Home -> Law Blog Directory -> International Law Blogs -> China Law Blog

International Law

: China Law Blog

Sexism China Style. Not A Good Thing.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

When I first read this post over at the Josh in China blog (why are there so many Joshs in China, anyway?), I smiled. But then I frowned. Okay, I didn't really frown, but I'm going for literary effect here. The post is entitled, "Interesting Cultural Differences" and it astutely (albeit reflexively) notes how the women at Chinese toll booths are uniformly "extremely good looking girls." When Josh discussed this observation of his with a cab driver, the cabbie responded by saying, "Of course! These are the people welcoming you into the city. They have to be beautiful!" Josh then tells us that the pay for these jobs is "three or four times that of a typical retail job." Probably better job security and benefits too. Now at first this seems harmless, but it really isn't. Now before anyone calls me a prude or anything, trust me I am not. But I also have two daughters and I would never want them either to be hired or not hired for any job based on their looks. Now I also know full well that nearly all of us have our own prejudices when it comes to looks and there is no way those can be fully excised when hiring, but blatant sexism is a bad thing and that is exactly what we have here. With any sexism on the up side (truly no pun intended) in terms of hiring means there has to be a concomitant sexism on the downside. For every attractive woman hired for this job, there is one less attractive woman who missed out on it. If I had to rate China on a sexism scale among the countries I know best, it actually does fairly well. It is not as good as the United States, but it is considerably better than Korea and better than Japan as well. I would say it is about the same as Russia. My sense is that pretty women in China are favored more in employment than in the United States, but that women who do their jobs well (no matter what their looks) are taken seriously. I am basing nearly all this analysis on observations in law firms and on conversations with female lawyers so it is about as far from scientific as one can get. Would love to hear from others in other industries. What do you think?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).