Gender, media, and myth-making: constructing China’s leftover women

ABSTRACT

In the last 10 years, the term ‘leftover women’ (剩女)—educated, unmarried women over the age of 27—has emerged as a visible stereotype in popular consciousness in China. Despite the surplus of men that is a result of China’s One Child Policy, women are blamed for marriage market challenges through sexist narratives and terminology. While some scholarship treats ‘leftover women’ as an accepted demographic phenomenon with clear causes and impacts, it can also be viewed as an artificial construct created through socially generated gender stereotypes and furthered through media messaging. This article examines and compares sociological research on Chinese marriage patterns, presentations of ‘leftover women’ in contemporary Chinese media, and independent interview findings to understand the role of media in the construction of gender discourse and the perpetuation of gender stereotypes. These rigid concepts of gender roles and ideal womanhood have far-flung consequences, both for women who internalize these misperceptions and for the social hierarchies supported by antiquated gender constructs.

KEYWORDS:

• Leftover women
• gender discourse
• marriage practices
• sexism
• leftover women
• femininity in China
• media representations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hannah Feldshuh graduated Phi Beta Kappa in April 2016 from the University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts with high honors in Asian Language and Cultures and International Studies. As an undergraduate, Hannah interned at the United States Trade Representative China desk and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Simon Chair in Political Economy. In summer 2016, she served as a Critical Language Scholar in Suzhou, China. Hannah is a current scholar at the Yenching Academy, Peking University, where she studies international relations and gender in China.

Notes

1 Translation is provided by the English subtitling in Let’s Get Married.

2 Wei and Zhen (2014) is the only study that explicitly explores ‘shengnü’ within the context of popular media. More work is devoted to the role of state media in propagating the term. Hong Fincher (2014), Larson (2012), and To (2013) discuss the role of government publications in shaping ‘shengnü’ discourse.

3 Quotes from Let’s Get Married are translated through a combination of my own translation and accompanying English subtitles.

4 Quotes from If You Are the One are translated by Wei and Zhen (2014), with my own modifications.

5 Quotes from iPartment are provided from my own translations and accompanying English subtitles.