Gender and Change in Hong Kong
Globalization, Postcolonialism and Chinese Patriarchy
Eliza W.Y. Lee, ed. 2003, Chapter 2: Engendering a Legal System: The Unique Challenge of Postcolonial Hong Kong by Carole J. Petersen, p. 23-26.
Gender and Change in Hong Kong
As recently as 1990, the concept of gender equality did not really exist in Hong Kong’s legal system. There was no legal right to equality in the colonial constitution and no laws prohibiting sex discrimination or sexual harassment. Although the British government had already ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), it had not extended CEDAW to Hong Kong because the Hong Kong government did not want to be bound by it (Byrnes and Chan 1993). Certain other international human rights conventions that applied to Hong Kong included a right to equality, but they were not directly enforceable in the Hong Kong courts (Byrnes 1992). As a result, sex discrimination was openly practised and widely accepted as the norm. For example, women were legally barred from inheriting much of the land in the New Territories, there were discriminatory laws and employment regulations, and virtually every newspaper contained sex-specific job advertisements (Jones 1994; Petersen 1996; Samuels 1993). Since the colonial government, traditionalists, and the business community strongly opposed sex-discrimination legislation, there seemed little hope of meaningful law reform.
