I came across a hilarious article in the NY Times, in which a typical American feminist has a fit over material published by the Chinese Women’s Federation. Although the organization is supposedly feminist, the advice looks like it could come straight from here, Dalrock’s site or Heartiste. Maybe someone in China’s Ministry of Culture has been paying attention to what’s happening over here…
In 2007, the Women’s Federation defined “leftover” women (sheng nu ) as unmarried women over the age of 27 and China’s Ministry of Education added the term to its official lexicon. Since then, the Women’s Federation Web site has run articles stigmatizing educated women who are still single.
Take this uplifting column from March 2011 that ran just after International Women’s Day:
Pretty girls don’t need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don’t realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls.
Imagine a state agency here saying anything resembling that. It’s unthinkable, yet this is what was published in China in the wake of International Women’s Day. Of course, it’s entirely true. One of the things I love about the Chinese is their ability to cut through the BS where these matters are concerned. Transparency in other areas is far from ideal, but they beat us hands down here.
More from the Chinese:
Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.
[...]
The main reason many girls become “leftover women” is that their standards for a partner are too high … As girls are not too picky, finding a partner should be as easy as blowing away a speck of dust.
[...]
When holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking … this is just being willful. Does this kind of perfect man exist? Maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?
I love that last line. Way to throw cold water on the Fifty Shades crowd.
The NY Times feminist’s commentary is the typical fare, so there’s no reason to repeat much of it here. To sum it up, she’s indignant. Big surprise…
The goal behind the Chinese drive to encourage educated women to shack up and have kids is to “increase population quality,” and that’s going to take a lot of effort on their part. However, when you compare what they are doing to our own policies, which encourage Honey Boo Boo-style family proliferation, I’d be willing to bet they’ll gain the advantage in time. Unless, of course, we can radically change course within a generation or so. I’m not going to count on us doing that, but it’s worth a try.
