Comparatively China has one of the longest maternity leave policy: 158 days for women over the age of 24 in most areas and 188 days in areas such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. However, these maternity leaves are fully paid by employers without government aid. As the Chinese government are now promoting two-child and even three-child policies, the potential financial burden causes employers to see unmarried female employee as “ticking time bombs that will blow up twice” (Wang, 2021). Furthermore, employers believe female with children would not or could not focus on work, a subjective reason for employers to implicitly or even explicitly reject female for intensive and professional position (CCG, 2022; CCG, 2017). While women are the most direct victims of such policies and perceptions, men are not free from unjust expectations. It was not uncommon for single male participants to be called ‘unreliable’, ‘rootless’ because they do not have a family to ‘tie them down’, and participants who are employers believe that married employers are more stable and ‘have more to lose’, indications of a socially enforced sense of assumed responsibility. While stereotypical gender roles influence access and advancement, gender representations affect what is considered appropriate behaviour in a professional setting. Employers and clients associate professional characteristics with gender representations, limiting various forms and ways professional knowledge can or should be applied in different situation (Ko et al., 2020). In the case of lawyers, male lawyers are expected to express strong-will, hawkish approach whereas female lawyers are expected to be the gentle, soft-voiced character that can ‘charm’ their counterparts instead of someone who can build a comprehensive argument. Under such policies, gender representations and gender roles, professionals in China are facing complex and unique challenges when building their professional identities. This paper discusses how participants from my research encounter, perceive and attempt to tackle these challenges.

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