Trapped Between Traditional and Modern Roles: Single, Educated Women in Shanghai

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Education and the Changing Family

Abstract

In the recent several years, China's single, educated women in big cities are castigated as “leftover” women if not yet getting married by late twenties. However, no solid evidence suggests that educated women are delaying or forgoing marriage, compared to equally educated men in China. This qualitative research intends to unfold the social constructed myth of “leftover” women. I conducted interviews in Shanghai to understand single, educated women’s motivation and desire towards marriage and how they cope with marriage pressure from their family and personal opportunities in their career development. The study also intends to link these women’s contradictions and struggles to the looming potential Second Demographic Transition in China. I investigate whether some of them will become innovators or pioneers of late/no marriage and alternative families in the nearly universal and early marriage context of China.

Author

• Yingchun Ji, National University of Singapore