|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Titus
Joined: 19 May 2012
|
 Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 7:05 am Post subject: China�s �Leftover� Women |
 |
|
The article below was written by Leta Hong Fincher. She is an American doctoral student in Tsinghua University�s Department of Sociology.
http://www.chinadebate.com/files/2011/09/Letapic-256x300.jpg
The article accurately describes the usual outcome of the Sex and the City lifestyle. Women who delay marriage and babies for careers and fun (and the perfect man) often end up alone.
Being alone is a crappy outcome for them. For the society, if this becomes common (as it is in the West) it is a disaster. The more intelligent and motivated women will not pass their higher quality genes on and the result is a lower quality group on the whole.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/opinion/global/chinas-leftover-women.html?smid=tw-share&pagewanted=print
| Quote: |
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?�
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.
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.
Glad we got that straight. Now, why would China�s state feminist agency conduct a scare-mongering campaign against single, educated women?
Curious, I searched the Women�s Federation Web site and found that it posted its first article on �leftover� women in 2007, shortly after China�s State Council issued an edict on strengthening the Population and Family Planning program to address �unprecedented population pressures.� These pressures include the sex-ratio imbalance � which �causes a threat to social stability� � and the �low quality of the general population, which makes it hard to meet the requirements of fierce competition for national strength,� according to the State Council. The State Council names �upgrading population quality (suzhi)� as one of its key goals, and appoints the Women�s Federation as a primary implementer of its population planning policy.
What better way to upgrade population quality than to frighten �high-quality� women into marrying and having a child for the good of the nation?
The Women�s Federation columns on sheng nu all share the same goal: convince single, educated women to stop being so ambitious and get married already:
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.
Some of the columns have been reposted several times over the years and list helpful tips, such as �seduce but don�t pester� and �be persistent but not willful�:
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?
Since 2008, local population planning commissions in cities such as Nanjing and Ningbo have carried out �interventions� to address the �leftover women crisis.� Local Women�s Federation branches have arranged matchmaking events for �highly educated, high-quality� women. This March there was a drive in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, for �leftover women to speedily find conjugal happiness.�
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
rollo
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: China
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:05 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| it's a choice not a tradgedy. White person overlaying her perspective on to Asians. This is a "problem" I will NOt lose any sleep over. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Zackback
Joined: 05 Nov 2010
Location: Kyungbuk
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
These ladies should just prepare to marry right after high school. They may have achieved economic "success" but man who wants some old bag like that? Yeah she has cash and that would be cool but along with it comes this attitude of "Well, I am an independent woman".
I'd be like "Shove it!"
But then again once they are a few years or so above 25 they are way too old for my taste so I don't even waste my time talking with them.
The only reason a chick should go to college/university is to get her MRS degree.
Last edited by Zackback on Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:13 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
You forgot the part about the rampant cheating some wives of powerful Chinese men must endure.
| Quote: |
And once a �leftover� woman finds marital bliss, what should she do if her husband has an affair?
The Women�s Federation comes to the rescue, with the headline, �Faced With A Marital Crisis, Women Need to Improve Themselves�:
When you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you are denying the man �face� ... No man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes ... Try changing your hairstyle or your fashion. Women must constantly change for the better.
In short, it�s the woman�s fault for refusing to get married, and once she is married, it�s the woman�s fault if her husband has an affair. Of course. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Zackback
Joined: 05 Nov 2010
Location: Kyungbuk
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Then the women were stupid enough to marry them. They knew with all that money he has that this is part of the lifestyle.
Don't come crying to me when your real goal was to have an easy life, along with nice clothes and jewelry, cars, etc. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 4:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| rollo wrote: |
| it's a choice not a tradgedy. |
On an individual level, it's a choice. On a collective level, millions of individual choices can easily culminate in a tragedy. One could argue that these women have every right to focus on themselves at the expense of their society's long-term well being, but their society has every right to chastise them for it as well. The West will have to learn the same lesson sooner or later: we need dedicated mothers performing a task that is about as sacred to human nature as anything can be, not H.R. personelle and middle managers.
Seriously, think of how many bright, beautiful children our societies are sacrificing so that their potential mothers can instead sit in a cubicle writing up memos about how bad sexual harassment is, or how to show your work mates proper respect, or why making jokes isn't okay. In what insane world is the latter more valuable in any sense than the former? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 5:02 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| The more intelligent and motivated women will not pass their higher quality genes on and the result is a lower quality group on the whole. |
The inferior organisms have been multiplying faster than the superior ones for some time now in the west. The mushrooming underclass. The opposite of what evolution predicted. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
GF
Joined: 26 Sep 2012
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 5:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
All aboard the pointless debate train, ETA: never !
Since these women are having difficulty reproducing, doesn't that mean they're inferior by evolutionary definition ? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
|
| Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Junior wrote: |
| Quote: |
| The more intelligent and motivated women will not pass their higher quality genes on and the result is a lower quality group on the whole. |
The inferior organisms have been multiplying faster than the superior ones for some time now in the west. The mushrooming underclass. The opposite of what evolution predicted. |
Evolutionary theory does not predict that smart people are more likely to reproduce. It predicts that whoever functions best in their environment are most likely to reproduce.
The upper class has always been a minority, and the middle class has essentially been taxed out of existence. That leaves us with the lower class, whose standards of living have been steadily increasing due to those tax dollars that have had a significant part in destroying the middle class.
I've worked my entire life post university and haven't had much time for children. I know people who have lived nearly as comfortably as me their entire lives, barely worked a day and popped out a bunch of kids. Our society makes it possible for them to basically have the family I didn't paid for by my hard work.
That's why the lower class is booming and the middle class is disappearing. |
|
| Back to top |
| |
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
