“You know, there are ‘hidden rules’”: Chinese female journalists’ gendered experiences in different work settings

ABSTRACT

This study explores the gendered experiences of 17 Chinese female journalists across different working environments (i.e., party news outlets, commercial news organisations, and the freelance market). It found that female journalists employed by news organisations suffered from and were variously implicated in workplace sexual harassment and assault, a lack of professional autonomy in regard to women’s issues, and institutional discrimination due to pregnancy and motherhood. Freelance female journalists, by comparison, while largely escaping the negative impact of gendered workplaces, face other forms of sexual harassment and sexism due to precarious working conditions (e.g., gendered earning uncertainty, a lack of institutional and social security, and harassment from male sources and readers which is often sexual in nature). Here, gender and unstable working arrangements interact. Providing first-hand accounts of these issues, these interviews allow us to understand how Chinese female journalists’ gendered experiences are shaped by the environments in which they work. This article thus argues that such gender issues should not be viewed in isolation, but rather analysed in relation to the nature and structural environments of female journalists’ specific work units.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese female journalists
• gendered newsroom
• gendered precarity
• sexism
• sexual violence

Introduction

Despite a significant increase in the proportion of female journalists worldwide, sexism and sexual violence in newsrooms is still pervasive. Research (RSF 2021) conducted in 12 different countries across all the continents, shows that sexual violence (e.g., sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape threats, and rape) against female journalists is primarily perpetrated by their superiors (51% of perpetrators), while 35% of the perpetrators are female journalists’ own respondents. Outside of newsrooms, freelance female journalists are also vulnerable to sexual harassment and sexism, and the more precarious their careers are, the less likely they are to be able to defend themselves against gender discrimination and violence (Steven Potter 2019; RSF 2021).

Looking at China specifically, female journalists in China also lack a supportive and respectful working environment. Huang Xueqin’s (Xueqin Huang 2018) report shows that out of the 416 Chinese female journalists surveyed, 83.7% said they had experienced sexual harassment of varying degrees and forms at work, with 40.9% of the perpetrators being their male superiors. A more recent survey (Yang Chen and Qiuying Zhang 2021) has also highlighted that of the 1,500 Chinese female journalists surveyed, 51.6% admitted that their promotion options and opportunities were limited, with 32.5% believing that their male colleagues have greater access to promotions and other opportunities. This is reflected in the fact that China’s highly gendered journalism work environment is increasingly driving female journalists out of the profession, with many of them leaving their jobs due to their refusal to accept sexism and sexual violence at work (Jingyi Guo and Kecheng Fang 2022).

However, while gender issues in journalism are prevalent worldwide, only a few scholars (e.g., Dana M Britton 2000; Kirsten Dellinger 2004) have hitherto emphasised that both work arrangements and employment status are important factors when considering gender issues in the workplace. Lindsey Joyce Chamberlain, Martha Crowley, Daniel Tope and Randy Hodson (2008) contend that while patriarchy and gender socialisation provide the cultural basis for understanding sexual harassment and victim responses, exploring the organisational contexts can help uncover whether and how sexual harassment occurs in particular types of workplaces. By doing so, the more gender-oppressive workplaces can be identified and used as an example for the need to promote gender equality (Britton 2000), while the culturally and organisationally unique (and often invisible or hidden-in-plain sight) ways in which gendered harassment occurs can be more deeply understood and therefore hopefully addressed in due course. This study thus sought to address the following questions:

RQ1:

How do different working environments (i.e., party news outlets, commercial news organisations, and the freelance market) impact female journalists’ gendered experiences in China?

RQ2:

Why do different working environments result in different gendered experiences for female journalists?

Based on the first-hand accounts of 17 female journalists, this study’s findings suggest that the gendered experiences of Chinese female journalists manifest themselves differently in different working environments. This means that women’s gender issues cannot be viewed in isolation from the specific working environment in which they are experienced. This study thus examines the impact of a complex media ecosystem on female journalists’ gendered experiences, thereby highlighting key areas of future research.

