Chinese university fires man who said women staff use children to avoid work and should give sex and salaries to male colleagues
- Ningbo University in China fired a male staffer for sexist comments on social media claiming women avoided work using children as an excuse
- He claimed that male staff had to do their jobs for them, before saying they should provide sex and their salaries to male colleagues
A Chinese university has sacked a male employee for comments on social media that women employees are lazy and use childcare and family responsibilities as an excuse to avoid doing work.
The School of Education at Ningbo University in Zhejiang province, eastern China, announced it had terminated the employment of the man, surnamed Li, after his “inappropriate comments” had caused “seriously vicious damage”, in a statement published on Weibo yesterday.
“Women tend to make trouble. They like to use the so-called excuse of taking care of family and children. That’s why employers don’t want to hire women,” Li said in his opening comment using WeChat’s Moments function.
“The core of the issue is that you shouldn’t make male colleagues take on extra work because you need to look after your family or your child. You shouldn’t take it for granted. You shouldn’t feel at ease and justified. You shouldn’t be so shameless that you even require male colleagues to do your work for you.
“I want to ask those women, ‘Why don’t you give your salaries to male colleagues?’; ‘Why don’t you have sex with male colleagues?’, and ‘Why don’t you let your child call male colleagues ‘dad’?’”
Li made the comments several days prior to his firing and they quickly spread on mainland Chinese social media. A user’s post on WeChat Moments can only be seen by his WeChat contacts, but any of these people can take screenshots of the post.
Li later apologised on WeChat for the comments, claiming he made the post because he was “depressed” at the time.
The university said on Sunday when the comments first came to its attention that Li had been suspended pending an investigation. He was fired the next day.
The story generated widespread criticism of Li and the attitudes he expressed towards women.
Deputy dean in China stripped of degree for stealing the work of 10 academics
“This guy’s world values have made me feel bitterly disappointed,” wrote one person on Weibo.
“I suggest he goes to a place without any women to build an empire to prove himself,” another person said.
In May last year, mainland internet giant NetEase fired a human resources manager for a sexist recruitment ad offering to help male job applicants drug and date rape their female colleagues. He posted the ad on WeChat along with a picture of his co-workers, most of whom were women and easily identifiable in the photo, the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald reported.
“Which one of my female colleagues do you like? Pass me your CV and I will help you woo her,” the former manager said in the post.
“Give me your resume. I can even help you by putting date rape drugs in her drinks.”
