Qualified to be deviant: stigma-management strategies among Chinese leftover women

This paper highlights the intersection of gender, sexuality and class in shaping the ways in which ‘leftover’ women navigate legal and social discrimination. ‘Leftover women’ is a stigmatising term in China that refers to women who do not get married by the time they reach their late twenties. Based on my fieldwork in China with queer and heterosexual ‘leftover’ women, I introduce two strategies of stigma management: ‘buying a licence to be deviant’ and ‘identity-hopping’. The former is a strategy adopted by heterosexual women with financial resources and a desire frequently expressed by queer women. ‘Buying a licence to be deviant’ refers to the strategy of accumulating sufficient financial resources to justify one's choice to be deviant and deal with the legal consequences of the evasion of the population policies. ‘Identity-hopping’ is popular among those with a lower social and financial status, who use the law's labelling function to hop from one stigmatised identity to another as a way to deal with stigma. From an intersectional lens, this paper advances law and society's study of stigma and discrimination by emphasising the hierarchy of stigmatised identities and the strategy of using the law's power of labelling identities to hop from one identity to another. It also demonstrates how the intersection of gender, sexuality and class complicates the ways in which leftover women understand and engage with the law.

Relational Dignity, State Law, and Chinese Leftover Women’s Choices in Marriage and Childbearing

Legal scholars tend to understand dignity as an intrinsic value that each individual gains at birth. This article aims to rethink dignity from a relational perspective. As dignity is highly dependent on other people’s judgement and evaluations in China, I use “relational dignity” to stress the precarious and relational nature of dignity in societies in which people attach great importance to guanxi networks. I discuss how relational dignity and state law interact to shape leftover women’s choices in marriage and childbearing. The precarious and relational nature of dignity motivates leftover women to follow dominant social norms in order to fit in. As a result, it reinforces state law’s discrimination against unmarried women and single mothers. On the other hand, the rubber-stamp quality of state law enables leftover women to use legal recognition to win societal recognition and attain relational dignity.

Gender discrimination in societal and familial realms: Understanding agency among Chinese marriage migrant women in Switzerland

To understand the agency of Chinese marriage migrant women in Switzerland in their everyday life, the present article examines the reasons why Chinese women marry European men and their post-migratory life in Switzerland. Based on interviews with Chinese marriage migrant women, the article discusses their gendered representations before migration (as “leftover women” or “divorced women”) to being “foreign wives” after migration to Switzerland. Their migration from China to Switzerland also resulted to a change in their roles from “professional women” to “homemakers.” The gender-related discrimination the women encountered from China to their post-migration life in Switzerland demonstrates a continuum of gender discrimination in which they highly exert their agency that has also been enhanced by acts of resistance.

“Leftover Women” or Single by Choice: Gender Role Negotiation of Single Professional Women in Contemporary China

In today’s Chinese society, we see more and more well-educated, well-paid, and independent career women. However, as traditional femininity has been associated with subordination and sacrifice, well-educated career women are perceived as less feminine and less like proper “women” or prospective wives. Career women who remain single until their late twenties have been referred to within Chinese popular culture as “leftover women.” The current research explores the negative discourses that single career-oriented women encounter in their lives, as well as their own perceptions on work, marriage, and gender roles. Through in-depth interviews with 30 single, professional women, I examined whether these women are really “leftover” on the marriage market and how they perceive their independent, single life. The study aims to explore how these career-oriented women live within conflicting social expectations and value systems, as well as how they perceive gender roles, marriage, and career.

What Are You Reading?

Reviewed Work(s):1. Leftover women: The resurgence of gender inequality in China by Fincher, L.H.2. Gender and media: Representing, producing, consuming by Krijnen, T. & Van Bauwel, S.3. Feminism and the mastery of nature by Plumwood, V.4. The Malthus factor. Poverty, politics and population in capitalist development by Ross, E.B.