[Reading addiction] How China's "leftover women" face discrimination, oppression and stigma

Looking back at the past history, is the current status of marriage and property rights of Chinese women advancing with the times or going backwards? How can the gender equality movement in China in the 21st century resist the oppression and gender discrimination of the state? Leta Hong Fincher's book "China's Leftover Women: Sexism and Wealth Unequal Power Game" provides perspectives and observations that shatter our past myths about these issues.

This book is the result of a two-and-a-half-year investigation and research based on interviews with more than 200 respondents when the author was studying for a doctorate at Tsinghua University in China. "In a way it's just a fictional issue.

Since 2007, Chinese officials, through news reports, editorials, TV programs and other media, have discussed “too much focus on work”, “too much career ambition”, “too picky about mate selection”, and “unwillingness to lower standards”. In the city, highly educated single women in their late thirties are engaged in an overwhelming stigma campaign.

Through a series of operations, the state media tries to shape the public ideology of "leftover women" in an attempt to make the above-mentioned single women classified as "leftover women" stop focusing on work and go into marriage. Under the unbalanced crisis, the promotion of marriage and childbirth to highly educated single women is to carry out its policy of improving the quality of the population and maintain social stability.

Taming restless men and entering marriage and childbirth is seen as a "vocation" of women, and vice versa is seen as a threat to the moral structure of society. The influence of the official media campaign has caused many young women with a high degree of education to gradually internalize the "leftover women" as a kind of panic under the repeated "bombing" of the media and relatives and friends. Pulling the unsuitable marriage partner, hurriedly entered the marriage.

The demographic structure of more men than women does not give women an advantage in the marriage market. Instead, it is to avoid the termination of the marriage contract and become the so-called "leftover women", which leads to excessive concessions in various rights and interests of marriage, especially on the purchase of real estate.

Due to the lack of the current real estate registration system in China, even if women sponsor some funds to help the man buy a new house, it is difficult for the real estate to be registered in two people's names. Give up the fight for the property to be jointly owned by the husband and wife. Coupled with the fact that the husband can often obtain more housing funds from his parents, relatives and friends, the husband's family often has a greater say in the registration of the real estate. Therefore, the owners of the real estate registration are often registered as males.

The author also mentioned that the requirement to buy a house first and then get married seems on the surface to be a manifestation of women and their families fighting for marital security, and the media often creates a discussion that bears the huge pressure of buying a house, all of which are borne by men, but It is an indisputable fact that many men can get more financial assistance from their parents or elders when they buy a house.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult for women to seek assistance from their parents or family members to buy a house. It is even common for them to be asked to sponsor their male relatives to buy a house under the pressure of filial piety. In addition, many women do not think that they can ask their parents for financial assistance to buy a house like men; or even if they have injected funds to help buy a house, but the ownership of the property is only registered in the husband's name. It can be said that women, like men, bear the heavy pressure of getting married and buying a house, but they are often forced to give up the ownership of the property after paying a considerable amount of money to buy a house.

From the stigma of "leftover women" shaped by the state media; society's re-acceptance of traditional gender roles; and the absence of a property registration system that excludes women's rights to accumulate property wealth, women's marriage and property rights were reformed in the 1980s After the opening and so far, it is gradually eroding and going backwards.

The author also uses the research results of historians to prove this retrogressive phenomenon. Women's property rights are weak today, far less than the Song Dynasty when women were given the greatest inheritance rights a thousand years ago. The Yuan Dynasty entered China with a conquest dynasty, and re-established the property inheritance system in line with the Mongolian steppe tradition and the Confucian patriarchal customs. Since then, the golden age of women's property inheritance has been reversed. Societal norms have been rewritten to be quite unfavorable to women.

Today, there are many parents who would rather provide funds to their male relatives to buy a house, but are unwilling to contribute to help their daughters to buy a house. The author believes that this proves that no matter how long the discriminatory social customs are, they may continue to circulate and reappear. , even women themselves do not question, nor do they think they should have an open discussion attitude.

The author believes that under the curse of "leftover women", the weakness of women's property rights and gender discrimination, the impact is not limited to the above-mentioned situations. If women encounter domestic violence in marriages where property rights have made too many concessions, they will be limited by legal obstacles and financial constraints. Dependence on the man can only continue to be trapped in the violence of marriage and it is difficult to escape. Women become "same wives" without knowing it; singles or ethnic groups with different sexual orientations, due to marriages that do not conform to the heterosexual model, face a more severe situation under the shadow of the threat of buying a house, sexism and violence.

Even in the face of gender discrimination in society and the oppression of the national security mechanism, the author also found that many women, like the interviewees above, began to realize the discrimination and injustice deeply rooted in the country and society, and began to develop Use various low-key organizations to carry out high-profile protest actions, such as art performances, occupation of the men's toilet movement, gay equality and other movements to fight back.

Past history shows that gender equality does not always develop linearly and gradually moves towards a more and more progressive state. The struggle for rights and interests is always difficult, but the loss of rights and interests is always very easy. In the face of these ideologies that sometimes appear, sometimes lurk around you and me, and are contrary to equal rights, we should remain vigilant, and perhaps in the future, a countercurrent may form and fight back against us.

This article was published on the [Story Studio] website on December 21, 2015: "How China's "Leftover Women" Face Discrimination, Oppression and Stigma"