Literature review

Differing manifestations of “gendered” organisations within journalism

A number of studies (see, for example, Lindsey E Blumell and Dinfin Mulupi 2021; Charles Wharton Kaye-Essien and Ismail Mai 2020; Jad P Melki and Sarah E Mallat 2016; Haiyan Wang 2016) have drawn attention to the fact that female journalists constantly face gendered obstacles and challenges in male-dominated newsrooms, including a lack of hiring and promotion opportunities, the glass ceiling, lack of decision-making and policy-setting authority, unfair task distribution, unequal pay, the “motherhood penalty,” sexual harassment, and the like. As a consequence of this, workplace sexual harassment often strips female journalists of their self-confidence and professional value, and in severe cases, may even cause them to suffer from depression and other mental illnesses (Louise North 2016a). Likewise, institutional discrimination against female journalists due to pregnancy and motherhood creates difficult working conditions for female journalists, making it more difficult for them to attain career advancements and achieve a work-family balance (Kaye-Essien and Mai 2020; Melki and Mallat 2016). Moreover, on a systemic level, female journalists being kept out of decision-making and policy-setting positions also prevents them from playing a role in combating such sexism and sexual harassment in the first place, thereby preventing them from pushing for gender equality and empowering other women (Melki and Mallat 2016).

Joan Acker (1990) points out that work organisations are by no means gender-neutral and gender-absent, but rather “gendered,” which means that “advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine” (p. 146). The “gendered” nature of a work organisation is thus an important contributor to social, economic, and gender inequality (Joan Acker 1998).

However, it is important to acknowledge that work organisations are not a homogeneous whole, but rather vary and are shaped by a number of complex factors, such as occupations, labour markets, and organisational cultures change (Mats Alvesson and Yvonne Due Billing 2009). Various scholars (e.g., John J Beggs 1995; Claudio Lucifora and Daria Vigani 2016) have also demonstrated that exploring the different power and gender relations inherent in different work organisations and institutional environments plays an important role in understanding how gender discrimination is maintained, weakened, or reinforced in the labour market. This is highlighted by Dellinger (2004), who noted the significant impact workplace environments (such as specific cultural norms and organisational ideologies) have on gender expression when comparing the varying masculinities exhibited by men working as accountants in different organisational settings in New York City.

In a Chinese context, Guo and Fang (2022) have similarly pointed to the different manifestations of gender discrimination across different news environments. For instance, due to the “long-term rigidity of the management system” (11) in some local party media outlets in China, the female workforce is liable to suffer severe gender discrimination, such as insufficient employment opportunities when applying to these bureaucratic institutions (Guo and Fang 2022). Nonetheless, the main focus of their study was the motives behind the career choices of female journalism graduates. Considering this, this study aims to illustrate the connection between the different forms of gendered experiences of Chinese female journalists and their respective working environments, which remains a rare topic of research in the Chinese context.

The gendered experiences of freelance journalists

It is also important to not overlook the fact that one work environment for female journalists is also the free market. Due to the gendered nature of news organisations, many female journalists have left or are leaving newsrooms to join the freelance market with the aim of liberating themselves from the sexism and gender-based labour oppression that prevails in newsrooms (Dunja Antunovic, Jenna Grzeslo and Anne Hoag 2019; Guo and Fang 2022). However, the freelance market, with its precarious employment landscape, also results in increased job precarity (Cristian-Ramón Marín-Sanchiz, Miguel Carvajal and José-Luis González-Esteban 2021; Catherine McKercher 2013), which leaves freelance journalists vulnerable to other, but equally problematic issues, including low and irregular pay, a lack of negotiating power, organisational support, and job stability, and not having access to the social status that “real” journalists employed by news organisations are awarded (Antunovic, Grzeslo, and Hoag 2019; Marín-Sanchiz, Carvajal, and González-Esteban 2021; Maria Norbäck 2022). In China in particular, the job precarity of freelance journalists is also closely tied to the state’s strengthening of its political control (Guo and Fang 2022). As a result, freelance female journalists in China are awarded neither official licences nor institutional support and face strict censorship (Guo and Fang 2022).

Indeed, the fact that the number of female freelance journalists is much higher than the number of male freelance journalists in many countries (see, for example, Antunovic, Grzeslo, and Hoag 2019) suggests that the issues freelance journalists face may also be gendered. For instance, female freelance journalists in the United States have more concerns about low pay than male freelance journalists (Antunovic, Grzeslo, and Hoag 2019), while Swedish female freelance journalists put their work on hold in order to provide childcare for longer periods of time than male freelance journalists do (Maria Edstrom and Martina Ladendorf 2012). Female freelance journalists are also more vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault than female journalists employed by news organisations because they have no organisational support (Potter 2019). Despite this, few studies have explored the gendered experiences of freelance (female) journalists (e.g., Antunovic, Grzeslo, and Hoag 2019; Brian L Massey and Cindy J Elmore 2011), particularly in the Chinese context. This is vital, particularly given that my research has highlighted that the gender disadvantages female freelance journalists in China face are exacerbated by the neoliberal market and government constraints.

