China has upset its young female population by labelling those who fail to marry by the time they are 30 as “leftover woman”.
The Communist government ordered its feminist All-China Women’s Federation to use the derogatory term in several stinging articles about the growing number of educated, professional, urban females aged 27 to 30 who had “failed” to find a husband and were now deemed “undesirable”.
“Pretty girls do not 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,” reads one article, titled “Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy”.
The derogatory name has been picked up by the state media and stuck, causing an outcry among millions of ambitious young and educated females who claim they have been thrown on the scrap heap – and who bemoan the low quality of suitors.
The conservative country is undergoing rapid changes with more women shunning tradition to wed and raise a family early.
But the government wants to shame them into marrying young to counter the growing and serious gender imbalance among the of 1.3 billion population.
The government is also worried hordes of unmarried men roaming the country could spark social havoc.
Leta Hong-Fincher, an American academic studying at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said: “Since 2007, the state media has aggressively disseminated the ‘leftover’ term in surveys and news reports.” – Daily Mail