5 ms·

China's 'leftover' women

31 points by snake117 11y ago

josu 11y ago
The article makes it sound as if this is a modern phenomenon and as if it is exclusive to China. This pressure for women to get married has always existed everywhere. The burden has somewhat alleviated recently in Europe (maybe in other developed countries too), but it is certainly there for all the developing countries.
- fredkbloggs 11y ago
  Yes. And while the cultural aspects are worth understanding, neither they nor the women are the real story in China. As you note, there have always been and will always be people of both sexes who are single through choice or temperament. But in China, the real story is leftover men. When you have such an enormous sex imbalance at birth for as long as China has, no amount of natural excess male mortality is ever going to even that out. So when you take the Chinese population, segregate it by broad age groups, subtract out those who are single by choice and pair off the rest, you're left with tens of millions of young and middle-aged single men. History's solution for this, almost invariably, is both simple and guaranteed effective. The leftover men are called an army, and they either die in combat or conquer foreign lands, where they can take -- by force, usually -- the stock of available women after killing the menfolk in battle. In either case, the imbalance is corrected. That's the real "leftover" story in China: if those men aren't to be an army, then what are they to be?
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    It's been estimated that up to 10% of men are homosexual, so that makes up most, if not all of the difference... Plus migration and things too...
    - meric 11y ago
      The homosexual men are more or less cancelled out by lesbian women...
      - Mikeb85 11y ago
        Except most studies show that more men are exclusively homosexual, whilst more women consider themselves bi-sexual.
        ilek 11y ago
        Sources would be nice.
  - meric 11y ago
    There's a clear trend where Chinese men are marrying Russian women. http://www.chinawhisper.com/6-pictures-of-chinese-farmers-and-russian-wives/ http://www.chinawhisper.com/6-pictures-of-chinese-farmers-an... http://rbth.asia/society/2013/05/25/the_key_to_a_happy_russo-chinese_marriage_46943.html http://rbth.asia/society/2013/05/25/the_key_to_a_happy_russo...
  - theandrewbailey 11y ago
    > The leftover men are called an army, and they either die in combat or conquer foreign lands Or they conquer their own land, i.e. a revolution.
    - fredkbloggs 11y ago
      > Or they conquer their own land, i.e. a revolution. Maybe, but that doesn't solve the problem. They're still single and would rather not be. Something else still has to give. A very long civil war might do it, if that's what you're suggesting.
- tsotha 11y ago
  What makes it a story is the imbalance between the sexes. These women aren't married despite having a pretty unbalanced sex ratio to their advantage.
hellbanner 11y ago
"Twice a week groups of about 30 to 60 parents meet in the same spot, each carrying pieces of paper containing information about their child - their job, level of education and salary, as well as their physical attributes."
FD3SA 11y ago
The "pressure" for these women to find their ideal spouse is similar to the "pressure" startups face in finding ideal employees. That is, they want the absolute best at rock bottom prices. If you read the article, many of these women who desired to get married had numerous suitors, but these suitors were judged unfit for one reason or another and thus failed to meet the women's strict requirements. Much like companies wanting to hire 100x developers at 30$ an hour, these women are unfortunately trying to bend the supply/demand curves to their tastes, rather than working within the reality of the market. As an aside, marriage as an institution in western societies is now a legal quagmire [1]. It's legal roots were laid down in times when women did not earn much and did not vote, so they were paid very generously in case of a divorce whose fault could be proven. Nowadays, divorce is the single most powerful legal instrument to take half of someone's net worth without any reason whatsoever. Marriage as an institution is beyond repair, and any couple who supports the spirit of family unity should boycott legal marriage for their own sake, as it leads to extremely toxic financial incentives for the lower earning spouse. Just another case study in man-made systems which are patched and reworked continuously without thought to the designer's original intent. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTOT6DKfZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTOT6DKfZ8
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > If you read the article, many of these women who desired to get married had numerous suitors, but these suitors were judged unfit for one reason or another and thus failed to meet the women's strict requirements In traditional societies where marriage is a one-shot that generally ends a woman's career prospects (or, one could argue, shunts them into being a wife), this is entirely rational behaviour. If you were only allowed to pick one job when you left university, and couldn't resign and get a new one, you'd give suggestions you lock yourself into McDonalds the short shrift.
  - WalterSear 11y ago
    Not if you end up without a job.
    - 11y ago
raincom 11y ago
This has to do with 'modernization' in the sense that moving away from agrarian society has changed the dynamic of picking partners. It has also given ample freedom to pick and reject: the search space has broadened. When the search space is broadened, you end up thinking that 'more suitors' are out there.
samfisher83 11y ago
Given there are more guys than girls maybe the problem is the girls are too picky.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mcv 11y ago
It's odd that there are so many female "leftovers". With the skewed gender balance due to the one child policy, I'd expect mostly male "leftovers". Though I guess they don't carry as much of a stigma as women do.
- Isofarro 11y ago
  It's a side-effect of cultural norms going back thousands of years. In marriage, status is a key factor, and the parents of both partners are the main decision maker whether to allow a marriage or not. Status wise: A man marries a women of lower status, a woman marries a man of higher status -- that's more likely to be approved by both sets of parents. (And parental approval is important in Chinese families) Which means, there's talented, very smart women in China who are struggling to find suitable husbands, because they are equal to high status men. And those men are looking for women with less status. The Male leftovers tend to then be at the bottom of the status chain, because there's no lower status of women to marry. So there are loads of rural areas and villages where women have moved to the city, and men remaining have no viable marriage prospects. (This is the segment negatively affected by one-child policy)
  - cousin_it 11y ago
    It looks like the Chinese government has adopted some impressively sane policies to even out the gender ratio: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-gender-crisis http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-ge... Though a lot still remains to be done, I'm happy that at least some people are thinking about the problem seriously.
rbanffy 11y ago
Having no children has big implications when the pension system is not sufficient to ensure retirement.
NTDF9 11y ago
Why is it always women issues? There are men leftover too. As I see it, men are leftover because they are passed over (by women) for "better men". Women are leftover because they are passed over by men looking for "younger women". So, to optimize mating, men need to work hard in their youth and establish themselves and women need to be VERY active in their partner hunt. As harsh as it sounds, men juggle career and love. Some men succeed, some don't women are now being asked to do the same. Some women will succeed, some won't. I don't feel sorry.