The landscape of journalism in China

China offers a unique media landscape different from most Western journalistic contexts. This is mainly manifested in comparative differences in news workers’ employment settings, employment systems, and social security (Fen Lin 2010; Jingrong Tong 2015). China’s news organisations are mainly divided into party news outlets that serve as state propaganda tools, and commercial or non-party news outlets that focus on market interests (Xianwen Kuang and Rining Wei 2018). Within news organisations, some traditional party media outlets still guarantee “lifetime employment” and stable salaries for their employees (Guo and Fang 2022; Haiyan Wang 2019). This employment system is also known as “within-system employment” (tizhi nei) or the quota system (shiye bianzhi). Working for this kind of news organisation is thus equivalent to being assigned a permanent job within the Chinese government system (Lin 2010; Tong 2015). This is key, as this particular work environment is generally more hierarchical than commercial news organisations, making it more difficult to complain about sexual harassment within the system.

By contrast, most commercial news organisations and certain party news organisations employ a market system, requiring journalists to renew their employment contracts every year or every few years (Lin 2010; Wang 2016). This market-driven approach, however, results in precarious working conditions and more pressure being placed on its employees, especially on female journalists, to keep their jobs and wages (Wang 2016). For instance, Wang’s (2016) research demonstrates that the commercial contract and salary systems deprive female journalists of paid maternity leave. Indeed, as per the findings of my study, compared with “within-system employment,” female journalists working under the market system seem more likely to suffer severe gender discrimination due to pregnancy and motherhood. Simultaneously, with the increasing commercialisation of culture, female journalists are also often increasingly reduced to sexual objects in the workplace (Wang 2016).

In addition to news organisations, China also has freelance journalists, who have the potential to bring “new and original voices in a media system that is still tightly controlled” (Emma Lupano 2017, 149). Unlike employed journalists working for news organisations, freelance journalists in China are independent of the media system, not directly bound by the workplace or the party; their financial resources are also not tied to a single media organisation (Lupano 2017). Without a news licence and institutional support (Guo and Fang 2022), however, freelance journalists face a great number of difficulties when reporting news. Importantly, these challenges are often tied to the gender and working environment of freelance journalists, as this article will show.

Research methods

This study is based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with 17 Chinese female journalists who work for online publications in four different Chinese cities.¹ The participants working for commercial and party news outlets were recruited mainly from my personal network, developed while working as a journalist and editor for a number of years for several party and commercial news outlets in China. Some of the participants were also recruited through snowballing, where participants in my network introduced their colleagues and friends as participants. In addition, a small number of participants were recruited via private messages on social media platforms, especially those who identified as citizen journalists and independent journalists.²

At the time the interviews were conducted, the participants in this study all worked in a variety of news environments in China (see Table 1). Of the 17 participants, seven of them worked for party outlets, five worked for commercial news outlets, and three participants identified themselves as independent journalists, specialising in news production but without institutional support or fixed salaries. Of the three independent journalists, two of them (I1 and I2) had previously worked for institutional media outlets for a while before becoming independent journalists due to dissatisfaction with their agencies’ increasing restrictions on reporting freedom. The final two participants (T1 and T2) were citizen journalists who publish online news content on social media about women’s rights issues and have tens of thousands of readers. As they are therefore effectively freelancers, citizen journalists and independent journalists will be classified here as freelance journalists. It is worth noting here the difficulty inherent in sourcing even small numbers of participants as a result of the Chinese political landscape. The scope of the work environments of the participants interviewed nonetheless helped to enrich the data and facilitate more in-depth comparisons.

Table 1. Participants’ profiles.

ID	Age (years)	Seniority (years)	Work unit
P1	27	2	Party news outlet
P2	25	2
P3	26	0.5
P4	26	2
P5	26	1.3
P6	31	5
P7	25	1.5
C1	26	3	Commercial news outlet
C2	25	2
C3	27	4
C4	30	8
C5	24	2
I1	32	10	Freelance market
I2	24	3
I3	33	3
T1	19	3
T2	26	1

Between October 17 and December 27 2020, I conducted semi-structured interviews in a hybrid way (both online and face-to-face) with 16 female journalists working in different working environments in China. Between April 16 and June 18 2023, I conducted a second interview with two previous participants from the commercial media sector (C3 and C4) in order to further develop the data. During this period, I also contacted another female independent journalist (I3) whom I had not previously interviewed, in order to further understand the reporting practices and gender dilemmas of independent female journalists. The duration of the interviews ranged from 40 minutes to 3.5 hours.

