The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating look at sexual harassment in China’s tech industry that is—rather shockingly—more blatant than the abuse women often face in Silicon Valley.
China has laws against sexual harassment and gender discrimination but they generally aren’t enforced. Some job ads state, flat out, that no women need apply. And the idea of men’s genetic superiority at tech jobs—as suggested by the now-fired Google engineer last week—is widespread.
In describing her personal experience to the Journal, entrepreneur Wang Yijie, co-founder of security startup Cloudfort Inc., said that investors regularly quiz her on whether her husband approves of her starting a business and how she balances work and home life. A few have told her explicitly that they don’t invest in companies founded by women.
There are some bright, promising spots. For instance, Jean Liu, president of ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing (and No. 36 on Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women International list last year) launched a women’s initiative to train future leaders at the company. Yet Didi was one of the companies with men-only job ads. It recently advertised two web engineering jobs and a customer-operations role with a stated preference for men, proving—as we well know—that it will take more than having women at the top to erase such an ingrained culture.