{"id":159529,"date":"2013-07-12T11:34:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T18:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=159529"},"modified":"2013-07-12T11:55:15","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T18:55:15","slug":"leftover-women-bare-branches-and-chinas-housing-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2013\/07\/leftover-women-bare-branches-and-chinas-housing-market\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Addresses China’s “Leftover Women”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The issue of so-called leftover women, or women who remain unmarried in their late 20s, is again in the media spotlight thanks to a bilingual book by Joy Chen titled, “Do Not Marry Before Age 30.”<\/a>\"\" American Public Media’s Marketplace interviewed Chen and other experts about the phenomenon of “leftover women”<\/strong><\/a> and women’s changing ideas about their role in Chinese society:<\/p>\n

Joy Chen\u2019s path to celebrity in China started with a blog she wrote from home in LA. “The blog was all about helping you understand the inside skinny on how to get to the top of global companies,” Chen says.<\/p>\n

It gained a large following from young Chinese — so large, that China\u2019s top publisher took notice. “They came over and said, ‘the Chinese market especially needs a book to encourage women, because young women today, white-collars, are facing many, many challenges in their lives’,” Chen recalls.<\/p>\n

Chief among them: being pressured by your family to hurry up and get married. If Chinese women don\u2019t marry by age 30, they\u2019re often labeled “leftover women”.<\/p>\n

Leta Hong-Fincher is a PhD candidate in sociology at Tsinghua University and author of the forthcoming book “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China.” She says China\u2019s government has popularized the term through the state media. [Source<\/strong><\/a>]<\/p>\n