Latest legal attempt to fight gender discrimination against women in China 

Amid the growing awareness of domestic violence, sexual harassment and suppression of #MeToo in China, the highest lawmaking body of the National People’s Congress are set to pass a new law to shield the rights of ladies and eliminate gender-based discrimination.

Before the week, the country’s legislature received the draft revision to the law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women which aims to safeguard women against discrimination and sexual harassment within the workplace.

The bill’s revision was submitted for its first reading to the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Monday, almost three decades after it had been first enacted.

State-run news agency Xinhua reported that under the new draft, employers are going to be prohibited from turning away female applicants due to their gestation or marital status. They are going to be prohibited from forcing a female job applicant to show her marital or pregnancy status.

Women who are pregnant or on motherly leave also will have their payment and benefits protected.

Original governments are going to be stipulating public venues create further women’s toilets also as provides many public facilities similar as maternity rooms and infant rooms.

The draft states that pestering or harassing women under the guise of being during a relationship, or after the end of a relationship is going to be prohibited.

The draft also attempts to clarify the duties of a hubby and wife within the nucleus family structure.

Still, wives will now have the right to ask the hubby to make financial compensation if the wife can prove she had taken on the utmost of the child-rearing, caring for the aged or assisting the husband in his work, If a marriage does dissolve.

Publicly sharing a women’s private personal information also will now be banned.

“ Female morality classes”, where women undergo brainwashing methods to control them and make them feel inferior to their better halves, will now even be banned under the revised law.

Lessons learned during these classes included “ do not fight back when beaten”, “ do not talk back when scolded” and “ promiscuous women get gangrene”.

Founder of the Inspection Squad for Workplace Gender Discrimination, Bai Zhi, said the organisation had come across multiple egregious examples of gender-based discrimination.

The Squad monitors job ads in Chinese workplaces and the year 2019, received 822 reports of gender-based discrimination in the workplace.

It also reported at least one hundred and fifty of these to labour authorities, according to a document Bai sent to the South China Morning Post.

Bai said even when the group reported cases of employers only hiring men, the companies did not consider the actions discriminatory.

“They are doing not change their geste they say it is because it is specialist work,” Bai told the Post.

Xinhua reported that the NPC is expecting to pass the revised draft bill soon.