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During a 23 year career with the BBC, and 43 years in journalism, (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor Welshman Phil Parry, has always known that the correct treatment of sectors in society was fundamental, and this is underlined today by news that jobs are advertised in China with the warning “men preferred”. or that women should only apply if they are of “good appearance”!
Sometimes attitudes are so appalling, that you almost have to laugh, and the phrase “get back in your cave” has never seemed so apt.
The approach towards women in China is terrible, and attitudes which went out decades ago here, still prevail there.
If you are a woman, getting a well-paid job in the vast country is hard, and it is routine practice for men to be paid MORE than their female colleagues doing the same work.
For those unaccustomed to truth in advertising, employers in China can be astonishingly forthright in their help-wanted notices.
Huangshi, a city in Hubei, recently sought investment-promotion officers under 35 years old, specifying “men preferred”.
A high-speed rail operator in Lanzhou wanted women, but only so long as they were under 25, over 160 centimetres tall and with a “good appearance”.
A Suzhou packaging firm, by contrast, stretched to the geriatric reaches of 45 in its search for a sales representative, adding that female candidates should already be married with children – in other words no mate
Ostensibly there is absolute equality in China (Mao Zedong famously said that “women hold up half the sky”), but the reality there is rather different.
The Communist Youth League (CYL) has said “extreme feminism” (which it does not define, but generally includes anything that encourages activism or conflict, yet discourages women from getting married and having children), is a “cancer”, with the party regularly casting feminism as a destabilising, insidious foreign force.
Under President Xi Jinping, “sissy men” have been banned from appearing on television, while traditional marriage and childrearing have been promoted.
It seems that “gender antagonism” may be setting the scene for broader social instability, and officials are even more worried about this so they have toned down their rhetoric a little recently.
They also worry hugely about plunging marriage and birth rates, because in a recent quarter China registered just 1.7 million marriages, half the number compared with the same period in 2017.
It is severely affected, too, by its former one-child policy, which seems to have fuelled discrimination (both unofficial and official) against women, because fewer and fewer men can secure a female partner (let alone a male one – prejudice against gay people in China is atrocious!), and rather than blame the practice itself, say that WOMEN are responsible.
The one-child policy led to the abortion of many female foetuses and thus a surplus of adult males today, many of whom struggle to couple up, and the number of surplus men, known as ‘guanggun’, or ‘bare branches’, is enormous.
By 2027 there will be 22.5 million more marriage-age men than women, which translates into 119 men of marriage age for every 100 women of that age; in 2012 the ratio was 105 to 100.
This is bad for the authorities, but it is good copy for journalists like me, if they don’t keep up with what’s happening, when in one part of the world jobs are advertised with the words “men preferred”!
Truths like these by Phil, who was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
Soon on The Eye, he looks at how another food scandal has emerged in China, which was brought out by a blogger, because the giant country does not allow a free media…
Tomorrow – regrettably during Phil’s long career, crime stories (particularly violent assaults) in cities have often dominated, but now it appears terrible attacks in RURAL areas in parts of Wales may be increasing, as gangs cross ‘county lines’ to trade in drugs.
