ChinaFile Recommends
06.21.18An American Lean-In Guru in China
Wall Street Journal
Joy Chen got a glimpse of the limelight as a Los Angeles deputy mayor two decades ago, but it was nothing like the fame she has found in China urging women to forget what they’ve been taught about matrimony.
ChinaFile Recommends
05.30.18In China’s Booming Tech Scene, Women Battle Sexism and Conservative Values
Reuters
Ms Li has a day job in the marketing department of one of China’s biggest tech firms.
Conversation
03.20.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/young-women-sys.jpg?itok=h9Z2kMgv)
What Is the Significance of China’s #MeToo Movement?
As the #MeToo movement has swept America, it has also made waves in greater China. On the mainland, the most widely publicized incident involved Luo Xixi’s allegation in a January 2018 Weibo post that her professor at Beihang University, Chen Xiaowu...
Books
02.07.18![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/left-over_book_sys.jpg?itok=gOtOc3rT)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/roseann_lake_-_book_cover.jpg)
Leftover in China
Editor’s note: After we originally posted this video interview about Leftover in China, questions were brought to our attention about the book. We took the video down while we reviewed these concerns, and we determined that the interview is suitable to run on our book video platform.W. W. Norton & Company: Factory Girls meets The Vagina Monologues in this fascinating narrative on China’s single women—and why they could be the source of its economic future.Forty years ago, China enacted the one-child policy, only recently relaxed. Among many other unintended consequences, it resulted in both an enormous gender imbalance—with predictions of over 20 million more men than women of marriage age by 2020—and China’s first generations of only-daughters. Given the resources normally reserved for boys, these girls were pushed to study, excel in college, and succeed in careers, as if they were sons.Now living in an economic powerhouse, enough of these women have decided to postpone marriage, or not marry at all, spawning a label: “leftovers.” Unprecedentedly well-educated and goal-oriented, they struggle to find partners in a society where gender roles have not evolved as vigorously as society itself, and where new professional opportunities have made women less willing to compromise their careers or concede to marriage for the sake of being wed. Further complicating their search for a mate, the vast majority of China’s single men reside in and are tied to the rural areas where they were raised. This makes them geographically, economically, and educationally incompatible with city-dwelling “leftovers,” who also face difficulty in partnering with urban men, given urban men’s general preference for more dutiful, domesticated wives.Part critique of China’s paternalistic ideals, part playful portrait of the romantic travails of China’s trailblazing women and their well-meaning parents who are anxious to see their daughters snuggled into traditional wedlock, Leftover in China focuses on the lives of four individual women against a backdrop of colorful anecdotes, hundreds of interviews, and rigorous historical and demographic research to show how these “leftovers” are the linchpin to China’s future.{chop}
ChinaFile Recommends
01.24.18‘Me Too,’ Chinese Women Say. Not so Fast, Say the Censors.
New York Times
They call themselves “silence breakers,” circulate petitions demanding investigations into sexual harassment and share internet memes like clenched fists with painted nails.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.28.17China Leads the March of Women Learning Business
Financial Times
In her early 20s Cindy Mi preferred long pencil skirts and severe blazers. She was managing her family education business and she projected authority by dressing conservatively.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.02.15More Working Women in China Freeze Their Eggs
Wall Street Journal
Government limits fertility treatment, so career-focused women turn to U.S. for help in having babies.
Features
11.06.14![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/e12-527.jpg?itok=dDg2GmrS)
No Women Need Apply
“Applicants limited to male.” 23-year-old job-hunter Huang Rong (not her real name) noticed this line in a job announcement only after she had heard nothing from the recruiter and gone back to check the advertisement online. She had graduated from...
ChinaFile Recommends
05.23.13China’s Entrenched Gender Gap
New York Times
China’s figures for working women is high because it includes women working in the countryside, and unlike developed countries, nearly half of China’s population is still rural. The picture for urban women is very different.&...
Reports
03.07.13![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_160x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/bsr_between_the_lines_image.png?itok=2pD18ZAi)
Between the Lines: Listening to Female Factory Workers in China
BSR
Women are crucial to China’s manufacturing sector. While women comprise more than 44% of the overall workforce, they represent about 60% of workers who migrate from rural areas to cities to work in factories. These female workers are diverse, with...