The offices of IT companies take pretty girls to motivate programmers and relieve stress

Shen Yu, who has a civil engineering degree, as a “motivator for programmers,” gives a massage to her colleague at Chainfin.com in Beijing. Photo: Giulia Marchi for the NY Times

What IT companies will do to attract the best developers to the staff! We have decided to offer money: large lifting and a stake. But a programmer is not alive with money alone! After all, I would like to communicate, female warmth and affection, which sometimes is so lacking in life. Yes, and a massage from a pretty girl also does not hurt.

But Western (Russian) companies cannot afford this - our mentality is set on absolute gender equality. Discrimination is unacceptable in any way. But in the East it is possible by mutual agreement of the sexes. Gender discrimination in Chinese IT companies is reported in a report by human rights organization Human Rights Watch.

One of the signs of discrimination is when the vacancies at work clearly indicate that only men are accepted for this position. Both state and private companies, including those from IT, can afford this. For example, here is an advertisement for a manager’s job vacancy from a well-known Baidu corporation.
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According to Human Rights Watch, this is especially often found in vacancies for highly paid and prestigious positions.

Human Rights Watch emphasizes that discrimination is present not only in private companies, but also in government organizations. For example, for one of the vacancies in the press service of the Ministry of Public Security (an analogue of our Ministry of Internal Affairs) they are looking for a person who "often has to work outside office hours, to work with a high load, only a man."

In other cases, if women are not directly excluded, then they have specific sexist demands: for example, they should be married women with children. This happens quite often. Obviously, many employers although reduce the risk that the hired employee will marry, become pregnant and go on maternity leave.

According to human rights defenders, all the examples described ads suggest that in China there is a traditional and discriminatory view of women as weaker people physically, psychologically and intellectually. It is assumed that they have the primary duty to take care of children - and therefore they cannot be as devoted to work as men.

In some cases, a discriminatory view of women is manifested in the fact that educational institutions like kindergartens and schools specifically invite men to work. They believe that "the absence of men in the field of child education forces children to adopt the women's view of the world and solve problems in accordance with the way women think and behave."

The worst case of discrimination was found in the ad, which the IT company Alibaba placed in its official Weibo account. This is a vacancy only for women in the position of so-called “goddesses” (goddesses).

The description says: “They are goddesses in the hearts of Alibaba employees, intelligent and competent at work, charming and tempting in life. They are independent, but not arrogant, sensitive, but not melodramatic. They want to be your colleagues. Do you want to be with them? ”

Similar announcements are found in Russia (thanks, raipc ).

The NY Times also writes about blatant cases of discrimination and sexual objectification, when the announcement directly indicates the minimum and maximum height of a woman, body type and weight. One ad states that women should have "normal features and good skin color." They should not have tattoos on the body, visible scars on the face, neck and hands and "incurable" formations on the skin.

In other cases, violations are manifested in the fact that IT companies in job advertisements purposely publish photos with pretty employees in the office in order to attract male programmers. Alibaba, Tencent and other companies have repeatedly emphasized in their advertisements that "beautiful girls" work in the offices.


Shen Yu listens to a stress programmer at Chainfin.com in Beijing. Photo: Giulia Marchi for the NY Times

The vacancy of “female motivators” for programmers seems to be a relatively rare phenomenon. The NY Times managed to find only seven companies with such vacancies. For example, Shen Yu (in the photo) earns about $ 950 a month. Her job duties include working at the counter, organizing events, ordering snacks and talking to programmers. Talking is especially important. Many programmers say that one-on-one sessions in a meeting room help to relieve tension and stress well.