31 points by snake117 11y ago

josu 11y ago

The article makes it sound as if this is a modern phenomenon and as if it is exclusive to China. This pressure for women to get married has always existed everywhere. The burden has somewhat alleviated recently in Europe (maybe in other developed countries too), but it is certainly there for all the developing countries.

fredkbloggs 11y ago
Yes. And while the cultural aspects are worth understanding, neither they nor the women are the real story in China. As you note, there have always been and will always be people of both sexes who are single through choice or temperament. But in China, the real story is leftover men. When you have such an enormous sex imbalance at birth for as long as China has, no amount of natural excess male mortality is ever going to even that out. So when you take the Chinese population, segregate it by broad age groups, subtract out those who are single by choice and pair off the rest, you're left with tens of millions of young and middle-aged single men. History's solution for this, almost invariably, is both simple and guaranteed effective. The leftover men are called an army, and they either die in combat or conquer foreign lands, where they can take -- by force, usually -- the stock of available women after killing the menfolk in battle. In either case, the imbalance is corrected. That's the real "leftover" story in China: if those men aren't to be an army, then what are they to be?
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  It's been estimated that up to 10% of men are homosexual, so that makes up most, if not all of the difference... Plus migration and things too...
  - meric 11y ago
    The homosexual men are more or less cancelled out by lesbian women...
    - Mikeb85 11y ago
      Except most studies show that more men are exclusively homosexual, whilst more women consider themselves bi-sexual.
      - ilek 11y ago
        Sources would be nice.
- meric 11y ago
  There's a clear trend where Chinese men are marrying Russian women. http://www.chinawhisper.com/6-pictures-of-chinese-farmers-and-russian-wives/ http://www.chinawhisper.com/6-pictures-of-chinese-farmers-an... http://rbth.asia/society/2013/05/25/the_key_to_a_happy_russo-chinese_marriage_46943.html http://rbth.asia/society/2013/05/25/the_key_to_a_happy_russo...
- theandrewbailey 11y ago
  > The leftover men are called an army, and they either die in combat or conquer foreign lands Or they conquer their own land, i.e. a revolution.
  - fredkbloggs 11y ago
    > Or they conquer their own land, i.e. a revolution. Maybe, but that doesn't solve the problem. They're still single and would rather not be. Something else still has to give. A very long civil war might do it, if that's what you're suggesting.
tsotha 11y ago
What makes it a story is the imbalance between the sexes. These women aren't married despite having a pretty unbalanced sex ratio to their advantage.

hellbanner 11y ago

"Twice a week groups of about 30 to 60 parents meet in the same spot, each carrying pieces of paper containing information about their child - their job, level of education and salary, as well as their physical attributes."