Semi-structured interviews combine pre-determined open-ended questions with the flexibility to explore unexpected topics or follow up on specific participants’ responses (Kathryn Roulston and Choi Myungweon 2018). The purpose of setting open-ended questions is to give participants enough freedom to narrate their own experiences (Anne Galletta and William E Cross 2013). I thus prepared open-ended questions for each interview and developed other questions as they emerged from each conversation. Participants were encouraged to talk about any forms of gender inequality they encountered at work. They were also invited to evaluate how they felt gender affects their reporting practices, particularly when they report on female-centric topics (sexual violence cases in particular). Due to ethical concerns, participants were not proactively asked whether they had any experience with sexual harassment or assault. When discussing gendered inequalities in the workplace, however, many of them took the initiative to mention such incidents.

Gendered news organisations

This section will consider the gendered experiences (either personal or witnessed) of employed female journalists in the newsroom and elaborate on the links between the nature of news organisations and the gendered experiences of these journalists. These gendered experiences include: (1) workplace sexual harassment and assault; (2) a lack of professional autonomy in relation to news content about women’s issues; (3) discrimination related to pregnancy and motherhood. When coding the interview data, I found that these three issues were the most frequently articulated by the employed female journalists.

Workplace sexual harassment and assault

One issue that the analysis of the interviews revealed is that individuals who experience sexual harassment or assault are not always seen as victims, but as “winners in life” (rensheng yingjia), or as individuals with vested interests who trade sex for power, abiding by “hidden rules” (qian guize).

The label “winner in life” is ostensibly a relatively positive term in the Chinese context, referring to an empowered person who has reached their “pinnacle” in terms of economic status, family, and work. However, as my study has highlighted, in the context of workplace sexual violence, the term has also often been used to describe female victims who ended up as “legitimate” wives after being sexually harassed or assaulted by men of higher social status and wealth. For example, I1 recalled that:

There was a chief editor of a news centre. (…) An intern once told us that this editor-in-chief had sexually harassed and assaulted her. But now, she is his wife and has two children with him. In the eyes of the outsiders (i.e., the intern’s colleagues), this female intern has become a “winner in life.”

In this scenario, the term “winner in life” perpetuates the perception that by marrying the chief editor, the intern (i.e., a vulnerable and sexually-harassed young woman) was able to benefit from the marriage through the access provided by her husband’s social resources and class status, while erasing the critical fact that she had been sexually harassed and assaulted. This intern’s story thus exemplifies how the disparities of power and status within a party news outlet can glorify and normalise sexual violence against female journalists who are in vulnerable positions (e.g., journalism interns), positioning the victim as a manipulator and beneficiary of sexual violence.

Ling Tang (2020) defines “hidden rules” as the unwritten norms by which women gain tangible benefits from sex with powerful men, including career advancement, money, and goods. The findings of this study suggest that the term “hidden rules” can also serve as a means to frame victimised women as manipulators and devalue their experiences and testimonies of sexual assault. For example, P4 stated that:

Workplace sexual assault is now very, very difficult to judge, especially when it comes to male leaders and female subordinates. (…) Even if she let me see her medical report confirming semen in her body, I wouldn’t dare say whether it happened with consent or forcefully … In the workplace, an adult world, you know, there are “hidden rules” (qian guize). (…) If she wanted something from the leader but didn’t get it, she could say she was raped.

P4’s account thus demonstrated how a male-dominated workplace’s “hidden rules” obfuscate the lines between rape and consensual sex, making it harder for people to trust the testimonies of female colleagues who may have been sexually assaulted by their male superiors. According to P4, even official medical reports are discredited due to the so-called “hidden rules.” When a woman’s testimony against a man is widely questioned, it not only condones the harm, but it also, in turn, reinforces the privilege that men hold to continue perpetrating violence (Cynthia A Stark 2019).

Notably, some of the participants’ accounts (e.g., C1, C2, and C4) point to the fact that the nature of the news institutions plays an important role in shaping the nature of and response to workplace sexual harassment and assault against female journalists. It was noted, for example, that the sexual objectification of female journalists tends to be more severe within traditional party news outlets than in commercial media organisations. Based on her past experience working in different sectors of the media, C4 noted that:

Compared with the market media, the traditional state-owned media is more backward institutionally. The party media is more like an “officialdom” (guanchang). Since it is a “public institution” (shiye danwei), it is strictly hierarchical. Here, female journalists are expected to give full play to their gender advantages and make good use of their sexual capital.

