Leftover Women Research Articles

‘Living-alone’ wanghong: Women’s singleness as a wanghong genre and the configuration of Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture

In this article, I explore how women’s singleness is represented by ‘living-alone’ wanghong on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小红书) and discuss the configuration of Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture. The term ‘“living-alone” wanghong’ refers to a group of Chinese vloggers – mostly women – who showcase their daily lives in domestic spaces while living by themselves. ‘Living-alone’ wanghong narrate their singleness as an autonomous choice that leads to a happy, high-quality, and bourgeois life. This narrative is distinct from the stigmatised ‘ shengnü’ (剩女, leftover women) discourse in contemporary urban China. By conducting thematic analysis of 50 sampled ‘living-alone’ vlogs featuring female wanghong, I examine three recurring themes: economic independence; self-care/self-discipline; and enjoyable loneliness. The analysis contextualises these three tropes in the postfeminist wanghong culture on Chinese social media. I argue that while ‘living-alone’ wanghong productively challenge stigmas around single women in the context of urban China, they ultimately transform women’s singleness into a neoliberal and postfeminist object in feminised consumer culture. Within their narratives, the structural struggles that single women face become issues that can and should be resolved by individual women. This transformation overshadows the underlying logic of consumption/commercialisation within Chinese postfeminist wanghong culture. This article further discusses the importance of the intersectional gender dimension in wanghong studies, as evidenced by the case study of ‘living-alone’ wanghong.

Virtual Ambiguity: The Relationship Between Leftover Men and Leftover Women and Social Platforms

Virtual Ambiguity: The Relationship Between Leftover Men and Leftover Women and Social Platforms

“Leftover Women”: Stigmatize Unmarried Women in China

“Leftover Women”: Stigmatize Unmarried Women in China

Book Review: Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher

Book Review: <i>Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China</i> by Leta Hong Fincher

Learned Women, “Leftover” Women, and “The Third Sex” Women's Learning in the Confucian Tradition and Contemporary China

Abstract This paper investigates women's learning experiences in the Confucian tradition and the social dismay and stigma associated with them. Despite being considered a meta-virtue in the Confucian tradition, learning becomes rather complex when women are the learners. It is viewed by learned women as a curse rather than a blessing in pre-modern China; it is associated with the stigma of “leftover women” and “the third sex” in contemporary China. Based on an examination of works written by women thinkers, I argue that the asymmetry in social recognition for men's and women's learning is rooted in the social and family structure of nei (in) and wai (out), which does not assign sufficient cultural and moral significance to learning achieved in the nei domain nor permit its continuous and accumulative existence. I propose two preliminary steps to rectify the issue of the lack of social and moral recognition of women's learning: first, a reforming of the nei and wai structure to allow assigning more moral, cultural, and normative significance to affairs in the nei domain. Second, re-examine and utilize classical Confucian texts such as the Mencius and later works by women writers to support and guide such reformations.

Book Review: Leftover women: The resurgence of gender inequality in China by Fincher, L. H.

Book Review: <i>Leftover women: The resurgence of gender inequality in China</i> by Fincher, L. H.

Stigmatizing female success: The affective economies of leftover women in popular television dramas in China

This article sheds light on the media representations of successful women using the theorization of affective economies. We focus on four female characters in three popular television series: Andy in Ode to Joy (2016–17), Su Mingyu in All Is Well (2019) and Luo Zijun and Tang Jing in The First Half of My Life (2017). First, we begin by using television content analysis to examine the ways women are subjected to the paradoxical cultural values that stigmatize unmarried women as shengnü (‘leftover women’) while promoting the neo-liberal ideal of duli nüxing (‘independent women’). Second, to explore the affective economies of successful women and how feelings and cultural values are circulated among the female audience, we conduct an in-depth analysis of interviews with 21 female viewers in China. Third, we employ feminist critical discourse analysis to examine how these popular television dramas reflect changing gender norms in China, where new types of relationships are now deemed acceptable. We argue that these series have represented changing gender norms that successful women can achieve happiness by securing a ‘carefree’ romantic relationship, replacing marriage as the new happy ending.

Attitudes Toward Women in Media Discourse -- Discourse Construction with "Leftover Women" as an Example

The media first proposed the term leftover women and then spread it on the Internet. Ex-isting studies on leftover women mainly focus on traditional media, such as newspapers and TV, and rarely involve we media. Through text analysis and comparative research method, this paper conducts a comparative study on the discourse attitudes of official me-dia and private media towards women and the media images they construct. According to the data citation and case analysis, the following results are concluded: the official medias construction of the image of leftover women is relatively rigid and simple, and the report-ing plate mainly focuses on the entertainment part. Due to the relative freedom of speech, private media create a more diversified image, and the mode is mainly personal Posting, re-lying on traffic to spread. To a certain extent, this paper fills in the research of leftover women in the field of we media and puts forward suggestions on how to create the me-dia image of leftover women more objectively.

“Complicating images of the modern Chinese woman, from only child to ‘leftover woman’”

ABSTRACT Two recent documentaries, Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s One Child Nation (2019) and Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s Leftover Women (2019), investigate the legacy of China’s one-child policy and its social impacts on marriage, career and motherhood in the present day. In the films, seemingly progressive young women subjects are depicted against a backdrop of culturally backward and brainwashed individual community members, representing Chinese culture at large, which results in a confusing narrative replete with logical gaps and unanswered questions. This article brings together qualitative data collected from interviews with “leftover women” with film analysis and scholarship on transnational feminism to argue for the importance of critical modes of representation and cautions against the tendency to blame culture.

Representations of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese English-medium newspapers

Abstract Previous media studies have largely examined the media construction of ‘leftover women’ in the Chinese-medium news media that are pervaded by patriarchal content. Yet, little attention has been given to the thematic content surrounding leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media which seem to be more liberal in their stance. To fill this niche, this study employs a key keyword analysis to examine the dominant thematic concepts related to leftover women in the Chinese English-medium news media. The findings illustrate that the key keywords in the news reports belong to three thematic categories, namely social actors and attributes, dating activities and relationships, and other social matters. These thematic categories are intertwined with one another to construct the overall representations of leftover women suggesting ideological implications for both patriarchy and egalitarianism. The usefulness of employing corpus techniques to examine overarching themes in gender representations is also highlighted in this study.

“By whom was I left behind?”

Abstract Applying Bamberg’s (2012) practice-oriented analytical framework for narrative identity as produced through specific linguistic behaviours, this research focuses on the context-specific construction of multiple identities in the accounts of Chinese leftover women (sheng nü). It also seeks to investigate how they negotiate selves and handle struggles in both the storyworld and the storytelling-world by examining the trinity of form, content and context narrated in seven semi-structured interviews. This research reveals that these unmarried Chinese women attempt to narrate a positive positioning of self. They deconstruct the socially ascribed leftover identity but renegotiate a gendered self as either invisible or visible women integrated within an agentic ‘excellent’ (youxiu) self, albeit somehow disrupted within the diverse embedding of patriarchal cultural accounts.

Representing Single Women: The Transformation of “Leftover Women” on Chinese TV Series

The tendency of late marriage and the increasing single population in Chinese society have galvanized a considerable amount of anxiety in recent years. Part of such anxiety has been manifested through the constant media representations of “shengnü” or “leftover women” since 2010. Referring to women in their late twenties or over thirties while still not getting married, the term “leftover women” indicates a continuous patriarchal policing of single women circulated in mass media. This study, by comparing two popular Chinese television series— We Get Married (2013) and Nothing but Thirty (2020), discusses the altering constructions of unmarried women on Chinese television against the backdrop of China's post-socialist gender politics. The comparison provides a useful vantage point to examine the emerging gendered structures and new cultural imperatives under specific historical contexts.

‘Leftover women’: A sociolinguistic study of gender bias in Chinese

Abstract This study is an investigation of a newly-created Chinese lexeme shengnü ‘leftover women’, referring to single women beyond the socially expected marrying age. Data from an online survey of 416 respondents reveals the various aspects of gender bias against women as seen in the coined term. They also provide evidence that gender bias is waning, as younger and female respondents are more likely to view shengnü as more offensive, to see the reasons for being ‘leftover’ as women’s desire for independence and freedom, and to identify society as the source of pressure for women to marry. Our study contributes to the field of sociolinguistics via its investigation of shengnü with other aspects of the Chinese language, by adopting a social media survey data gathering method – which offered us a sizable sample – and by being possibly the first empirical sociolinguistic study of gender bias via a detailed investigation of the various aspects of a particular lexeme in the Chinese language.

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.

