As graduation season comes to a close, the yes123 online job bank at the end of last month surveyed 1,260 college graduates to gauge their experiences as they seek jobs, often for the first time. The results were shocking. It turns out that many graduates’ welcome into working life is a litany of harassment, starting at the hands of interviewers.
In the survey, 30.2 percent of respondents said they had been sexually harassed by an interviewer, either verbally or physically. It is not like they have had years to encounter a few “bad apples” — most of these jobseekers have only just started interviewing this year.
That is just the start of a lewd laundry list. Another 31.8 percent of respondents said they were asked if they had any “unmentionable diseases” or “experienced pain during their periods,” 27.3 percent said interviewers made inappropriate jokes, 25.2 percent said they were asked about their sexual orientation and 23.9 percent said they were asked about their measurements, height or weight.
As for physical intrusions, 21.8 percent said that interviewers had put their hands on their shoulders, 20.5 percent said interviewers had touched or tried to hold their hands, 18.4 percent said that interviewers caressed their backs and 9.4 percent said interviewers groped their buttocks.
By far the most common was invasive questioning, with 87.7 percent saying they were asked private questions, including 60.3 percent who were asked about their relationship status.
Despite the figures, to many, these results are not surprising. If this batch of graduates is facing such pervasive harassment, imagine the countless more before them who experienced all this and worse, setting dismal expectations as they began their foray into adulthood. The figures help paint a picture of the kind of normalized harassment only now seeing the light of day, helping to elucidate why #MeToo is necessary and why it took so long to gain ground.
Job interviews also provide a distilled case study of the power dynamics at play in so many harassment cases. The setup is classic: Someone with power and authority (the interviewer) has something (a job) that another with less authority (the interviewee) wants. Is the interviewee going to make a fuss when the interviewer brushes their knee or asks about their plans for marriage? Or are they more likely to shake it off as something they will just have to put up with to pay the rent and put food on the table? It seems a small indignity to bear for the benefits, but as these tableaus play out en masse, it creates hostile environments that often escalate into something worse.
As the government heightens incentives for people — particularly women — to return to the workforce, it is clear that throwing money at the problem is not enough. Overt harassment aside, these data also expose a less sinister, but more pervasive disregard for any semblance of work-life balance. When employers ask about a woman’s plan for marriage (and it is nearly always a woman), they are enforcing a false dichotomy between having a career and having a family, and forcing her to choose, even straight out of college. How could any young woman imagine having a healthy personal life when she is repeatedly told it would harm her career?
The implication behind employers’ probing questions is that any pursuit outside of work is an unacceptable distraction, justifying the unsustainable working hours and conditions that plague workplaces in Taiwan, and poison well-being along with productivity.
It might only be one survey, but its jarring figures add another irrefutable piece of evidence to what the champions of the #MeToo and labor movements have been saying all along.
Three in 10 interviewing graduates facing sexual harassment is no aberration — it is symptomatic of a rot that needs to be cut out at its source.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS