On April 7, a nurse nearing the end of her month-long probation period at a hospital in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, was asked by her department director to quit for not obeying her superiors.

Feeling her dismissal had something to do with her refusal to join the director for dinner, the nurse then shared snapshots of their chat on social media. On April 14, the hospital decided the director had no business inviting her for dinner and suspended him.

While the Chengdu hospital found the nurse's dismissal legal, the case is an example of how disadvantaged women are when their male superiors make advances at them. As head of the department, the director wielded enough power to decide the probationer's fate.

And when he invited her to a private dinner, there was no way to rule out sexual harassment. In fact, the tone of the text message he sent her－"You do not need to do very well at job, but you must understand the superior's intentions and obey…"－does cast a cloud on his intentions. Also, if he had harassed her, the nurse would have feared losing her job before calling the police.

Suspending the department head was the right decision, and the hospital should probe if he has done this before and report him to police if he has.

The case highlights the need for society to protect women employees. Some offices prohibit office romance, but sometimes true love could be blooming between colleagues. That is why most modern offices have glass walls, so that everybody can see what goes on inside the offices of their superiors.

But the goal should be to give enough protection to women employees so that they speak up when facing harassment.

Like in the case in Chengdu, only when women facing harassment speak up will the culprit get the due punishment. It is time to let every woman know that.