TO be turned down for a job is always disappointing. But in China, where it is difficult for new university graduates to find jobs, it is doubly disheartening when employers tell female job applicants they would rather hire a man in any circumstances.
Such blatant discrimination is unlikely to be expressed openly in most societies but it is a common practice in China.
And there are complications. While the quality job market is competitive, there are professions in China where work conditions and endemic discrimination against women have resisted China's changing social and economic conditions.
Wang Yen graduated this year as a teacher from one of the best English-language teaching universities in China.
Since she completed her studies in June, she has been looking for a job. Like thousands of similar students, she must find work if she is to keep her modest roof over her head.
Under the terms of her study grant, she loses her Beijing hukou (residency card) if she is still unemployed three months after graduation, and if she loses her hukou, she must return to a limited future in her native Hunan Province.
