2018年CRI Employers urged to be flexible towards female workers

A forum 1 that focuses on how to promote leadership for women was recently being held in Beijing, ahead of International Women's Day.

Some accomplished 2 female professionals at the event have said that employers should adopt flexible workplace policies.

The policies include a certain level of flexibility 3 in tracking employees' daily attendance.

CRI's Shen Ting has more.

Julie Broussard is the Country Program Manager of UN Women China, a co-sponsor of the event, titled "She Leads, She Empowers."

Broussard says women in the workplace are essential, especially after they gave birth. She talks about the need for the promotion 4 of female leadership.

"I think there's a lot of value in women contributing in the workplace and having participated in work life in a way that gets them a sense of fulfillment. I think obviously whatever they feel, they need to become re-familiar with the field. They need to see what are the latest trends and developments in that field. I would advise that women get help when revising their resume and maybe get a little bit of practice on doing job interviews."

Working women are confronted with big hurdles 5 on the corporate 6 scene.

A survey, seeking opinions from over 500 people, shows around 40 percent of people think that kids and family are usually the main factors that slow the pace of women on their career paths.

The survey was conducted on Wechat by another sponsor of the event, China Plus, with China Radio International.

Hung Huang is a famous author, blogger, media figure and publisher in China. She was invited to the forum.

In her opinion, the corporate world doesn't have a structure favorable for women to have children.

"The white-collar job system was traditionally only designed for men, rather than women. I feel that we need to urge the management to give female workers more flexibility in their daily attendance record. For instance, an employee of my studio has recently got pregnant. My studio is not rigid 7 in tracking employees' attendance and they do not necessarily work in the office everyday. We've discovered she's now able to complete all her tasks on time following her pregnancy 8. However before she got pregnant, she was often complained about for causing delays. So I believe if the workplace gives female employees such flexibility, they would be encouraged to work better."

Virginia Tan is the co-founder and President of Lean In China.

She is optimistic that employers will choose to become more flexible. Her optimism is based on her findings that there are two trends which she thinks help women on their career path. One is increasing digitalization. She explains.

"Because I think these two trends are actually changing the way the future workforce 9 is going to operate and the way that even large companies actually have to move towards. You know, another finding from the White Paper is about the impact of women in the workplace in this digital age; where it talks about how things like remote working are enabled by digital tools which can actually help women balance ( their work and life demands) — not only does this apply to women alone but also to men who can also balance their demands in and outside of their workplaces. So you can manage teams even when you are not actually in the office."

Roughly 70 percent of Chinese women have joined the workforce.

According to a research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor 10 Statistics in 2017, China's total labor force and participation 11 rate for women both rank first across the globe. China's labor force participation rate has been sitting at around 76 percent, comparing to 65 percent in the U.S. and 58 percent in Japan. But the figure is actually going down.

According to Virginia Tan, by 2025, seventy-five percent of China's workforce will be millennials. Virginia Tan believes this is the second trend that will perhaps change the rules of work.

"The second thing is the rise of millennials. You know, post-90s, those born after 1990 and 1995; they are not going to accept the same rules that were made for work. They are already exerting that pressure. They are demanding things like flexibility. A lot of them, even if you pay them money, actually they don't want to be stuck in the office all day long. They want to be contingent 12, they want to be free and they want to be freelancers 13. They want to have their own companies. Actually I think this helps change the rules of work, and I think this helps actually women."

All other issues that have been discussed at the forum include major challenges for women at work, suggestions to post-90s women and how to deal with the second kid issue.

For CRI, I'm Shen Ting.