C4’s account highlights that the stricter the male-dominated hierarchy and organisational order, the more difficult it is for women to report sexual harassment in the workplace, and the more likely they are to be expected to use their sexual capital to achieve promotion. It is also worth noting that according to the participants’ accounts, in those traditional state-owned news outlets in China which employ the government mechanism in which journalists are considered government staff with lifelong job guarantees, the leadership is largely made up of men. Furthermore, news institutions which serve the government conduct job title reviews for journalists (e.g., junior, deputy senior, and senior positions) and have fairly cumbersome administrative levels for news workers (e.g., national-level cadre and provincial-ministerial cadre). This leads to an overemphasised “distinction between superiors and inferiors” (C4) and a clear hierarchy within the organisation (P6). This again makes it more difficult for victims of sexual violence to speak out against their superiors.

In comparison, most commercial news media outlets adhere to a market mechanism, which has the effect of diluting the hierarchical relationship between superiors and subordinates. As C3 stated,

One of the advantages of commercial media is that the superior-subordinate relationship between leaders and journalists is not so clear. When I was working in the official media, the relationship between superiors and subordinates was that they could not wait to “kneel down and lick” (guitian).

C3’s account thus supports the argument that the more hierarchical a work environment is, the more likely it is to allow and uphold oppression resulting from power inequality. In an environment like this, it is therefore more difficult to complain about sexual harassment within an institution.

A lack of professional autonomy

Professional autonomy generally refers to the freedom of journalists have to determine news topics, content, sources, and the narrative framework of news stories according to their professional judgement in the process of reporting operations, as well as the extent to which they can participate in and influence decision-making at the editorial level (Zvi Reich and Thomas Hanitzsch 2013). A number of studies (e.g., Louise North 2016b; Karen Ross and Cynthia Carter 2011) have shown that “horizontal segregation” exists in newsrooms, where journalists are assigned to cover news content based on gender; female journalists, for example, are often assigned to “soft” news fields such as advertising and entertainment. In the Chinese context, my study certainly suggests not only that “horizontal segregation” exists in Chinese newsrooms (evidenced by the fact that women-oriented news is primarily left to female journalists), but also that female journalists still lack professional autonomy even when covering women-oriented topics. This can easily lead to a lack of female perspectives being taken into account in the news coverage of women’s issues and to the viewing of women’s perspectives as unorthodox (Juana Gallego, Elvira Altes, María José CantRon, Maria Eugenia Melus and Jaume Soriano 2004).

Indeed, of the 12 directly-employed female journalists I spoke to, none held leadership positions in their newsrooms or within their professions, and more than half (e.g., P2, P3, and others mentioned below) said that they do not have the right to decide which news topics or content they could cover. C4, for example, who works for a commercial news outlet, stated that the news content she produced about female sexuality was forcibly removed from the release agenda by several male editors on the grounds that it was “too private and inappropriate for the public.” C4 believed that herself and her female colleagues could actively use their “feminist understandings” to guide the public and to help create a positive media image of Chinese women. However, as in this instance, it appears that interference by male editors often restricts female journalists’ professional autonomy when it comes to reporting on these issues.

Some of the participants also indicated that news content related to the topic of women’s rights (gender-based violence in particular) has become the focus of scrutiny in newsrooms because it is deemed liable to cause social instability and create gender antagonism.

Although both female party media and commercial media journalists reported a lack of professional autonomy in terms of reporting on women’s issues, the journalists’ accounts also suggest that the extent of this suppression of reporting autonomy differs between the two types of news organisations:

Firstly, as most commercial media outlets face more serious consequences for disregarding the party line, such as getting their publication shut down (especially after reporting on sensitive topics that are not popular with the party-state), they are usually stricter in censoring the news reporting of their employees (C3).

Secondly, due to the performance criteria used in the market system, female journalists working in most commercial media institutions may face a reduced income for writing about issues affecting women, as their news articles are more frequently censored or banned. As C5 emphasised, “Our salary won’t go up if we are not allowed to report on many topics!.” Some participants working in the commercial market also mentioned that their news reports “constantly go offline or are notified to go offline” (C2), which not only destroys their enthusiasm for their work, but also puts them in the difficult situation of their salary failing to reflect the hours worked.

These accounts thus not only highlight the systemic impediments to their professional autonomy that female journalists face, but also the impact of the man-made controls which commercial news organisations place on women’s finances.

Discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy and motherhood

The term “motherhood penalty” refers to the discrimination that mothers experience in the workplace relative to childless women and men both with and without children (Rosa M Polan, Larissa H Mattei and Emma L Barber 2002). Analysis of the interviews suggests that female Chinese journalists experience greater pressure than male journalists to balance both family and career. In order to maintain their career standings and have a fixed income, some participants stated that they had even needed to postpone getting married and having children, increasing their exposure to maternal health risks related to pregnancy at an older age. For instance, due to the fact that her work requires her to go on frequent business trips, C2 noted that she has had to think about only starting a family at a later date:

Judging from my current state, it is impossible to start a family because my job is very frequently on business trips. I spend almost half of my time outside … I think it is more difficult for those (journalists) with families to balance.

Likewise, it seems that female journalists with families and children (especially those who work for commercial news outlets) sometimes have to sacrifice their health in order to keep their jobs and income. C4, for instance, who works for a commercial news outlet, even had to go on business trips both during the ninth month of her pregnancy and while breastfeeding. She recalled that:

When I was pregnant, I still had to travel a lot for work. I can still remember when I was in a car, and it was full of smoke smell. I know it was not good for the baby, but I could not do anything about it.

The fact that journalists such as C4 are still assigned to overtime work, such as business travel, indicates a lack of organisational regard for pregnant women’s health and their need to care for their (unborn) babies. A few participants made the observation that commercial news organisations generally show less concern for pregnant female employees than party news outlets within the governmental system do. C4 stated that:

Commercial media has an assessment mechanism. Therefore, even if a female staff member is pregnant, she cannot receive special treatment from the editor-in-chief. The work intensity is still very high.

According to C4, the assessment mechanism at her commercial news organisation divides news reporting into three grades (A, B, and C), and the salary gap between each grade is about 1,000 yuan (approximately £109). If journalists want to maintain their income via this mechanism, they have to work very hard to find events and exclusive news that can arouse widespread public discussion in order to prove their professionalism, requiring them to devote a lot of time and energy. This pressure is reflected in the participants’ accounts (e.g., C2, C3, C4, C5), which suggest that some female journalists working under the market employment system feel like “soldiers without an armour” and that they suffer even more serious gendered discrimination as a result of pregnancy and motherhood. This suggests that the salary mechanisms of these profit-oriented news organisations play a significant role in maintaining the precarious and exploitative working conditions for female journalists.

In this respect, it is thought that freelance journalists who break out of the “confinement” of news organisations may be able to escape gender issues within these organisations, such as sexual harassment from their superiors, a lack of professional autonomy, and the “motherhood penalty.” In reality, however, the position that female freelance journalists find themselves in is still quite harmful and simply manifests itself in other ways. This will be analysed in greater detail in the following section.

Female freelance journalists and their gendered precarity

Female freelance journalists often have no organisation to provide them with resources, assistance, and protection, which makes them even more vulnerable to sexual harassment and other gender-based discriminations in settings other than press offices (Catherine McKercher 2009; Potter 2019). The accounts given by the female freelance journalists in this study show that although they have largely escaped the hierarchical gendered relations of newsrooms and sexual harassment by their superiors, they remain in a precarious position and are powerless in the face of other forms of gender inequality, including: (1) gendered earning uncertainty; (2) a lack of institutional and social security; and (3) harassment from male sources and readers which is often sexual in nature. In this regard, gender inequality and precarious working conditions intersect to make their situation even more difficult.

Freelance journalists are generally not paid for their time and travel expenses for investigative and editorial work, as most media outlets and publishers only buy their finished products (Mirjam Gollmitzer 2014). As such, the five female freelance journalists I interviewed reported that the amounts they were paid do not equate to the time they spent on investigations and interviews. I2 stated that she was only making around 600 yuan (approximately £65) a month, and “was only paid 300 yuan to write a news article over 1,000 words” (about £33). During that time, I2 could not even afford her basic living needs, often having to live on the cheapest instant noodles and work part-time at some charity organisations. Similarly, I3 stated that:

My work is quite tiring, and force majeure (bukekangli) often occurs, and then there is no manuscript fee. To be honest with you, I don’t really enjoy the state.

I3 also conveyed her dissatisfaction with her current status as a freelance journalist, on the basis that her work often faces various force majeure instances, such as censorship by the national propaganda department, editors making manuscript selections, and competition among freelance journalists, etc. These obstacles prevent her from maintaining a satisfactory level of income.

These circumstances are also sometimes exacerbated by the intersection of their gender and reporting interests. According to my participants, female freelance journalists are more inclined to report on women-centric topics, such as women with disabilities and violence against women. This makes their news work a target for propaganda departments and online censorship agencies. Political pressure consequently causes employers to revise, remove, or reject their manuscripts, thereby depriving them of paid work. Describing her income situation, T2 noted that “Even writing news stories doesn’t necessarily mean getting paid. Once reporting of certain incidents has been banned, our salaries can only be owed or cancelled.” In most cases, female freelance journalists are thus not able to rely on any contracts to recoup losses and receive compensation for this.

