Working Women Forced to Lie About Marriage Status

In China, single women are hiring fake boyfriends to fool their families into thinking they're on the marriage-and-mommy track. But don't you think that married women have it any easier. They have to hide their real husbands to fool their bosses into thinking they're single.

This trend isn't new -- XinHua News Agency reported in 2005 about married women who pretend to be single at work in order to keep their jobs. Employers assume single women don't have important personal obligations that would distract them from work, and they see single women as more available to meet clients in the evenings at bars -- and more fun for male customers.

So, single women are employable because they're a little bit loose, and married women are not as employable because they can't manage both workplace and family, and what's more, at any moment -- poof! -- they could have a baby.

When Shanghai Daily picked up this story five years later, the stories told by the interviewees haven't changed much. Rings are removed before work and replaced after work. High-performing single women are fired when they get married. One women didn't get into several graduate schools because of her marriage. In job interviews, women have to decide whether to admit their marriage and risk not being hired, or to lie about their marriage and risk being fired later for dishonesty.

The women who opt to lie are known as "Yin Hun Zu," or "Hidden Marriage Group." There are male Yin Hun Zu too, but employers don't find married men as much of a liability as married women. Both sexes are supposedly distracted from work by their spouses and babies, but only women are expected to be available to customers and business partners in a sexual or flirtatious manner.

These employers are correct to worry that their married employee will become less productive because they're thinking about their home lives. Yes, she's thinking a lot about her relationship -- and how it's suffering from the stress of hiding their husband.

My manically matchmaking coworkers constantly try to set me up with their friends and relatives, because they view my singleness as a disease that needs treating. Which is easier, being diseased or being unemployable -- and why does it have to be one or the other?

Photo credit: U.S. Office of War Information