Representations of “leftover” women and men in the Chinese English-language news media: a keyword analysis of similarities and difference

Abstract Although the phenomenon of “leftover” women and men in China has been hotly debated over the past decade, there are few comparative studies investigating similarities and differences underlying media representations of the two groups. To fill this gap, this study employs a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the discourses of similarities and differences underlying the representations of leftover women and men in the Chinese English-language news media between 2007 and 2017 by building two corpora. The findings indicate a similar discourse surrounding both leftover women and men, which is heterosexual marriage pressure. The findings also reveal two discourses highlighting differences between leftover women and men: while leftover women are represented as A-grade women facing fertility issues, leftover men are represented as D-grade men confronted with the demographic crisis. These discourses have ideological implications for heteronormativity and patriarchy. The study sheds light on non-hegemonic forms of femininity and masculinity constructed by the media in contemporary Chinese society, as well as the usefulness of employing corpus techniques to examine both similarities and differences in gender representations.

Tradition, modernity, and the visual representation of “leftover women” in the English language news media in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the visual representations of “leftover women” (unmarried women who are 27 or above) in the English language news media in China by employing multimodal discourse analysis. The findings show that both conservative and gendered discourses are constructed by different visual resources in relation to “leftover women’s” actions, reactions, outfits, symbolic processes, and settings. Our research provides new understandings of Chinese single womanhood, which reflect the State profamily and pronatalist agenda intertwined with the pressure from tradition on the one hand, and women’s increasing awareness of individual choices, sexual freedom, and feminist values under the influence of globalisation and modernisation on the other.

From leftover women to cuihun – audience reception of TV representation on marriageable single women in China

ABSTRACT “Leftover women” have not only become a social phenomenon for wide discussion, but also a source for TV production in China recently. The term “leftover women” was given based upon the collision between the value of traditional Chinese marriage and the empowerment of marriageable single women nowadays. Chinese TV series have taken full advantage and represented “leftover women” in order to get attention and a high audience rating. The wide TV representation, however, has generated increased anxiety, concerns, and pressure on Chinese single women about early marriage (cuihun in Chinese). It has meanwhile acted as an amplifier of the marriage pressure on the female in today’s China. Our finding shows that a certain percentage of the female audience did not welcome the inclusion of such a misrepresented female image in the TV, which further intensifies the tension between marriageable single women, traditional marriage pressure from Chinese families, TV productions, and society. “Leftover women” in China have been examined to different extents, while the implications of TV representation are under-researched. This article thus calls for academic attention to this field for future exploration.

Decoding Chinese Millennials: The Culture of Singles in the Post-Mao Era

ABSTRACT Though China has long served as a prototypical collectivist culture, the growing number of individual and unattached adult singles is gaining currency in the country. While previous studies of Chinese singles are typically geared toward the country’s so-called “leftover women”, and treat singledom as pejorative or problematic, this study focuses on the emerging demographic of young urban singles and their distinctive social role in reform-era China. Based on semi-structured interviews with 18 singletons from Guangdong Province who are entering the workforce, this study provides an exploratory overview of this new generation of young Chinese singles. The interviews reveal how this emergent single culture is prompting changes in individual autonomy, interpersonal attachment, marriage, gender norms, and family dynamics in contemporary China.

The Pressures on Leftover Women and Men under the Chinese Patriarchal System

The Pressures on Leftover Women and Men under the Chinese Patriarchal System

Gendered Governance: Is China Taking a U-Turn on Its Women’s Liberation Movement to Solve the Problem Left Over by It: ‘The Leftover Women’?

Increasing pursuit of education, employment and financial independence among women, which is undoubtedly an impact of early inception of women’s liberation movement in China, has nevertheless resulted in more and more women becoming uncompromising, when it comes to a marriage partner. Moreover, even though men are always in search for good looking and professionally successful women, but they are invariably unwilling to wed women with as much or more education or income than themselves. As a result, a new category of women, the ‘leftover women’ has emerged. This article explores the reasons behind their emergence and role played by women’s liberation movement therein. It also studies the actions taken by governing bodies in creating and propagating the term itself and the stigma around it, especially pinpointing the approach taken by them towards ‘leftover women’ visa-vie ‘leftover men’. It reveals the underlying patriarchal agenda of gendered governance, behind twisting and practically stalling the women’s liberation movement in China in the recent years. As the official narrative of women’s liberation and development is increasingly catering to more traditional and patriarchal values, the article argues, Chinese government is taking a complete U-turn in women’s liberation movement in the 21st century.