A company in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province held a job fair for women on August 21, 2018, welcoming child-bearing women. Photo: VCG

Employers suspected of gender discrimination in employment will be summoned by authorities, according to a notice jointly released by three Chinese departments on the employment and entrepreneurship of female college graduates. The move has sparked heated discussions on China's social media platform. 

The All-China Women's Federation, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security propose a series of measures in terms of setting up exemplar of female entrepreneurs, practicing training in job-hunting, and implementing and strengthening supportive policies, according to the notice. 

In particular, the authorities vow to verify and deal with problems related to gender discrimination in employment in a timely manner and provide assistance to female college graduates who have difficulties in finding a job. 

The issue became a trending topic on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Sunday with nearly 390,000 internet users giving it a thumbs up and it was forwarded nearly 6,000 times. As of Sunday evening, over 24,000 netizens commented on the topic with varied opinions. 

One of the comments that received over 28,000 likes and 1,700 replies pointed out that gender discrimination during recruitment is usually hidden since the employer would not tell frankly that they don't hire females but just tell the female candidates that they don't meet the requirements. 

Many netizens expect that employers who discriminate against women during recruitment should be punished as many believe simply summoning these employers for a meeting has no deterring effect.

Some netizens who work as human resource specialists also admitted that unless the authorities impose a ratio of female and male employees, or give incentives to employers to hire females, companies will not take it seriously. 

Apart from the reason which many companies use for not hiring female employees that females' physiological characteristics aren't suitable for some jobs, netizens pointed out that even positions such as administration work or secretary also prefer males to females due to women's maternity leaves. 

Some netizens said that the solution to the gender discrimination problem does not lie in summoning these employers but to relief employers' pressure by subsidizing them with maternity allowance for female employees, as many companies especially small- and micro-scale companies, which have been suffering from tremendous deficit after the COVID-19 outbreak, are unable to sustain hidden costs of hiring women. 

Some internet users also associated the gender discrimination at workplace with China's further lifted family planning policy to allow each couple to have up to three children, criticizing the employers' practice as it's contradictory to the nation's policy. 

Meanwhile, other netizens noted that a few female workers take advantage of their privileges to cheat companies, with some getting pregnant soon after they are recruited and quitting their jobs when maternity leave is finished. 

Thus, many netizens concluded and suggested compulsory male maternity leave as a more effective policy to reduce gender discrimination in the workplace.