This is China! BLOG

China Hiring Practices: A Man’s World

“So this is a Chinese company you’re talking about?” I asked my friend, Frankie (not her real name). Frankie is a young, vivacious German woman in her late twenties (NOT pictured at left; that’s Barbarella, just in case my younger readers didn’t know). Her thoughts faster than her words can carry, she’s bright and quite pretty. Both young Chinese guys and Westerners alike spend a fair amount of time and energy hunting her, as she would probably put it. She’s lives in Nanjing, where she’s worked for a Chinese company for about four years. Friends for as long, she had called me recently to chat. She was telling me about the sexism she was meeting as she was looking for a new job in the China market.

“No, it’s a Western company,” she answered, clearly frustrated, “Swedish. “I had passed a British acquaintance my CV because he suggested I would best fit the marketing position he was leaving for another company. He said he thought I actually had more experience than he did, and that I’d be perfect for the position. We met a couple more times to talk about the company and the position. Weeks went by, though, and he didn’t say anything about an interview.

“Finally, I asked him what his boss thought of my CV. He said he hadn’t passed it on to his boss. I got really angry,” she bit the words over the phone. “I shouted at him, ‘you just told me all that so you could try to get into my knickers!’

“Surprisingly, he admitted it. He said he would pass the CV along to his boss. A few days later the Swedish boss contacted me, said he loved my CV. He also said the marketing position was better-suited to women, so the job was mine to have. I asked him how much was the salary. He told me. It was much less than the British fellow had been paid. I told the boss this, and that I had far more experience than the fellow. He said the salary was less BECAUSE I was a woman. Of course, I didn’t accept the offer.”

Frankie’s revelations had caught me off guard. Western companies – and especially Western managers – present themselves as high-minded here in China, paragons of commercial virtue for the Chinese to emulate. Here, instead, anecdotally, it seemed Western managers – and by extension their companies – were falling back to the pre-1970s caveman thinking that launched the Women’s Liberation Movement in America and Europe.

Frankie also applied for a Quality Assurance position here in China with an American company. The company would fly her back to the States for training, then she would travel around China inspecting the production of Chinese facilities. They had no idea she was a woman, because her name to Americans looks like Germanized “Frank”. In the initial interview, done over the phone, the company was very excited about her qualifications. It was also the first time they realized “Frankie” was not a he but a she. In the follow-up interview they vacillated about the salary, quoting a rate that was far below what had been published for the role. She said to them on the phone, “But I know what the salary should be for this position.” She had done her homework and had talked with others who were doing the same job in China, all men. “Well,” they said, “you’re living in China, where it’s cheaper.”

Though it is questionable in the second instance of mis-matched expectations to what extent her being a woman had to do with the reduced salary offer, it does bring into question whether the company would have played the same shell game with a great, strapping German man with the same qualifications.

My favorite story of hers, though, is of the Chinese President of a State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) who was interested in having Frankie work for him as a manager. “Do you have a photo of yourself,” the President asked. Frankie sent one onto him. “Are you available on the weekends and at nights to work?” Frankie soon after chose not to pursue the opening, as it were.

One of the reasons China appeals to the imagination of so many Westerners is there is a sense through its history and through modern-day media that anything goes here. That is typically meant as a back-handed compliment to China’s quixotic way of social and economic development, and to its society. But it also applies to the behavior of some companies doing business here: the managers become Neanderthals and their China businesses become their caves, where they think it’s permissible to pull women around by their hair. Today’s Western working women in China, though, are far from the pliant, empty-headed bimbos managers would like to think they are. Many of them are tough, and tough-minded. Perhaps that’s the least desirable characteristic these men are looking for in their female staff, or in any of their employees, for that matter.

The Emperor is dead; long live the Emperor.

Bill Dodson
SUZHOU, China