When Professor Hsiu-hua Shen of National Tsing Hua University in Taipei, Taiwan, went to Beijing to conduct research on gender discrimination issues, she started hearing stories from friends looking for jobs. The women told her that they often weren’t asked to come in for interviews, or if they were, the topic would drift to their current and future children. Over and over, they encountered the assumption that they would be having children, which would distract them from the job. Companies, it turned out, were reluctant to hire—or even interview—female candidates, because of this gender discrimination.
