Along with almost everything else, divorce has boomed during the reform era. In 1982, toward the beginning of the reform period, according to official figures only about 100,000 couples divorced an extraordinarily tiny number in view of China’s huge population. But by 1986 that figure had jumped to...
Even if kidnap victims are able to escape them sometimes face a dim future. In one notorious case, an abducted married woman managed to break free after six months and returned to her home. But her husband and his family confused to take her back. The woman then committed suicide. Her suicide arose not from...
Official figures indicate that 88,000 women and children were kidnapped and sold into marriage or slavery between 1991 and 1996, although the real number is probably higher. Typically, gangsters arrive in a town and head straight for the marketplace where they lure young women with attractive- sounding...
Some men sweep into a town or village on a wife-hunting expedition, interview several prospective brides, draw up a list of those they would consider marrying, and then propose to the first on the list, and if rebuffed, propose to the second, and then the third, and so on until they find a woman who will say...
The imbalance in the cities is less dramatic, but still troubling. Nationwide, only about 4% of all Chinese between the ages of 28 and 49 are unmarried, but of that group of singles, almost all (94% to be precise) are men.
Understandably, marriageable women have definitely become a hot commodity. This has...
There is some talk in the scholarly literature from time to time about another, and brutal, way of controlling the female population, namely infanticide. In traditional times, desperately poor parents sometimes sold their children, knowing that someone who bought a child had the means and the incentive to...
A sign that ought to be posted on telephone poles all across China, but which one will never see, would read like this: “MISSING: Millions and millions of Chinese women.” Even the greatest detective could not find these women because they are not missing in the usual sense that they suddenly...
A third factor militating against women’s equality in the labor force is the notion that employing women can be expensive or troublesome. Some employers are quick to point out that it costs the enterprise plenty when a woman worker gives birth. By law, female workers in state-owned enterprises are...
The first of these factors is that women tend to have less skilled jobs. For instance, nationwide women account for over 60% of sales clerks, but only 22% of scientists and technicians. Presumably, enterprises want to hang on to workers with valuable skills, most of whom are men, while they are more inclined...
One of the most notable changes in China in the past several decades is the nearly universal employment of women. Today, better than 9 0ut of 10 women between the ages of 18 and 65 are working-perhaps the highest rate of anywhere in the world. In 1949, around 600,000 women were in the workforce; today there...