FD3SA 11y ago

The "pressure" for these women to find their ideal spouse is similar to the "pressure" startups face in finding ideal employees. That is, they want the absolute best at rock bottom prices. If you read the article, many of these women who desired to get married had numerous suitors, but these suitors were judged unfit for one reason or another and thus failed to meet the women's strict requirements. Much like companies wanting to hire 100x developers at 30$ an hour, these women are unfortunately trying to bend the supply/demand curves to their tastes, rather than working within the reality of the market. As an aside, marriage as an institution in western societies is now a legal quagmire [1]. It's legal roots were laid down in times when women did not earn much and did not vote, so they were paid very generously in case of a divorce whose fault could be proven. Nowadays, divorce is the single most powerful legal instrument to take half of someone's net worth without any reason whatsoever. Marriage as an institution is beyond repair, and any couple who supports the spirit of family unity should boycott legal marriage for their own sake, as it leads to extremely toxic financial incentives for the lower earning spouse. Just another case study in man-made systems which are patched and reworked continuously without thought to the designer's original intent. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTOT6DKfZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTOT6DKfZ8

rodgerd 11y ago
> If you read the article, many of these women who desired to get married had numerous suitors, but these suitors were judged unfit for one reason or another and thus failed to meet the women's strict requirements In traditional societies where marriage is a one-shot that generally ends a woman's career prospects (or, one could argue, shunts them into being a wife), this is entirely rational behaviour. If you were only allowed to pick one job when you left university, and couldn't resign and get a new one, you'd give suggestions you lock yourself into McDonalds the short shrift.
- WalterSear 11y ago
  Not if you end up without a job.
  - 11y ago

raincom 11y ago

This has to do with 'modernization' in the sense that moving away from agrarian society has changed the dynamic of picking partners. It has also given ample freedom to pick and reject: the search space has broadened. When the search space is broadened, you end up thinking that 'more suitors' are out there.

samfisher83 11y ago

Given there are more guys than girls maybe the problem is the girls are too picky.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mcv 11y ago

It's odd that there are so many female "leftovers". With the skewed gender balance due to the one child policy, I'd expect mostly male "leftovers". Though I guess they don't carry as much of a stigma as women do.

Isofarro 11y ago
It's a side-effect of cultural norms going back thousands of years. In marriage, status is a key factor, and the parents of both partners are the main decision maker whether to allow a marriage or not. Status wise: A man marries a women of lower status, a woman marries a man of higher status -- that's more likely to be approved by both sets of parents. (And parental approval is important in Chinese families) Which means, there's talented, very smart women in China who are struggling to find suitable husbands, because they are equal to high status men. And those men are looking for women with less status. The Male leftovers tend to then be at the bottom of the status chain, because there's no lower status of women to marry. So there are loads of rural areas and villages where women have moved to the city, and men remaining have no viable marriage prospects. (This is the segment negatively affected by one-child policy)
- cousin_it 11y ago
  It looks like the Chinese government has adopted some impressively sane policies to even out the gender ratio: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-gender-crisis http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/02/chinas-great-ge... Though a lot still remains to be done, I'm happy that at least some people are thinking about the problem seriously.

rbanffy 11y ago

Having no children has big implications when the pension system is not sufficient to ensure retirement.

NTDF9 11y ago

Why is it always women issues? There are men leftover too. As I see it, men are leftover because they are passed over (by women) for "better men". Women are leftover because they are passed over by men looking for "younger women". So, to optimize mating, men need to work hard in their youth and establish themselves and women need to be VERY active in their partner hunt. As harsh as it sounds, men juggle career and love. Some men succeed, some don't women are now being asked to do the same. Some women will succeed, some won't. I don't feel sorry.