Man grabs woman’s wrists, ankles as she tries to repel Paris hotel room advances. Pressure mounts for tougher legal sanctions against sexual harassment at work, school in China. — SCMP
Growing public awareness about sexual harassment at work in China has led to the emergence of fresh details in a case involving a man who was fired for asking a female colleague for a kiss on a business trip to France.
The man was fired for his behaviour by a Shanghai company after he tried to justify his actions by claiming he made the approach because “Paris is the capital of romance”.
New details about the 2016 case were revealed by the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions on its official social media account on Jan 18. The federation also took the opportunity to spell out what constitutes “sexual harassment”.
The man, surnamed Wu, grabbed a female colleague’s wrists and ankles in a hotel room after she rejected his advances.
After returning to Shanghai, he was dismissed by the company for violating the codes of conduct specified in the employee handbook.
Two months later, Wu applied for labour arbitration and demanded compensation of 620,000 yuan (RM413,004 or US$87,000). That bid failed, as did a later attempt to sue the company.
Online observers have described the man as “shameless”.
“If the romantic atmosphere of France influenced his behaviour so much, I wonder why the traditional Chinese virtue of respecting others had not affected him at all,” said one online observer.
The Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions resurrected the old case to highlight definitions of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Chinese law did not explicitly define sexual harassment until the Civil Code took effect in January 2021.
The law specifies that those who suffer from sexual harassment through spoken language, written text, images, physical behaviour and other means can bring a civil claim against the offender, and companies and schools should take reasonable measures to prevent sexual harassment from happening.
A new legislative amendment of the Women’s Protection Law, which took effect in 2023, also addressed the definition of sexual harassment and the duty of employers to protect their staff.
Professor Jiang Yue, who specialises in women studies in Xiamen University’s School of Law, told the mainland media outlet Hongxing News that the law change represented progress in tackling the problem.
However, the current laws only specified possible forms of sexual harassment without defining their content.
Jiang, who carried out a statistical analysis on 147 civil lawsuits involving sexual harassment in the workplace, said fewer than 30% ended with a win for the plaintiff due to lack of evidence.
There has been a growing push on mainland social media against sexual harassment at work or in schools.
Women in China started to break the silence as the #MeToo, or #WoYeShi in Mandarin, campaign swept across the globe in 2017.
In a recent case, a group of female standup comedians issued a joint declaration against sexual harassment last December, after a male comedian, Eike, was exposed to have taken photos of a female comedian wearing shorts and making misogynist comments in a group chat.
Associate professor at Peking University Psychological Health and Counselling Centre, Xu Kaiwen, said #MeToo campaigns help reduce the sense of shame victims usually feel, and increase the social awareness about the issue. – South China Morning Post
