China’s Leftover Women: A Conversation with Dr. Leta Hong Fincher

In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Dr. Leta Hong Fincher joins us to discuss the legal and social status of women in China. Dr. Fincher, who has written widely on gender issues in the PRC, reviews the history of Chinese marriage and divorce policies with an eye towards China’s contemporary feminist movements. She speaks to how the privatization of housing in the 1990s led to widening gender income gaps and the way women are increasingly discriminated against in the workplace. She highlights, amidst China’s ongoing demographic struggles, the plight of so-called “leftover women,” or sheng nu, who are faced with growing government and societal pressure to marry and start families. Dr. Fincher concludes by discussing the future of feminism in China, emphasizing the resilience and popularity of feminist movements despite the challenges they have faced.
Dr. Leta Hong Fincher (weai.columbia.edu/content/let...) is a journalist and research associate at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute. A sociologist by trade, she focuses on feminist issues in China and has published two books on this subject - Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (2018) and Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2014, with a recently-published 10-year edition). Dr. Fincher is fluent in Mandarin and was the first American to receive a PhD in sociology from Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

[@phil20_20]

I'm not expecting Xi to change things in light of the shrinking birth rate. His pride won't allow it. Everyone is worried about their countries' workforces, but they're not looking at equality, rather fertility.

[@BruceWSims]

I cannot state in any stronger terms the mixing of a variety of societal issues without discrimination among the social forces at work. It is, IMHO, an insult to Womens' Consciousness Raising to confabulate LBGTQ, Womens Rights, "Left-over Women" and Objectification of Women as though these are part and parcel of the same energy. I see this pattern repeated around the World and can only stand in shock that this is the highest regard that is being paid to the issues. Other than blowing your own academic trumpets, what is it you think you are accomplishing??????

[@Cerrack40]

Lol get emotionally off center 😂

[@thestockfother]

History goes through cycles. We're in a period right now whete woman in rich countries have been given a lot of freedoms to not think of falling in line with their biological purpose. Men will eventually have to curtail this like in tye past to recoup population numbers for affected nations. It's always for the greater good. This is why the US gov permitted states (micro countries) to reban abortion if they want too. Which some did do.