China's Leftover Women: Late Marriage Among Professional Women and Its Consequences

ISBN-13: 9781138554221 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017

Sandy To

Opis

The term "sheng nu" ("leftover women") has been coined in China to describe the increasing number of women, especially intelligent professional women aged thirty and over who have not married. This book explores this phenomenon, demonstrating that such women are often deliberately choosing careers, single lives and/or non-traditional relationships over traditional marriage. The book explains the reasons for these choices, discusses the consequences for China’s population, already distorted by the single child policy, and compares the situation in China with that in other countries. The book also relates the problem to theories of feminism, individualisation, reflexivity and agency.

Spis treści

Preface  1. Highly Educated, Accomplished ... and Unmarried: Introduction to China’s ‘Leftover Women’  2. ‘I’m Very Traditional so I Must Get Married!’: Traditional Marriage Views of Modern Career Women  3. ‘I Have a Lot of Friends who are Still Single Because Men Think that we are Too Tough!’: Discrimination in the Marriage Market  4. ‘I’m Quite Unhappy Because he Made me Face the Choice.... So I Chose Work’: Patriarchal Demands and Difficult Choices  5. ‘I Have a Lot of Western Colleagues who Say they Don’t Like their Wives not Working. They Think they Should Utilize their Talents’: Contesting Discriminatory Constraints  6. ‘I Would Like to Find Someone who Can Take Care of Things at Home and Complement my Schedule’: Combating Controlling Constraints  7. The Strategies of Partner Choice: Maximizers, Traditionalists, Satisficers, Innovators  8. The Future of China’s ‘Leftover Women’: Conclusion

O autorze

Sandy To is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong