Why Not Me? Family Care Responsibilities and Gender in Job Search in Hong Kong

Background and Purpose: Family status is defined as the responsibility of a person for the care of an immediate family member.  With growing attention to family caregivers, family status discrimination in the workplace is recognized as a global social problem. “Motherhood penalty” is highly visible in the current scholarly discussion in the western contexts (Crittenden, 2001), but research on the consequences of having other types of family status, and on the mechanisms of discrimination in different social and cultural contexts remains limited (Townsend, 2002).

To bridge these gaps in literature, we conducted a study with employers in Hong Kong on their views and management practices of employees with different family status, in order to understand how family caregivers with varied care duties are perceived and treated in the labor market of Hong Kong, explore how the meaning of family care is constructed in the local society, and search for policy directions to achieve work-family balance and gender justice.

Methods: We adopted a mixed-methods design, which combined an exploratory survey using CVs with manipulated gender and family care duties yet equivalent otherwise (N=102), 20 qualitative in-depth interviews, and a focus group discussion (9 participants) to explore how employers in Hong Kong treated men and women taking care of young children or ageing parents differently in employee recruitment for various positions, and how structural discrimination and cultural contradictions in the processes were embedded in Hong Kong’s patriarchal and neo-liberalist social order. 

The survey sample consisted of employers in the four major industries in Hong Kong (i.e. Finance, Public Service, Retail, and IT), from both small-and-medium-sized enterprises (38.2%) and larger companies (61.8%), and who reviewed CVs for both entry-level (55.9%) and management-level (44.1%) jobs.  We also aimed for adequate variance in the backgrounds of participants in in-depth interviews and the focus group discussion.

Results: Multiple regression models revealed that compared with men and women without family care responsibilities, fathers and caregivers of ageing parents received favorable treatment in the job market of Hong Kong.  Mothers were evaluated as similarly competent, committed, and having potentials as other family caregivers, but still were not preferred in hiring decisions. 

We then built logistic regression models to understand the hiring decisions of employers.  When personal traits and efforts could predict the chance of employment of male family caregivers regardless of job particulars, low-income and dead-end positions were more likely to be offered to female family caregivers regardless of their personal traits.  But ironically, in our qualitative data, in the discourses of employers, the dilemmas that mothers encountered in the labor market were still attributed to their personal failures in planning, productivity, and responsibility.

Conclusions and Implications: The study uncovers important mechanisms of inequality and discrimination in the particular social and cultural contexts of Hong Kong, which will be valuable for future comparative analyses.  It also calls for both cultural and structural interventions, through social service and social policy, to build family friendly work environments and promote the rights of family caregivers.