Chinese tech giants, government departments under fire for gender-based job ads

Some of the most prominent Chinese tech firms and government authorities have come under fire after a report said that discriminatory hiring practices based on gender are widespread in China and are linked to a shrinking proportion of women in the labor force.

The report called "Only Men Need Apply," was published on Monday by Human Rights Watch says that discrimination in hiring by Chinese government authorities and private companies is contributing to a widening gender gap in the world's second-largest economy.

The group said it analyzed more than 36,000 jobs ads. Besides Alibaba (BABA), the report highlights sexist ads from other top Chinese tech firms, including Baidu (BIDU), Huawei and Tencent (TCEHY).

Job ads posted by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd were among those that deterred female applicants or objectified women, said Human Rights Watch in a report released on Monday.

In many of the adverts, prospective employers boasted of “beautiful girls” at their workplace as a selling point for new employees, while others included specific height, appearance and temperament requirements for women that were unrelated to the roles.

“We have investigated these incidents and are making immediate changes. We are sorry they occurred and we will take swift action to ensure they do not happen again,” Tencent said in a statement.

An Alibaba spokeswoman said the company “will conduct stricter reviews of the recruiting advertisements to ensure compliance with our policy.”

A Baidu spokeswoman said the postings were “isolated instances”. They include a video posted on an official Baidu social media account in September 2016 in which a male company employee said that one of the reasons that he was "so happy every day" was because he could "go to work with beautiful girls."

Human Rights Watch also called attention to posts by Tencent, which runs China's biggest messaging app.

It cited an October 2016 social media post by Tencent promoting the company's recruitment fairs in the United States in which an employee was quoted as saying, "The reason I joined Tencent originated from a primal impulse. It was mainly because the ladies at human resources and that interviewed me were very pretty."

Human Rights Watch said that so far in 2018, 19 per cent of the Chinese civil service job adverts it reviewed were “men only” or at least said men were preferred. Only one job posting this year listed a preference for a female candidate, it said.

The Human Rights Watch report received a muted response on Chinese social media on Tuesday, with almost no posts commenting on the issue on popular microblog platforms such as Alibaba-backed Weibo or Tencent’s mobile chat app WeChat.