China’s ‘Leftover’ Women

[REP]

China’s ‘Leftover’ Women
By LETA HONG FINCHER


BEIJING — The headlines scream like sensational tabloids: “Overcoming the Big Four Emotional Blocks: Leftover Women Can Break out of Being Single.” “Eight Simple Moves to Escape the Leftover Women Trap.” And my personal favorite: “Do Leftover Women Really Deserve Our Sympathy?”

In 2007, China's Women’s Federation defined “leftover” women (sheng nu) as unmarried women over the age of 27.
These eye-catching topics do not appear in supermarket-aisle gossip magazines. They are articles about single, professional women published on the Web site of China’s state feminist agency, the All-China Women’s Federation. The Communist Party founded the Women’s Federation in 1949 to “protect women’s rights and interests.”

In 2007, the Women’s Federation defined “leftover” women (sheng nu ) as unmarried women over the age of 27 and China’s Ministry of Education added the term to its official lexicon. Since then, the Women’s Federation Web site has run articles stigmatizing educated women who are still single.

Take this uplifting column from March 2011 that ran just after International Women’s Day:

Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don’t realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls.

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[JB126]

1. Why

can't they just put them in Mitt's binders?

[loudsue]

2. Just one more thing about being so cozy with China that

makes me uncomfortable. I know that, by and large, there is a lot to love about the Chinese people. But their government seems to use and abuse certain aspects of their culture to enhance their control over the people. I hate it.

[REP]

5. My husband sent me the link, with comment, "Fuck China"

Meaning just that: their government, not the people (their government is already doing that to them).

[aquart]

3. They're kidding themselves.

They aborted or abandoned so many girls that the ones being left lonely are the men. This is an attempt to put pressure on the women to take whatever guy makes an offer.

[hedgehog]

9. I wonder if the real problem is too many young Chinese women refusing to marry at all?

IIRC, many young Japanese women are looking at married life and deciding to remain single!

[aquart]

10. Not unlikely.

[stevenleser]

15. I think that is probably true. Everything I read tells me chinese men are desperate for single women

Hard to tell anything for sure coming out of there.

[Stargazer09]

4. Okay...

So the only reason for a woman in China to get an education is to be more competitive as a future wife?

Are they not allowed to use that education to make a contribution to society?

[REP]

6. What other reason do women exist?

Marry and reproduce.

[Big Blue Marble]

7. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose N/T

[zazen]

8. "as women age, they are worth less and less" grrrr

[REP]

12. From the State's 'feminist' agency, no less

Expect more of the same from our own Right Wingers.

[virgogal]

11. I couldn't even finish the article I was so enraged.

[FloridaJudy]

13. It's a long-term problem

With that culture. I read a lot of fiction by Chinese-American women, and the terms for an unmarried woman in her late twenties have never been flattering. Something like "left-over holiday cakes", meaning well past the expiration date, is the usual term.

It's long been a tradition that families want lots of sons, to insure security for their old age. Hence women have been urged to marry young, and start producing them. How this squares with China's present attempt to limit their population growth baffles me though.

And "feminist" it definitely ain't! Confucian, yes, but like most male religious founders, he had a pretty low opinion of women.

[Nay]

14. God, this shit enrages me. I urge all Chinese women to reject marriage totally, and if they want

a child, to get artificially inseminated and make sure the fetus is female, and TO HELL with those men. Unbelievable. I think those 'average or ugly' women ought to gather together into large 'communes' and reject marriage altogether.