On March 6th, the Hunan Provincial Federation of Trade Unions issued a labor law supervision reminder letter, reminding employers to safeguard the legitimate and special rights and interests of female employees. Among them, the phrase 'except for personal basic information, no further inquiries or investigations shall be made about the marriage and childbearing situation of female job seekers' has attracted attention, and related terms have flooded the news hot search. According to the Labor Contract Law, when recruiting workers, the employer shall truthfully inform the workers of the job content, working conditions, work location, occupational hazards, safety production status, labor remuneration, and other information requested by the workers; The employer has the right to know the basic information directly related to the employee and the labor contract, and the employee shall truthfully explain it. In general, the marital and child rearing status of workers is not directly related to the basic information of the labor contract. However, some companies require job applicants to fill in information on whether they are married or have children, and some companies even dismiss female workers for not truthfully reporting their marital and child rearing status. These practices are suspected of infringing on the rights and interests of workers. Recently, a top professional recruitment service platform in China released the "2025 Survey Report on the Current Situation of Chinese Women's Workplace", which showed that "being asked about marriage and childbirth during job hunting" is the most common workplace injustice experienced by women, accounting for over 60%. In fact, as early as 2019, nine departments including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued a notice explicitly prohibiting employers from inquiring about women's marriage and childbearing status during the recruitment process. The Labor Law stipulates that employers cannot refuse to hire women or raise their employment standards for women on the grounds of gender during recruitment. However, some employers still use various subtle methods to inquire and understand the marital and childbearing status of female job seekers in practical operations. Employers are particularly concerned about the marriage and childbirth status of female job seekers, often due to cost considerations, that is, they want to exclude some older unmarried or married women who have not given birth from the recruitment scope, in order to avoid the possible decline in labor capacity during pregnancy, job vacancies during maternity leave, and the dispersion of work energy due to breastfeeding behavior after maternity leave that may occur in the future, thereby reducing the labor cost burden of the unit. Nowadays, being discriminated against in employment due to marriage and childbearing status has become a psychological shadow for many women when seeking employment. In order to "save themselves" as much as possible, some job seeking women even choose to conceal their marriage and childbearing information to "get away with it". The request from the Hunan Provincial Federation of Trade Unions not to inquire about the marriage and childbearing status of female job seekers is a reiteration and emphasis of relevant regulations. In reality, female workers face employment discrimination that goes far beyond being asked about their marriage and childbirth status. There are also phenomena such as inadequate implementation of menstrual pain leave, maternity leave, and breastfeeding leave for female workers, as well as salary reductions or even dismissals due to pregnancy or childbirth. Objectively speaking, there are many relevant laws and regulations that protect the rights and interests of female employees nowadays, but there are generally difficulties in implementing them. On the one hand, we need to strengthen publicity to make employers understand the necessity and importance of respecting the legitimate rights and interests of employees; On the other hand, by introducing and improving relevant implementation rules, laws and regulations can be made more operable. In addition, relevant departments should further increase the cost of illegal activities for enterprises, forcing employers to fully protect the legitimate rights and interests of female employees. For enterprises that excel in this area, tax incentives and other measures can be taken to encourage and motivate them, effectively reducing the cost of hiring female workers. In the long run, it is necessary to explore the establishment of a scientific and reasonable mechanism for sharing the cost of childbirth, and comprehensively and systematically share the pressure for employers. Only by taking multiple measures and forming a joint force from all parties can we fundamentally curb the impulse of employers to discriminate against women in the workplace, and effectively solve this long-standing problem. Otherwise, it is likely to "press the gourd and float the gourd", only blocking the recruitment personnel's inquiries about the marriage and childbearing situation of female job seekers, but it is difficult to change the employers' heart of rejecting female job seekers. (New Society)