Discrimination due to longer maternity leave needs addressing

In recent months, more than 20 provincial-level administrations have introduced measures to encourage couples to have children, and better implement the three-child policy, mostly by further extending maternity leave for women and offering parental leave.

While many have welcomed these measures, some have expressed concern that women may now face greater pressures finding a job or risk losing them. Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed in 2021 by an online job-seeking platform on the status of Chinese women at the workplace said they had been asked about their marital and family planning status while looking for jobs.

Extending maternity leave will also increase the labor cost for employers. Social security agencies provide childbirth allowance to employers who use it to pay women who are on maternity leave, but if this allowance is less than the employers' standard wage, then the employers will have to pay the balance.

Also, when female workers take extended maternity leave, employers may have to pay them as well as those who are hired to fill in for them, further increasing labor costs and the possibility of discrimination against women at the time of hiring.

Therefore, while extended maternity leave might help implement the three-child policy, it could also increase difficulties for women at the time of hiring and promotion. Implementing the policy is not going to be easy until gender discrimination in the workplace is addressed. At the legislative level, the authorities should take more measures to combat gender discrimination so that employers dare not or cannot discriminate against women.

The revised draft of the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests that was recently submitted to the top legislature makes it clear that employers shall not recruit men alone or give preference to men or ask women about their marriage or family planning status and then make that the basis on which to hire or not hire them.

Legislation can help curb gender discrimination but it is not enough. Corresponding supervision and law enforcement systems should be set up to fight increasing employment biases in the three-child era. Trade unions at all levels and women's federations should play an important supervisory role and gender discrimination should be a criterion on which to assess officials' performances. At the same time, targeted tax cuts or incentives and subsidies should be introduced for employers so that their increased labor costs can be shared by the State.