Why Male Leaders Cannot Have a Female Secretary?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, July 21, 2003

Why Male Leaders Cannot Have a Female Secretary?

Sichuan Province in southwest China has recently formulated a new regulation forbidding male leaders to employ female secretaries, which has sparked heated discussions in various newspapers.

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Sichuan Province in southwest China has recently formulated a new regulation forbidding male leaders to employ female secretaries, which has sparked heated discussions in various newspapers.

An article in Nanfang Metropolitan Daily says the new regulation has significant meaning and can be taken as a reference by other local governments. The author of the article believes there are a few disadvantages of male leaders and female secretaries working together.

In today's China, quite a few corruption cases are blamed to have been connected with female secretaries who've won the favour of their bosses so as to lure them into satisfying their greedy demands by mishandling public funds.

Moreover, if male boss and female secretary are always invariably together, it will have a detrimental effect on the leader's authority and image. Also, It can easily result in malicious gossip from the staff.

The author notes men usually desire to display their power in front of young and beautiful ladies. When their secretary makes a request, the boss seldom says "no". Because he wants to impress the woman the man will show off his power by fulfilling her request. So the author concludes that the female secretary can lead the male boss astray by using her sexuality and his ego as the weapons.

However, an article published on the Xinhua net holds the new regulation in scorn. The author sharply pointed out that male leaders, though prohibited from employing female secretaries, can still freely contact other female subordinates. The author believes that men in a position of power should first modify their behaviour and assert who is boss by making it clear nobody will have leverage over him, not even the secretary or women at the work place.

Furthermore, the new regulation reflects an obsolete concept of male superiority prevalent in China and this will add fuel to the fire to the argument of gender discrimination in obtaining employment.

If the regulation gets widely promoted, it will only accentuate the out dated mentality where trust and honour are no longer evident and bias, inequality and distrust are common place. More practically, many females may lose jobs just because of their sex and this will cause instability to the whole society. (CRI News)

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