China’s ‘Leftover Women’ Are Screwing Up the Country

My Facebook friend Shanshan Thompson sent me this New York Times China op-ed last night. Titled ‘China’s ‘Leftover Women’ , the author addresses the pressures being put on women in China to marry and have a child. 

Note, that there is considerable pressure on the Chinese government to end its one-child policy and adopt a two-child one. Census data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2011, China’s gender ratio stood at 117.78 newborn boys for every 100 baby girls, a continuous decline from 119.45 in 2009 and 117.94 in 2010. While positive, the results of the one-child policy have created significant problems. It’s estimated that by 2020, there will be 24 million more men than women at marriage age in China.

The institution charged with being a primary source of pressure on women’s choices and promoter of insecurity in women is the All-China Women’s Federation, founded by the Communist Parti in 1949 to “protect women’s rights and interests.”

Headlines on the ‘feminist’ website include:

* “Overcoming the Big Four Emotional Blocks: Leftover Women Can Break out of Being Single.”

* “Eight Simple Moves to Escape the Leftover Women Trap.”

* “Do Leftover Women Really Reserve Our Sympathy?”

I will share more advice to Chinese women by their government at the end of photographer Stockton Johnson’s beautiful editorial ‘Romantic Pastel’, starring Tian Yi for Vogue China January 2013.Yi Guo has styled a gorgeous tableau of spring romanticism to feed the aspirations of China’s growing class of professional women.

America is clearly not the only nation with one political party seizing control of women’s bodies in an effort to force women to deal with our own challenging birth rate, previously held in balance by immigrant women who are now having fewer children.

Writing continues after editorial images.