Nanjing’s 'leftover' women outnumber men 5 to 1

By Cecilia Wang, December 4, 2014

According to a news report by the local Nanjing newspaper Jinling Evening News, for every “leftover man” in the Jiangsu provincial capital there are five “leftover women.”

“Leftover women”, or shengnu, is a pejorative term that classifies women who remain unmarried into their late twenties and beyond. The term was made popular by Chinese media and the internet, and has been capitalized on by the entertainment industry. Shengnu discourse has also been propagated by (shockingly) the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), which claims to be a women’s rights organization. The ACWF even reposted an article entitled “how many leftover women really deserve our sympathy?” on its official website.

According to the report, the male to female ratio of those who have reached marriageable age in the city is 1 to 1.2, while the “leftover” men to women ratio stands at a staggering 1 to 5.

The report deems unmarried women who have reached the age of 28 “leftover” (for their male counterpart the cut-off age is 30), citing the CEO of a matchmaking company as saying that the city of Nanjing currently has at least 300,000 women that have been leftover.

Teachers at primary and middle schools are the ideal wifes for most men, since they have more time to take care of their (hypothetical) children. The type of women that are most unappealing to single men are the ones labeled nuhanzi (literally manly woman or tomboy) who don’t quite fit the traditional Chinese female ideal of a tender, submissive, and clinging lady.

As of last night, the topic “5 women for 1 man” was trending on Weibo. While some female netizens were posting self-deprecating jokes about themselves and single men joked about them planning a trip to Nanjing, some took to the newspaper’s official Weibo account, slamming it for being misogynistic and questioning the authenticity of the statistics shown in the report.

According to a Weibo user who actually phoned the editor at the newspaper, the editor believed the numbers they got from the matchmaking company were “very comprehensive.” Because matchmaking companies are among the most unbiased data collectors.

Meanwhile, the report successfully inspired posts suggesting that women who haven’t found their significant other should engage in self-reflection and check if they fall into any of the following categories.