Educated women are urged by the state, society, and their families to marry before the age of twenty-seven, lest their own choosiness, education, and career focus result in their becoming “yellowed pearls,” no longer marriageable (and thus unlikely to produce the high-quality eugenic children upon whom China pins its future). These women have been derided in state media and in the rhetoric of the official All China Women’s Federation since 2007, when the Chinese Ministry of Education “added the term to its official lexicon” (3). The title, “Leftover Women,” refers to a fabricated crisis of single educated urban women. Although Fincher touches on rural ownership, her main focus is the urban property-owning elite.
Because married women are pressured to leave their names off deeds, they often lose control of substantial assets. In 2011, marital property rights were legally redefined to emphasize ownership by the party named as owner on the deed. Women not only earn less than men, but they have less parental help with home purchasing. Fincher’s book, Leftover Women, builds on this research and connects it to what she terms “resurgent” gender inequality in post-socialist China. Her dissertation traced Chinese women’s de facto exclusion from the exponential wealth accumulation created by China’s expansive urban property market. Leta Hong Fincher, a former journalist and daughter of China academics, is the first US citizen to earn a Tsinghua University doctorate in sociology. London: Zed Books Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
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