Businesses keeping China’s one-child policy alive
Beijing (AsiaNews) - Reports have surfaced that a company in north-eastern China is asking its female staff to apply with management a year advance that they plan to have children on the grounds that maternity leave could leave them short-staffed. Nothing is known as to whether the company can refuse the application.
Although China’s government has eased its one-child policy, more and more reports are indicating that would-be mothers are still discriminated, with the authorities turning a blind eye to the abuse. As the main target in this latest restriction on the family, women could be fired or sued.
The case involves a business in Changchun city, Jilin Province, whose female employees are now required to tell bosses a year in advance that they plan on having a baby, this according to the state-owned New Culture newspaper.
Thousands of social media users have weighed in with their thoughts on the Sina Weibo microblogging site.
One woman said there are "no benefits" to the company's plan, and that it "only continues to hamper female employment".
That's a view shared by some men, with one writing, "We do not want to force employers to become more reluctant to hire female employees."
Plenty of other users think the measure is necessary, describing it as a "practical" move. "I have to say, since the second child policy, our unit now has more than a dozen pregnant women," wrote a female user. "Limitations would be good."
According to the company's Human Resources director, China's new two-child policy has left them "helpless" in the face of a baby boom.
"Some employees said that they wanted to take advantage this policy and have another child," Ms Zheng said. "We have to consider the overall interests of the enterprise."
For the company's boss, hiring staff to cover maternity leave has proved "impossible" because of the economic downturn, leaving colleagues overstretched.
China adopted a one-child policy in 1979 to boost economic development. Subsequently, the plan was eased for ethnic minorities to allow them to have two children, and for farmers, who could have a second child if the first was a girl.
However, the policy was often implemented with violence, with exorbitant fines imposed against violators and even forced sterilisation and near-term abortions.
In 2013 and 2014, the government “loosened” its policy to let some couples (those in which at least one spouse was an only child) have a second child, expecting 20 million new births in 2014. In fact, only 16.9 million babies were born. By May of this year, only 1.45 million couples – out of 11 million eligible ones – had applied to have a second child.
This imbalance, experts say, is the result of decades of anti-natalist public policies, higher costs of living and the difficulty of finding decent jobs to support a large family.
As a result, the mainland birth rate now stands at 1.18 children per couple, significantly lower than the global average of 2.5 children.
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