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Women’s Development in China’s Legal Profession Under Gender Stereotypes

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Abstract

In recent years, more and more Chinese women have joined the legal profession and have made remarkable achievements in this field. Gender stereotypes, however, which involve a deep-rooted social concept, have seriously hindered Chinese women’s development in the legal profession and have had a profound and adverse impact on women’s career progression. Based on the statistical data in the public domain as well as the ethnographic data drawn from interviews with legal professionals and informal conversations with lawyers known to the principal author, this paper focuses on women in the Chinese legal profession, identifies the causes of women’s dilemmas in their career development as well as the impact of gender stereotyping on them within the legal profession in order to provide some insights on improving gender equality in China. According to the authors, the causes of gender stereotypes in China are diverse: Existing legal institutions promote and maintain such stereotyping practices; traditional gender concepts enter into and disseminated in people’s thoughts; the theory of biological determinism in the field of science misleads the general public; and the legal system constructs women’s status as workers and mothers. In view of this, it is necessary to achieve substantive equality in China’s legal profession by weakening men’s domination of the legal profession, improving the structure and ideology of relevant institutions and policies in offering women more incentives for career development, and also changing women’s understanding of and efforts against biased gender stereotypes. This will help break down China’s gender stereotypes, promote gender equality in the legal profession, and address the dilemma of women’s legal career development.

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Notes

  1. For example, to name a few, there is an underrepresentation of women in senior corporate positions. The Women on Boards Progress Report 2022 by MSCI shows 55.9% of female employees in the workplace who possessed a bachelor’s degree or above, which is much higher than male employees (33.6%), but the percentage of women on board of listing companies was only 14.8% [46]. Another problem is salary inequality between women and men for the same work [32].

  2. Legal profession refers to the bar in common law, but in China it may cover a wide range of populations such as judges, procurators, lawyers, law teachers and other legal affairs workers. In this article, the authors use this term in a broader sense; however, they also refer to the lawyers only in some context.

  3. It is said that women in the legal profession face the glass ceiling in career development, lack leadership in the profession, must adjust to the social culture of men’s domination in the management, and childbirth and child raising has seriously affected their promotion in the workplace [42].

  4. Research shows that there are gaps between men and women in terms of job recruitment, promotion and salary [50, 75]. But, the findings of our informal interviews with some of the first author’s friends (n = 5) who are directors of law firms in Beijing, Guangzhou and Xi’an, section chiefs of courts (n = 3) or procuratorates (n = 3) in Shaanxi regarding gender equality cannot completely support the statement of salary gap between male and female legal professionals: All interviewees expressed that there is no discriminatory practice in pay between men and women. To the lawyers, the total income of a lawyer regardless of gender mainly depends on the number of cases represented and the amount of the subject matter, but most lawyers interviewed prefer to hire a male rather than female paralegal; accordingly, the salary and other treatments might be slightly different. Moreover, there is no age restriction for lawyers to practice law, whether male or female, so long they are healthy and can go through annual inspections of the justice bureau. To the judges and procurators, the interviewees stated that there is no discrimination between men and women in terms of recruitment, job promotion and salary, since all these are regulated by the law, regulations and rules. According to them, China’s labor law imposes the retirement age at 60 for men and at 55 for women, with the exception that women who hold a division-head-level position or a Level-IV senior judge or procurator position can retire at 60 (of course these women judges or procurators may apply for retirement at 55, or they have to work before 60 years old). Furthermore, as a practice supported by law, female judges after 52 (as opposed to male judges after 56) will not be promoted to a division-head-level position or above. Given the strong personal relationship between the first author and the interviewees, our interview findings are regarded as reliable as it can mitigate the “presentational” effect that most scholars mention.

  5. Regarding the specific requirements, see Article 5 of the Lawyers Law of the People’s Republic of China (2017).

  6. Before 2018, there was no restriction on the major for the applicant to be admitted to the legal profession. After the reform in 2018, Chinese authorities imposed restrictions on the major for the qualifications to attend the national judicial examination: Applicants after graduation from a college in 2018 should major in law; they may be subject to various restrictive conditions if not majoring in law. See, for details, ibid., Article 8; Measures on Implementation of the Unified National Qualification Examination (2018) [No. 140, Order of the Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China]; and Questions and Answers on Relevant Policies Related to the Unified National Qualification Examination (2018).

  7. China has not imposed any restrictions on the number of employees in a corporate legal affairs department, but it recommends 7% of the total staff of the company [61].

  8. For example, there are a total of 1,133 partners in the Yingke Law Firm including 785 men and 348 women, and in Beijing Dacheng Law Firm, only one director of the six branches is women. The situation is similar in other big Chinese law firms. The data is calculated by authors based on information from the Law Firms’ websites at https://www.yingkelawyer.com/zytd/lawyer.html (accessed on 12 December 2023) and http://dacheng.com/cn/professionals?view=/bjdachenglaw/template/cn/teams-lawyers.ftl (accessed on 12 December 2023).

  9. See, e.g., Articles 6–10 of the Special Provisions on Labour Protection of Female Employees (2012) [Order of the State Council No. 619].

  10. Id., Article 5.

  11. Based on the 2009 employee-employer matching data of about 240,000 employees in six provinces, including Beijing, a study—which did not touch directly women’s rights—found that the benefits of Chinese trade unions to employees of state-owned enterprises were mainly in wage rates, and that employees in private, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and foreign-funded enterprises were on the working hours. As far as the working rights are concerned, the trade union only protects female members while the employment situation of non-member female employees deteriorated [35]. In addition, some of the policies on women’s rights protection are not implemented effectively, which required more policy advocacy and outreach [6].

  12. Amy Diehl et al.’s research proposed some possible solutions to reduce gender inequalities, such as increasing the transparency in decision-making, provision of remote and flexible work with autonomy, and implementation of equitable reward structures which recognize all types of contributions toward organizational goals [10]. These are also worthy of Chinese counterparts for consideration.

  13. See Articles 5-9bis of the Law on Parental Law (Japan) (2019), the Chinese version is available at https://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/children/work-family/dl/190410-01c.pdf (accessed on 12 December 2023).

  14. If a male employee chooses to take parental leave for 47 weeks, he will receive 100% of the pay during the leave, but if he chooses to take such leave for 58 weeks, he could receive 80% of the pay during the leave. All expenses are paid by the national social security fund and the employer. In terms of the allocation of maternity leave, at least 3 weeks should be taken before the birth, 10 weeks after the childbirth belongs to the mother and the father respectively, which cannot be transferred between them, while the remaining leave of 26 weeks (or 36 weeks) can be freely decided by the parents who would take the leave [38].

  15. Employees who become parents are entitled to 3 years of unpaid leave. This part of the leave can be taken by one parent alone or by both parents. Meanwhile, it is possible for employees in the capacity of the parent to apply for childcare-related allowance, which can be up to 1,800 euros per month [3].

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  1. School of Foreign Languages, and The Fellow of the Human Rights Research Center, Northwest University of Political Science and Law, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710063, P. R. China

    Xin Fu

  2. School of International Law, Northwest University of Political Science and Law, Xi’an, P. R. China

    Lina Zhang

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Fu, X., Zhang, L. Women’s Development in China’s Legal Profession Under Gender Stereotypes. Int J Semiot Law (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-024-10151-1

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