With the introduction of capitalism to China in the 1970s, the gender wage gap rapidly worsened, with the wage gap in China increasing by 1.5 times or more between the 2000s and the 2010s (Ichiro Iwasaki and Xinxin Ma 2020). Indeed, the accounts of my participants show that the gender wage gap is also partly reflected in the wage differences between female and male freelance journalists in China. For instance, I1 indicated that “freelance male journalists who can cover a wider range of topics tend to earn more lucrative salaries than us.” Similarly, I3 noted that when she had once suggested to an editor that she wanted to do finance-related topics, she was prevented from doing so because the editor did not trust her and thought that “female journalists could not write very profound things on this topic.”

In addition to this, female freelance journalists in China lack social benefits and institutional guarantees, being deprived of the same rights to maternity leave, sick leave, and social security that employed journalists are entitled to. For instance, I3 pointed out that because they do not have maternity leave, editors only “focus on the efficiency and quality of freelance journalists’ contributions at any time,” without considering the health and accessibility needs of female freelance journalists, such as needing rest during pregnancy. This creates a sense of competition among freelance journalists, as freelancers know that if they are in poor physical condition, the editor can “turn around and find a more competitive candidate” (I3), leading to a misogynistic working environment. Although male freelance journalists are also similarly not entitled to social benefits, a lack of social or institutional benefits primarily hurts women’s interests, as in the example of paid maternity leave. The legal provision of 98 days of paid maternity leave does not apply to female freelance journalists in China, for instance, who thus have no ability to guarantee their source of income during pregnancy.

Furthermore, as noted by my participants, the disadvantages of working freelance also extend to a number of other aspects of female freelance journalists’ experiences in China. Firstly, female freelance journalists are rarely invited to events organised by the government and other official institutions in China, meaning that they do not have access to key news sources in a timely manner (I1, I2, T2). Secondly, they have no one to share responsibility with when things go wrong in the field, as well as with press releases, and in relation to their mental health (e.g., litigation, censorship, and traumatic situations) (I1, I2, T1). As I1 stated, “In a news organisation, leaders have responsibilities, editors have responsibilities, so for the most part, journalists are safe. Yet, this (i.e., a lack of institutional protection and support) is now a challenge for independent journalists.” The “safety” provided by institutional employment means that institutional journalists are less vulnerable to political, economic, and personal risks (such as fear of arrest, having no income, or sexual harassment by male readers and sources) compared to their freelancing colleagues.

It is also worth noting that there are more women than men currently working as freelance journalists in China.³ Likewise, Chinese female journalists reportedly encounter more sexual harassment than their male counterparts during interviews (Huang 2018). Indeed, a number of my participants reported that the aforementioned disadvantages of freelance work—including long-term erratic income, government restrictions on freelance journalists, and a lack of institutional support—further encourage aggressive and misogynistic behaviour from some of their male respondents and male readers:

Some of my male interviewees would ask me for that kind of (sexual) service. They asked me directly if I could provide them with that kind of service. (…) especially when they realised that I had economic difficulties. (I2)

When going to different places to interview some people, some of them realised that I was an independent journalist. I have neither a superior nor a newspaper office, so they did not recognise me. (…) During this process, I was also harassed by them. (I1)

Sometimes I am cursed for something I write (by the male readers), and the swear words are very sexist, like “fuck your mother” (cao ni ma). (…) Our society is constantly perpetrating these things. (T1)

These experiences of being sexually harassed and discriminated against by their male interviewees and readers thus highlight that even when they leave gendered news organisations, Chinese female journalists cannot escape sexism and sexual harassment at work. In a precarious labour market, the interplay of gender and job precarity among female freelance journalists further weakens their resilience and makes their gender disadvantage more pronounced. In other words, female freelance journalists’ financial difficulties and the lack of institutional and social support encourage male respondents and readers to engage in aggressive behaviour, knowing that the women being harassed are vulnerable and have no recourse in such situations.

Indeed, the more precarious the employment security of female journalists, the more insecure and fearful of retaliation they are when disclosing their own experiences of sexual harassment (Janet Harris, Nick Mosdell and James Griffiths 2020). In the Chinese context, these gendered encounters experienced by female freelance journalists certainly also mirror the wider, socio-cultural gender inequality in China, in that the actions of these male sources and readers are a reflection of the misogyny and gendered power imbalances in wider Chinese society. As a result, female freelance journalists, the demographic seemingly most motivated to write about women’s issues, are also those who face the most barriers to publishing.

