Is a good husband more important than a good job? This is a question from a survey of 7,311 female university students jointly conducted by Jinan Times newspaper and the job hunting website Sdrc.com.cn, both based in eastern Shandong Province. Of the respondents, 72.2 percent answered yes.

It does not, however, indicate that future wives want to cling to old family traditions of the wife running the house: over half the respondents believed that housework should be shared equally between husbands and wives. The reason behind the rush to marry is that an ideal job is much harder to find than a prince charming with a good job, or the capacity to land a good job. In this survey, the top two most valued virtues for future husbands are skills (77.7 percent) and income (14 percent).

Only 2.8 percent of respondents said female university graduates don't face gender discrimination in the labor market, while 52.8 percent said gender discrimination is a serious problem. Some students simply complained that many posts at job fairs are not open to female candidates, something that puts them at a clear disadvantage.

The idea of the importance of marriage over career seems to go to extremes for some university graduates in Dongguan, southern Guangdong Province. A story on Guangdong-based newspaper Information Times in October reported that many female university seniors there are paying more visits to matchmaking agencies than to job fairs, many of whom put forward clear requirements about the economic status of potential partners.

A new hope for female job-seekers in the labor market to reverse the trend could come from an incoming Employment Promotion Law, which stipulates that employers should not refuse to hire female workers, except for jobs in mines, lumber, installation and removal of scaffolding and other posts that are considered unsuitable for women.

On October 9, Zhang Xiaojian, Vice Minister of Labor and Social Security, said that once the new law takes effect in January, his department will press ahead with its implementation and punish violators. He added that the incoming law also allows employees to resort to labor arbitration or even sue their employers for job discrimination.

Poorly implemented laws

The Employment Promotion Law, which intends to eliminate discrimination against job applicants on the grounds of sex, age, religion, race or physical disability, is not China's first law with specific clauses on eliminating gender discrimination in the labor market.

In 1992, China passed and put into effect the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women. During its amendment in 2005, a provision was added stipulating that no employer should refuse to hire women on the ground of sex except for special types of work or posts unsuitable to women.

However, the law has been poorly implemented. Li Ying, a lawyer working for a nongovernmental organization providing free legal service to poor women, told Beijing Review that when representing her clients in court, she often has to persuade judges to agree with her citation of the law. These judges sometimes did not know the law existed. Li said such a situation could be turned around since most provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions have adopted and released their implementation methods on the revised law over the previous year.

The Labor Law, which went into effect in 1995, also carries the provision: "Females shall enjoy equal rights as males in employment. It shall not be allowed, in the recruitment of staff and workers, to use sex as a pretext for excluding females from employment or to raise recruitment standards for females, except for the types of work or posts that are not suitable for females as stipulated by the State."

However, companies' reluctance to bear the extra costs caused by female employees' maternity leaves and post-maternal care has led to rampant violations of gender discrimination clauses. These cost-conscious companies have even coined the term "gender losses" to describe the burden of hiring female employees.

A story in Workers' Daily in October reported two cases of female employees filing complaints with the government labor administration department for arbitration in Beijing. One was a 27-year-old expectant mother, surnamed Duan, who had been a star alcohol saleswoman at her company. Her company fired her in her seventh month of pregnancy, without giving good reason or a penny of compensation. Another case concerned three expectant mothers who worked as cell phone sales clerks in a shopping mall. When their bellies began to show considerable signs of pregnancy, they were given the new task of advising customers at different boutiques, which required them to walk around the shopping mall all the time. They would either do this, or had to quit, the company told them. Knowing they couldn't fulfill their new missions, the company ended its labor contracts with the three women.

At a conference on the welfare of women and children in May, Governor of Guangdong Province Huang Huahua admitted that gender discrimination in hiring still exists to different extents in Guangdong. Huang said one company chief told him that hiring women is not cost-effective because women were not as strong and tough as men and took pregnancy and maternity leaves. Huang said he rebutted the man a bit emotionally, "If hiring women is so troublesome, who do you think gave birth to you?"

Differing from the Labor Law and the Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women, the forthcoming Employment Promotion Law has listed all the posts that are unsuitable for women. This regulation has left employers no freedom in randomly defining their vacancies as suitable for women or not.

Unspoken discrimination

Liu Qian, a human resources consultant at Sdrc.com.cn, told Jinan Times that more and more employers that don't want to hire women have made their discrimination unspoken. This means that they won't say they need males in the CV collection process, but they simply eliminate all female candidates during the recruiting process using other excuses. Sometimes this behavior is difficult to spot or punish.

Liu also said that gender discrimination in general has diminished in recent years and to relieve the job-hunting pains, female graduates should try harder and be more flexible without thinking about gender discrimination all the time.

Female university graduates definitely need to be tough if they really want a good job, according to Lu Guofu, head of the career center at Guizhou Normal University. At an online forum in November he told female students, "It doesn't matter if you fail once, twice or a third time. Just like inventor Thomas Edison at work-he didn't fail 10,000 times, he only found 10,000 ways that wouldn't work."

Features of the Law On the Protection of Rights And Interests of Women (Amended in August 2005) This is the first law to specify equality between men and women as a basic state policy. The law has emphasized the responsibility of governments at all levels in safeguarding women's rights and interests. Article 6 states, "The people's governments at and above the county level shall be the institutions responsible for the work of women and children. They shall organize, coordinate, guide and urge the relevant departments to conduct well the protection of the rights and interests of women." The role of women's federations in guaranteeing women's rights and interests has been strengthened. Article 10 mandates, "When any law, rule, regulation or public policy relating to the important rights and interests of women is formulated, the opinions of the women's federations shall be taken into account." New measures of guaranteeing women's political rights have been written into the law. The law has provisions on raising the proportion of women deputies to the National People's Congress and local people's congresses at various levels and recommending and promoting women cadres by state organs, public organizations, enterprises or institutions. The law has introduced provisions on forbidding gender discrimination in education. Article 16 states, "When a school recruits students, it shall not, except for some particular specialties, refuse to recruit female students or raise the standards on the recruitment of female students because of gender." The law has clauses forbidding gender discrimination in employment and safeguarding women's social security. "With the exception of the special types of work or posts unsuitable to women, no unit may, in employing staff and workers, refuse to employ women because of sex or raise the employment standards for women," states Article 23. The law also says that female employees are entitled to special labor protection during menstrual period, pregnancy, obstetrical period and nursing period. The law has highlighted the protection of property rights of rural women. "Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in the contracted management of rural land, distribution of proceeds of collective economic organizations, use of land requisition and occupation compensations and use of house sites. No organization or individual may trespass upon a woman's rights and interests in the rural collective economic organization on the grounds that she hasn't married, is married, is divorced or has been widowed." The law emphasizes the protection of women's right of person. One article in the law prohibits the act of organizing, forcing or inducing women to engage in obscene performances. Article 40 says, "Sexual harassment against women is banned. The victims shall be entitled to complain to the entity or the relevant organs." This is the first time that rules against sexual harassment have been written into Chinese law. The law has clauses clearly forbidding domestic violence, identifying organizations that bear the major responsibility in preventing and stopping domestic violence. "The public security, civil affairs, judicial administrative departments, the urban and rural grassroots self-governing organizations, and social organization shall, according to their respective functions, prevent and stop family violence and help women victims." The law also stipulates that the local legal aid institution or the people's court has the responsibility to provide women in actual financial difficulties with legal aid or judicial aid.