities and failings of the Chinese govermment and its legal system.
This readiness of the new generation in China, coupled with the sugges-
tions and strategies described in this Note, should serve to bring about
gradual improvement for women in the Chinese workplace, and eventually
in the whole of Chinese socie,; government, and politics.
.Over the past decade, the People's Republic of China (PRC or
China) has attempted to correct its history of human rights violations
in the wake of increasing economic and social reform.1 These new
laws and policies have had mixed results, especially in the area of
combating discrimination against women in the workplace.2 Such
gender discrimination has taken the form of preferences in hiring
men, excessive fines based on alleged violations of family planning
regulations, unfair dismissals, periodic employment plans,3 earlier re-
* Editor in Chief, BOSTON COLLEGE TmiRD WORLD LAW JOURNAL (1999-2000).
1 See, e.g., White Paper, Progress in China's Human Rights Cause in 1996, Information
Office of the State Council of the P.R.C., (Mar. 1997), translated at
<http://iw .china.org.cn
/English/WhitePapers/96HumanRights/96HumanRights.html> (visited May 19, 2000)
[hereinafter 1996 Human Rights White Paper]; Human Rights in China (HRIC), Caught
Between Tradition and the State: Violations of the Human Rights of Chinese Woenn, 17 WomN's
RTS. L. REP. 285, 287 (1996); Hilary K. Josephs, Labor Law in a Socialist Market Economy:
The Case of China, 33 CoLuM.J. TRANSNAT'L L. 559, 560-61 (1995).
2 See Elisabeth Rosenthal, A Day in Court, and Justice, Sometimes, for the Chinese, N.Y.
TiMES, Apr. 27,1998, at Al.
3 In 1980, China instituted a 'basic national policy of limiting each couple to one
child to curtail population growth. See HRIC, supra note 1, at 294-95. The policy is en-
forced on a local level and it generally involves numerous restrictions on a woman's repro-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bctw20&div=22&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Fighting Gender Discrimination in the Chinese Workplace
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