Jiahui Duan on Belittling Grievances: Legal Consciousness and Strategic Non-mobilization in Chinese Workplace Harassment (Law & Society Review)

"Belittling Grievances: Legal Consciousness and Strategic Non-mobilization in Chinese Workplace Harassment"
Jiahui Duan
Law & Society Review
Published online: April 2025

Abstract: This article investigates the interplay between legal consciousness and legal mobilization in Chinese workplace sexual harassment cases. Drawing on 78 in-depth interviews with victims and fieldwork observations, it argues that second-order legal consciousness – the understanding of law derived from observing others’ experiences within relational networks – acts as a lens through which experiences of harassment are interpreted, inhibiting formal legal mobilization. Findings reveal that Chinese employees, facing a legal framework with limited protections and workplace hierarchies that discourage dissent, often strategically avoid formal reporting to safeguard their positions. This calculated inaction is informed by second-order legal consciousness, reinforced by the belittling of grievances, where complaints are minimized, dismissed, or normalized. Consequently, grievances are channeled away from formal, employment-based reporting toward individualized or gender-based remedies, which fail to address the systemic nature of workplace harassment. Bridging legal consciousness and mobilization literatures, this study reveals how the two concepts interact within Chinese workplaces. It further demonstrates that the belittling of employee grievances is not only a barrier to mobilization but also a crucial source of second-order legal consciousness, thus shaping victims’ decisions and perpetuating a cycle of non-reporting.

Jiahui Duan on Sexual Harassment in Irregular Chinese Workplaces: Business Dinners, Team-Building Activities, and Social Media (Law & Social Inquiry)

"Sexual Harassment in Irregular Chinese Workplaces: Business Dinners, Team-Building Activities, and Social Media"
Jiahui Duan
Law & Social Inquiry
First View , pp. 1 - 32
Published online: October 2023

Abstract: Much of the social and economic inequality that sexual harassment perpetuates is created in the workplace. But research has not always acknowledged the fluid and changing nature of workspaces. This article argues that irregular workspaces and activities—bars and other social drinking sites at which yingchou (business drinking activities) take place, team building, and the WeChat social media platform—are significant sites of sexual harassment in China. These irregular workplaces play a significant role in working life in China, and their informality has made them prone to sexual harassment in the context of deeply entrenched gender norms and vertical power hierarchy.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Jiahui Duan!

Welcome to Dr Jiahui Duan who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr Jiahui Duan is an interdisciplinary legal researcher with an interest in feminist jurisprudence, legal consciousness, labor rights, power, and resistance. She has previously researched the land rights of rural Chinese married-out women. The current research she conducts focuses on workplace sexual harassment issues in China, with the aim of understanding the development of workplace sexual harassment issues in Chinese society, as well as exploring potential anti-sexual harassment strategies within an emerging economic and political context such as China’s. A common intellectual thread of her work is: examining how individuals’ legal consciousness is formed, reshaped, or even disintegrated in their interactions with other socio-legal actors, and investigating the dynamics of legal rules, social norms, and human agency, as well as the Internet and other technologies.

    Dr Duan received her J.S.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a Lloyd M. Robbins Fellow and a BELS Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was a certified lawyer in mainland China.    

      Research Areas:

• Law and society
• Gender and Law
• Employment Law