A Chinese journalist reports that an 18-year-old female employee at a Foxconn factory in Shanghai was subjected to sexual harassment from three male employees  — while attending a required sexual harassment training seminar.

Say it ain’t so – not in the land where the late Chairman proclaimed: “Women represent a great productive force in China, and equality among the sexes is one of the goals of communism. The multiple burdens which women must shoulder are to be eased.”  Chapter 231 of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (emphasis added). 

Apparently, the factory, which employs almost 60,000 people, has an enormous demand for young workers – i.e, people under age 21.*  And those newly-hired employees must take various training classes, one of which deals, quite appropriately, with sexual harassment.  Because no attendee is permitted to leave the seminar, one female employee was forced to sit silently while being sexually harassed. 

One worker at the factory was quoted as saying: "That sort of thing happens a lot. She was just not used to it."

I guess that the company had the right idea in requiring sexual harassment training, but that something went awry in the application.   

(*We have frequently warned employers in the US with a large proportion of young people, such as start-up companies, that harassment may present itself as a big problem, and that training and good policies are a must).