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Breaking through the glass ceiling

By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-31 14:51

Many white-collar women join exercise clubs and visit them every day after work to stay fit in the hope it will bring them promotion at work. [CHINA FOTO PRESS]

BEIJING - They have become icons of modern China, encapsulating the struggle faced by millions of young women embarking on the world of work.

The dramas of Du Lala and Guo Haizao epitomize the challenges and temptations of life in a big, brash and bustling city in which dreams and reality can be polar opposites.

The best-selling novel Du Lala's Promotion, later turned into the film Go, Lala, Go, tells of the eponymous heroine's meteoric rise from being an ordinary office girl to becoming director of human resources at a Fortune 500 company.

It became a lesson in how society may be unfair but it is still possible for women to break through the glass ceiling in the macho corporate world using a combination of hard work and feminine wiles.

Equally popular was the riveting Chinese TV drama Dwelling Narrowness. In this, the heroine Guo Haizao becomes the young mistress of a government official in order to help her older sister and husband save up for a decent apartment in a city of ever-spiralling property prices.

Guo's fans have argued at length that in an increasingly materialistic, money-worshipping society, there is no shame in using marriage or relationships as a way of climbing out of economic hardship.

Catherine Song, a 24-year-old training manager at an international retail company in Wuhan, Hubei province, admitted that when her contemporaries were job-hunting after graduation, the inevitable frustrations tempted many to become a mistress to a wealthy and generous benefactor in the sure knowledge their youth would last only so long.

"However, when each of us settled and started our careers in various industries and companies, we realized that only by working hard and constantly learning would we be able to bring about career success despite all the unfairness," she said.

Song added that for people of the post-80s generation like her, happiness in life and at work were of the greatest importance. "You cannot live in an empty villa without a Mr Right and you cannot be a leader of hundreds of employees without a dear friend."

Zhao Peng, chief executive officer of Zhaopin.com, one of the largest human resources service providers in China, told China Business Weekly that young Chinese women were climbing the nation's corporate ladders. However, it was important to find the right balance between work and play, as Du Lala discovered.

A survey conducted by Zhaopin.com showed that 92.5 percent of respondents were willing to be career women. However, less than 30 percent of them said they wanted to become female entrepreneurs or CEOs.

It revealed that about 40 percent of respondents wished to be middle level company managers. In addition, 20 percent of them aimed to be experts in their sectors rather than taking on management roles.

Human resource experts said the findings reflected the fact that Chinese career women had become more mature and sensible in dealing with relations between home and work.

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The survey also showed that more than 40 percent of respondents said they worked overtime nearly every day. As many as 62.5 percent spent half their time at work, while 4.8 percent of respondents devoted 90 percent of their time awake to work.

Xue Xiaobei, a 31-year-old English teacher in Beijing, said: "Apart from the courses I teach in my school, I have to spend one third of my spare time in preparing the next day's lessons and I'm also a private tutor to six children.

"I never expect billions of yuan but I have to pay my 5,000 yuan monthly mortgage, raise my son and support my parents who live on the outskirts of the capital."

Zhaopin.com's Zhao said all the stress and difficulties that Chinese female employees faced was about balancing their lives and decision-making.

"You can choose whether to buy a small apartment or to rent one; you can opt for taking the subway or driving a car. You can send your children to a State-owned kindergarten or a private one," he said. "Options are always available and a good career woman should have the ability to make such decisions and compromise where necessary."

Wang Xi, a 30-year-old human resources manager at an IT company in Shanghai, said: "Du Lala's story actually reminds us that life for so-called white-collar elites is not only about salary rises, promotion and competition, but a gorgeous dress or a luxury facial mask."

Another survey by Zhaopin.com showed that 63.3 percent of female managers and 76.4 percent of male managers prefer to promote their male staff. It means that women have fewer opportunities to be promoted compared with their male colleagues.