RE: On China's Leftover Women: Single and Successful
You have argued that the primary reasons for women becoming leftover is due to them embarking on their own careers and having more choice in what role they want in society other than being mothers.
I would say you have left out one other reason which perhaps is more significant than the rest. A women's expectation for a partner has largely centred around their ability to provide financial security, and they expect this immediately. This means a house and a car. Of course, this used to be more realistic for the average person than it is today.
Which leads back to your point, women with these high expectations have two choices, they can either risk looking for that most ideal financially competent partner, or they can become more financially competent themselves.
As a girl who grew up in China, and reaching the left over age, I know from my own experience and perspective as well as many of my friends that it is our own expectations that give us unrealistic measures of what is considered a good partner. The potential partners are reduced very significantly because of what we want.
I was going to comment on the very same thing. We have a large population of successful, ambitious young Asian women working in Vancouver. One works in my office and has spoken at length about her family's expectations for her now that she has reached the ripe old age of 26. They want her to return home, get married and bust out the babies pronto. Strange considering these are the same parents who expected so much from her while she was at university and pressured her to pursue a career in law or dentistry. (She chose public relations instead but has a side hustle as a translator. ) My colleague said that even if she wished to marry (and she doesn't, not yet), she'd be limited to a very narrow selection of men. Those who are equally ambitious and educated have already married and are having children. Those her own age are working overseas and can choose to marry 20-year-olds once they return home. Since she refuses to marry "down" she's decided to make Canada her permanent home and expects to marry a non-Asian. This is one of the reasons why you see so many youngish Asian women (aged 25-32) with white guys here in Vancouver.
See my reply to @sweetsssj. Seems to me she needs to stay in the "working hard, fighting to be upper middle class" zone, so she can marry a man who needs a similar synergy. Otherwise she will rise up out of the level where any man that would interest her would also be interested in her. She seems to flirting with that danger zone.
I have written a supplementary article in response to this article and as an expansion to some of the points I made in the above reply. I mention some alternative angles as to why leftover women exist, and why they do not necessarily have to be successful!
Check check it out!
China's Leftover Women - Single and Not necessarily successful
Of course, I am happy to debate and discuss!
In china if you don't own a house you aren't a worthy man. Be rich or be nothing. Funny how that BS never comes up in these discussions...
Assuming you've exceeded upper middle class into the rich zone, then probably the uber successful men who would meet your interest wouldn't be interested in you for the most part, because what benefit can they gain from a successful wife?
So you've basically relegated yourself to either only sex+romance with the successful men but not marriage, or to marrying down. Sad fact of life. Do you see any other option?
But seems if you reach that level of success, why do you even need marriage? Because you had a traditional childhood and want to make your own family? In that case, it seems you'd probably have to marry down to a man of much lower status. That man is basically going to be a slave to you, which is going to cause other abnormalities. No matter how I slice it, it seems uber successful (very rich) women and traditional families seem to be mostly incongruent. Even Bill Gates married far down with Melinda Gates (not her family, but her personal level of status at Microsoft).