Home> Archive> 2022> Volume 12 Number 2 ( May. 2022)
IJSSH 2022 Vol.12(2): 85-91 ISSN: 2010-3646
doi: 10.18178/ijssh.2022.V12.1071

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

Huimin Zhang

Abstract—Researchers have studied leftover women to understand the struggle of women to balance marriage planning and career advancement. The aim of this study is to assess social perspectives associated with the pressures leftover men and women face. China is still dominated by the patriarchal thinking that men are breadwinners and women are homemakers, no matter how widespread the notion of gender equality is. In recent decades, the concept of leftover men and women has become a cliché. Women left over are especially affected by many sources of pressure, such as family, media, and policy, but their welfare has been overlooked. Although leftover men are in a better position than leftover women, they still have strong pressure from their families on their careers. Passive leftovers continue to go unnoticed. Based on a 4-month online content analysis, 15 in-depth online interviews, and five semi-structured face-to-face interviews, I have found different perceptions of leftover men and women from their parties and the outside. Moreover, under personal and social attribution, family reputation has been considered as a main point for leftover women to marry early rather than for leftover men.

Index Terms—Gender roles, leftover women, leftover men, patriarchy.

Huimin Zhang with graduates from research master in Research in Sociology and Demography at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain (e-mail: zhanghuimin13@gmail.com).

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Cite: Huimin Zhang, "The Pressures on Leftover Women and Men under the Chinese Patriarchal System," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 85-91, 2022.


Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

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