Creation: Historical Materialism Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
On February 14th, the “Leye Shanghai You+” action— a large-scale comprehensive spring employment promotion job fair in Shanghai— was held at the Shanghai Gymnasium, jointly organized by nine departments including the Shanghai Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. What attracted particular attention at this job fair was the appearance of so-called “Fertility-Friendly Positions.” According to officials from Zhongxiu and “charitable” individuals, fertility-friendly positions provide female employees with benefits such as: an 8-hour workday (8 am to 6 pm, with a two-hour break), no strict attendance requirements (absences due to illness or other reasons do not affect performance, and only a maximum of 100 yuan deduction from the full attendance bonus per month), free children’s playgrounds and cafeterias, dedicated rest rooms, five social insurances and one housing fund, paid maternity leave, annual leave, and other employee benefits, allowing mothers to balance work and child-rearing, achieving “work-family balance.” However, are fertility-friendly positions in reality as rosy as the bourgeoisie claims?
Although “charitable” individuals boast about the advantages of fertility-friendly positions, unfortunately, only a small number of women can enjoy such benefits. In 2021, there were 320 million employed women in China, accounting for 43% of the national employment population. Yet, at this job fair, only 11 out of over 500 companies were willing to establish fertility-friendly positions for women, with a total of only about 350 such positions (out of more than 14,000 jobs offered at the fair), making up just 2.5%. Such scarce positions cannot solve the widespread difficulties faced by women. Moreover, the actual number of women employed in fertility-friendly positions is far below the number of positions nominally offered by these bourgeois entities. For example, in Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, a “Mom Position” similar to fertility-friendly positions was once set up in 2024, with over 3,000 jobs publicly offered, but only 82 women actually took these jobs, all of which were gig work, with no formal employment. Clearly, these so-called “fertility-friendly” positions are just illusions for working women—mirages that are fundamentally unreachable.
Furthermore, the actual work provided in fertility-friendly positions is far from as good as what the bourgeois “charitable” individuals claim. On the surface, fertility-friendly positions are responsible for formal work within the organization; in reality, most women who take these jobs are assigned to temporary, disposable gig work. For example, according to the directory of Guangzhou Xin Yi Education and Training Center Co., Ltd., the company claimed to offer positions such as “HR Specialist” and “Course Consultant” for women applying for “Mom Positions,” but staff told reporters that the actual “Mom Position” only required caring for children during lunch breaks, with working hours just two or three hours at noon. Even if women become formal employees, the positions they can hold are extremely limited: roles like video editing, product design, customer service—characterized by small-scale production, requiring no strict labor discipline, and thus not significantly affecting bourgeois exploitation of surplus value even if women need to care for children; or domestic services, cleaning, gig work—positions that exploit housewives’ skills, with wages relatively low. The bourgeoisie provides no special treatment for women in fertility-friendly positions; instead, it packages the characteristics of flexible working hours as “benefits,” using these jobs as a means to exploit surplus value by turning women into surplus floating and stagnant populations (floating surplus population refers to workers who are intermittently absorbed into production and dismissed back into unemployment; stagnant surplus population refers to those working at home for capitalists and brokers), facilitating their exploitation.
The reason why fertility-friendly positions have become a farce is fundamentally determined by the characteristics of capitalist society. In capitalism, the organization of production serves to exploit surplus value for the bourgeoisie. Women, due to physiological characteristics (menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth) and their status as family slaves under patriarchy (requiring more energy to manage household chores, cooking, and daily life), cannot participate continuously in capitalist production like men, thus providing a continuous source of surplus value for the bourgeoisie. This results in women facing more obstacles and discrimination than men when participating in social labor. The bourgeoisie claims to protect women’s rights, establish fertility-friendly positions, and give women preferential treatment, but it fundamentally refuses to address the core obstacles women face: the discrimination rooted in class interests and the heavy burden of domestic labor. Therefore, all the promises of benefits and protections associated with fertility-friendly positions are empty and baseless, mere illusions.
However, under socialism, these issues do not exist. The socialist revolution sweeps away the old production relations of capitalism, transforming the purpose of production from generating surplus value for capitalists to defending the socialist regime and seeking welfare for the working people. This solves the problem of the bourgeoisie excluding women from social labor. At the same time, under socialism, domestic labor previously performed entirely by women has gradually shifted to social labor through the establishment of kindergartens, laundries, and other facilities, allowing women to free themselves from heavy household chores and participate freely in social production. The superficial reforms under capitalism, which “dazzle the eyes,” cannot solve the serious problem of women being excluded from social production. Only socialist revolution and proletarian liberation can truly enable women to usher in a new life of their own.