Conclusion

This article has explored the differing forms of sexual violence and sexism experienced by Chinese female journalists across different working environments. This thus points to the fact that the gender issues evident in female Chinese journalists’ experiences should not be viewed in isolation, but rather analysed in relation to the nature and structural environments of their specific work units. In doing so, this could help shed light on how different work mechanisms reinforce or reduce gender inequality. This topic of research is also of great importance in that it provides a rare gender perspective on the news environment in a non-Western context and elaborates on the gendered dilemmas Chinese female journalists still face in the wake of the #MeToo movement in China.

A number of key issues have been highlighted in this article. Firstly, that in working environments with stricter hierarchies and more pronounced power differentials, such as in party news outlets “within the system” (tizhi nei), news offices are prone to perpetuating rape myths that shield high-status perpetrators within these institutions. This rhetoric includes calling female victims “the winners in life,” advocating for the utilisation of female sexual capital, and using the cultural concept of the “hidden rule” – the notion that sexual attention can be exchanged for a stable job or promotions—in order to discredit and sexually objectify victims of workplace sexual harassment. In this context, these “hidden rules” can thus become a way to re-frame victimised women and devalue their experiences and testimonies of workplace sexual harassment.

Second, this study has highlighted that commercial news organisations following the market-oriented operation model often show less tolerance for pregnant and breastfeeding female staff than party outlets. Female employees of these institutions are often not allowed to reduce their work intensity during pregnancy and breastfeeding, while still needing to meet the assessment standards set by the market-driven model.

Third, this study shows that Chinese female journalists not only lack reporting autonomy in the traditional “hard” news topics, but are even severely limited when it comes to the “women’s issues” topics that are often assigned to them. Moreover, poor performance scores caused by a large number of news articles ending up unpublished due to censorship around these topics, also systematically reduce the earnings of female journalists who work for commercial news outlets.

In addition to looking at gendered news organisations and the different gendered encounters of female journalists within such organisations, this study also explored the gendered experiences of female freelance journalists by recognising the interplay between female identity and precarious working conditions. For instance, the interviews conducted with the female freelance journalists highlighted that they are still not immune to sexism and sexual harassment despite working outside of news organisations. In fact, it is possible that they are even more vulnerable, with the freelance journalists interviewed reporting being more “nakedly” exposed to the social construction of gender inequality. This to a certain extent mirrors a wider, socio-cultural gender inequality in Chinese patriarchal society.

It is nevertheless important to note that Chinese female journalists are not a homogenous group, so it would be misleading to propose that my participants’ gendered experiences are representative of those of all Chinese female journalists. As such, further research is needed to focus more explicitly on the nuances of female journalists’ gendered experiences by considering variables such as journalists’ ethnic identities, work locations, ideological approaches, organisational contexts, reporting fields, etc. It is also vital that Chinese freelance female journalists are taken into account in future studies, a demographic that has been little studied prior to this study. This study thus serves as a starting point for scholars to pay further attention to the distinct forms of gendered precarity and discrimination that different workplace cultures engender in the field of journalism, especially in the under-researched Eastern context.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my supervisors Dr. Boriana Alexandrova and Dr. Jonathan Howlett for their professional support during my Ph.D. studies and with this journal manuscript. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their time and feedback in helping me to improve this paper. Finally, I appreciate the active participation of the study’s participants, even if I cannot name them here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The initial part of this research was undertaken with the support from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) [grant number. 201908140114].

Notes on contributors

Siyu Chen

In 2019, Siyu Chen started her Ph.D. at the Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York where she has worked under the supervision of Dr. Boriana Alexandrova, Dr. Jonathan Howlett, and Prof. Stevi Jackson (emeritus). She has a keen interest in media and gender; specifically, she is interested in how Chinese journalists play a role in reporting on sexual violence against women. Before this, Siyu worked for several Chinese party news outlets and had also been employed as an editor for multiple commercial news media companies.

Notes

1. The cities are not specified in order to maintain the anonymity and safety of the participants.

2. As Chinese freelance journalists are not recognised by the Chinese government, this makes it very challenging to find journalists willing to participate in such interviews. Despite this obstacle, I worked steadfastly to find independent journalists who would agree to participate in the study.

3. While there is no quantitative survey to directly support this, I1, I3, and C4’s observations support the validity of this.