Feminist thinking became more prominent since the 1960s, focuses on the promotion of women's rights and interests. After many years ago, the rights of diverse women and girls become empowered, however, Discrimination against women in the society was still common. According to a Survey Findings from Women’s Commission, discuss the Perception of the society towards women’s functionalism at society and found out that Women still commonly stereotyped as family carers and Discrimination against women in the workplace was still common.
First and foremost, the structure of paid employment is the one reason cause Hong Kong women face gender discrimination in the workplace. Women in the labor market are excluded from certain types of work, their employment and promotion opportunities limited by the glass ceiling. Because of the gender stereotype, the society has given a gender role to guide people in enacting what is considered to be feminine and masculine behavior, for example, Masculine are generally expected to be strong, independent and active. In contrast, women are generally expected to be weak, dependent and emotional. This gender role will affect the society have a Gender segregation issue, in occupations, Horizontal segregation affects men and women do different jobs, assume that teacher, nurses are women and police or doctor are men. According to a news mentioned that the Hong Kong’s justice minister Teresa Cheng said gender bias remained a problem in the local legal profession, because society has a bias on women ability, them assume that woman has a bad judgment than men because women are generally expected to be sensitive, unable to judge cases rationally, women lawyers were sometimes spurned by potential clients and partners.
Also, women are disproportionately employed in lower-paying, lower-status occupations. Since the 1980s, The school enrolment rate for girls, in general, has been higher than that for boys, however, according to Bloomberg reported that Hong Kong's gender pay gap widened to 22.2 percent in 2017 from 19.1 percent a decade ago. Women are treated fairly in Hong Kong at educational levels but in, woman have the same education level with men, but less opportunity to be hired into manager-level jobs and increase pays. The main reason why woman ability not accepted is that When interviewers encounter female job seekers, they will use their stereotypes to pre-empt the female job seekers, rather than actually examining them. Most employers believe that female job seeker may be more focused on family rather than career development, which will result in less responsibility and motivation in their work than male job seekers. Besides, The law stipulates that employers need to provide paid maternity leave and breastfeeding leave for female employees which make company inclined to hire men who do not need to take these fakes. With this reason, most company will likely to recruit male than females and occurs more unequal treatment to woman applicants.
Finally, With the advent of MeToo, the Time's up campaign, sexual harassment in the workplace has become a global issue. Sexual harassment is defined as unwanted behavior of a sexual nature which involved violates the dignity and create an uncomfortable work environment. According to research indicates that victims of sexual harassment experience many negative psychological outcomes, including stress, depression and decreased life satisfaction. A survey conducted by the EOC in Hong Kong found that in 2016, 9% of the respondents indicated that they had been discriminated against or harassed in the past year. Half of the incidents occurred during work or job hunting, and the number has an upward trend. However, most women took no action to express their strong discontent. Most of the women afraid to report the harassment behaviors to the company because they worried about the negative consequences and scary to lose the job.
According to a new in this March, Two former fitness company receptionists were suspected of being sexually harassed by the male manager at the same store in May last year, they complain to the company but the company responded two receptionists made nuisances to employees and customers and affected the company's internal operations. Therefore, in the end, the company was decided to dismiss the two. Similar cases are common in Hong Kong workplace, the attitude of the company make Hong Kong women more insecure in the workplace, and there is no way to complain about sexual harassment, the main reason why most of the women do no took action to express their strong discontent after got a sexual harassment experience.