The resurgence of ‘ignorance is women’s virtue’: ‘Leftover women’ and constructing ‘ideal’ levels of female education in China

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the construction of an ‘ideal’ level of female education in China by reflecting on the social phenomenon of ‘leftover women’, and the perpetuation of this stigma by both Chinese state media. It contributes an in-depth engagement with the educational dimensions of ‘leftover women’ through innovative discourse analysis that examines the content of one of the most popular Chinese dating shows in the last decade. This analysis reveals the role of ‘experts’ in preserving myths about being or becoming ‘leftover’, as well as the influence of family, in particular mothers, on young Chinese women’s choices and self-perception. This paper argues that by attending to popular discourses and their reframing of older Chinese ideas, in particular, ‘ignorance is women’s virtue’, we can offer qualitative insights to the relatively lower numbers of Chinese women at doctoral education levels.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• gender
• discourse
• Chinese ‘leftover women’
• phD

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on equal and complementary contributions from the first and second authors. We would like to thank LI Lin and LI Huihui for their valuable feedback on the historical review of our earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We have translated ‘wucai (无才)’ as ‘ignorance’. But as we shall illustrate later, the connotation of ‘wucai’ is sophisticated and ever-evolving. It does not simply denote illiteracy or the lack of knowledge, but includes a notion of self-pursuit and self-awareness. There is no direct equivalent in English.

2 While we translate ‘cai’ (才) into ‘talent’ here and throughout this paper, it is noteworthy that, in Chinese culture, ‘cai’ is not something inherited or innated; rather, a person is supposed to devote her/himself into self-cultivation to gain it.

3 For example, 76.3% women were in paid work in 1990 compared to 60.8% in 2010 (Attané 2012).

4 Accessed September 2021.

5 Accessed September 2021.

6 Hukou is a system of household registration in China. The benefits that residents enjoy vary from region to region, but generally relating to the qualification of buying property and the right to public education – two things that are highly concerned in marriage.

7 The term ‘super woman’ in this context denotes single women who are economically and intellectually independent and usually enjoy equally high or higher professional status than their male peers.

8 Accessed on 28 September 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of China under Grant 2020ECNU-HLYT026.

Notes on contributors

Yun You

Dr Yun You is an associate professor at East China Normal University, Shanghai. Her research interests include deconstructing the Western dominant construction and representation of East Asian education, and moving further, elaborating Chinese educational ideas and practices from sui generis onto-epistemological lenses and amid the interplays of socio-politics and culture.

Charlotte Nussey

Dr Charlotte Nussey is a research fellow at UCL’s Institute of Education, focusing on education and intersecting inequalities through qualitative methods, particularly around gender, language and the climate crisis.