Posted on 10/13/2012 5:03:51 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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In 2007, the Womens Federation defined leftover women (sheng nu ) as unmarried women over the age of 27 and Chinas Ministry of Education added the term to its official lexicon. Since then, the Womens 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 Womens Day:
Pretty girls dont 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 dont 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.
After knocking some good sense into those misguided women who pursue a higher education, the column accuses educated, single women of sleeping around and having degenerate morals:
Many highly educated leftover women are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most leftover women do not deserve our sympathy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
in country that practices abortion and infanticide on girl babies?
preposterous. unless the Chicoms have a large bone smuggling male population.
This woman is so sad a man will not love here. She has to write a piece about women in China.
In America, the leftover women are called “the NOW gang”
That’s the point of the propaganda. They’re trying to stigmatize women who have left the marriage market.
I had heard there was a shortage of women in China...
I think Chinese women are more aware of the risks so if they pursue careers they know it's at the expense of marriage.
These women sound like my ex wife. She left me 10 years ago thinking she could find something better. Now she’s she’s a spinster, no husband, no children....no hope. But lots of haagen daz.
All I have to say is I'm not too proud to eat leftovers.
The one child policy has caused a demographic nightmare for the Chinese: they don’t have enough people to accomodate necessary future growth in the economy. Necessary to avoid mass insurrection. India will probably outgrow China because the trends are more favorable.
Come to America, where a fat, dumb and fugly girl can still be Secretary of State.
(Of course, they may have just been finding polite ways to reject my initial interest, but it didn't seem like it.)
No surprise they’re seeing the same problems that the West has. Until ‘liberation’, women didn’t really have a choice - they had to get married. Now they can pursue a career and not get married, or get married and not have kids. Give women the option of not bearing the next generation, some will take it. It’s a simply a choice.
But when too many take it, then the population nose-dives, as we’re seeing in virtually all of the West. Yes, there are still kids, but far, far, fewer, and not nearly enough to keep up with the needed replacement rate. Immigration (both kinds) is the only thing keeping this country from the same death spiral, and that is not healthy in the long run either.
They must have a LOT of fags, huh?
Be careful, very careful. You are stepping into a clash of cultures.
Seems to me there are far more ‘left over’ men in China, there being a serious sex imbalance in the population.
Stygmatizing these women is a way to try to paper over that dire problem is my guess.
:^/
Don’t they call them cougars here in the States?
Having one problem doesn’t mean they don’t have another. Feminism is a destructive force anywhere it spreads. Especially in societies that still remember virtuous women.
Still seems like excuse making to me.
With the sex imbalance they have, women can afford to be choosy in what they accept and won’t accept, and that doesn’t sit well with some.
Beauty standards can vary. I’ve been told large feet could render a woman considered smoking hot by American standards unappealing in parts of China.
Look up the author online. See her photo. Know you are right. Seriously. As soon as you see her photo, you’ll know why this is her area of research.
we have NOW, they have LOW, same same...
Exactly! These “left over” women may just want to remain single.
Iff they could afford to be that choosy they wouldn’t end up single.
Unless they are choosing to be single.
I’ll take the leftovers.
Most do not. Most simply have unrealistic expectations and don’t realize they get less attractive as they age. Just like in the west.
Everyone makes choices thoughout life. Some work out and some don’t. Very few people have no regrets.
I simply do not see what all the fuss is about.
What is the alternative? Forcing individuals to do certain things? Certainly that has been China’s history ... one that I would not like to see us emulate.
And even when you force people to do things or not do things, the law of unintended consquences rules. Witness the “one child” policy ... which I very much doubt that “leftover women” instituted.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/author/letahongfincher/
‘When all candles be out, all cats be gray.’
Brilliant!
Many highly educated leftover women are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most leftover women do not deserve our sympathy.
The main reason many girls become leftover women is that their standards for a partner are too high As girls are not too picky, finding a partner should be as easy as blowing away a speck of dust.
When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking ... this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?
Wow - that's more unvarnished truth than we've seen in a single New York Times column in at least 80 years! :)
They should come to America. Our standards are a bit different. They probably match their needs.
In looking for a spouse, there is no such thing as perfect. When looking for that special someone, why do people seek something that they themselves don’t exhibit? I have been married for more than 18 years to a woman who is wonderful in a lot of ways, but she is not my idea of perfection. Likewise, she will remind me on occasion, that I am far from perfect myself. But, what has made it work for us is that we accept each other for who we are. That doesn’t mean we don’t fight. We do and we have. But, through it all, I would choose her again. People who expect perfection will end up alone. Those who understand this will be much happier in the long run. Imho.
The male/female ratio is China creates some unique problems that you don’t normally see in the west. The closest thing I have seen to this problem is life in a military town where the number of single males far exceeds unattached females. Other places with such problems include San Francisco (lonely women due to high number of gays) and New York (women over 30 — think “Sex in the City” demographic). China’s one child requirement and cultural preference for males is probably one reason why will it become more aggressive and expansionist in the future.
Reading the article carefully, we see:
Pretty girls dont 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 dont 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.There's LOTS of men available, but the women are all chasing the same small group of WEALTHY PORFESSIONAL men. Their hypergamous, status-oriented egos won't allow them to "settle" for men who are actually in their league, and then (as the article notes) they get older and even less able to attract a high-status mate. Unwilling to admit failure, they settle into being single and collecting cats. Like many American women.
More precisely, they don't have enough HIGH-IQ people to accommodate necessary future growth. They have more peasants than they need. They need brilliant engineers and managers to bring their country out of the Third World (Their GDP per-capita is $8.5K, versus $35K for Japan and $38K for Taiwan).
To accomplish that, they need for their high-IQ women to have lots of kids, while restricting the number of kids their peasants have.
Read the article -- these are the things she DISPUTES.
For thousands of years, the preservation of civilization has rested upon most men and women having no choice but to marry the best person available to them, and have enough children to support them in their old age.
Since WW2, it has become possible, and increasingly acceptable, for people to remain single and childless. It remains to be seen whether civilization will be able to survive this.
This has been the trajectory since the Industrial Revolution and a mass exodus from agriculture.
I agree it is an experiment, but not one that can be pinned on the “leftover women” of China.
The “leftover women” campaign is as old as the hills. Blame women for all of societies ills. That’s even older than marriage.
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