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China's leftover women: Late marriage among professional women and its consequences, by Sandy To, London and New York, Routledge, 2015, 199 pp., US$160 (hardcover), ISBN 9780415723619
"It was not the women's aversion to marriage that rendered them unmarried, but it was patriarchal constraints that were the root cause of them being 'leftover' in the marriage market".
- Sandy To
In recent years, there has been a rise in the number of single, well-educated, professional women in China, a societal issue which has come to be known as the phenomenon of "leftover" women. Sandy To's China's Leftover Women: Late Marriage among Professional Women and its Consequences is a valuable and timely contribution to provide both scholars and the general public with an understanding of this phenomenon. Through interviews conducted with over 50 never-married elite women in Shanghai from December 2008 to January 2011, To reveals that the root cause of the phenomenon of "leftover" women can be attributed to patriarchal constraints in Chinese society. She acknowledges "leftover" women's agency and illustrates that women are adopting a variety of strategies to combat discrimination by men for their achievements and their partners' control over their work-life choices.
To's research goes a step further from Leta Hong Fincher's Leftover Women: the Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China published in 2014. While Fincher's book accuses the state and its media of stigmatizing "leftover" women and pressuring these women to rush into marriage regardless of their best interests (Fincher, 2014), To's book focuses mainly on single women's agency and strategies in looking for marriage partners under pressure from the state, society and their families.
Although To agrees with Fincher that the state takes a leading role in this media campaign to put a stop to single women's delay in marrying for the sake of maintaining social stability and population control, she does not consider this as the primary force in intimidating single women into marriage. She argues that the media campaign can only have minimal effect unless it targets the root cause of this phenomenon, namely, high-achieving women who face the constraints of discrimination and control imposed by men who hold patriarchal views about marriage.
In Chapters 1 and 2, Sandy To breaks down the oft-misrepresented fact that "leftover" women...