Why Some Chinese Women Are Embracing a ‘No Kids, No Ring’ Lifestyle — Wu Xiaoying

Feeling squeezed by the twin pressures of work and home life, some anti-marriage activists are fighting for their independence by lashing out at “married donkeys” and “dick cancer.”

Interesting effect of increasing the role of capitalism (privatization) in China is decreasing women's labor power and resurgence of social conservatism, which in turn is resulting in resurgence of feminism and the rise of women's liberation movement. 

This gaining more attention in China as Mao's Marxism was "balanced" with Deng's opening to capitalism and Xi's rehabilitation of Confucianism, a form of traditionalism (read conservatism), to create a contemporary "market socialism with Chinese characteristics."

The reality is that the privatization of both property rights and the family unit since the 1980s has had a dual effect, forcing women to shoulder a greater portion of household labor and child care, even as it’s put women at a structural disadvantage in the labor market.

In the socialist era, the pendulum between a woman’s personal and professional lives swung decisively toward the workplace. Women were at least theoretically entitled to equal pay for equal work, and slogans exhorted them to “sacrifice” their responsibilities at home and devote their time to working for the nation and collective. This discourse naturally influenced the country’s family structures, and was reinforced by various state welfare programs and other interventions.

The family unit is viewed much more positively today. The era in which the ideal husband and wife pair were little more than comrades — and the decision to have a second child supposedly incurred few costs beyond an extra pair of chopsticks — is gone. In its place are nuclear families centered on a mix of reproduction and consumption, with a new emphasis on intensive childrearing and intimate companionship.

This shift, combined with the disintegration of state-sponsored welfare programs and universal employment mandates, has reinforced women’s positions as family caregivers and made them the primary candidate to stay home full time. That inevitably clashes with their competitiveness on the job market, forcing them to juggle their work and home lives — while conditioning employers to assume women will put their families first.…

The liberal solution. 

Ultimately, real change will likely require the state to once again wield its power on behalf of women. Many young women today fear getting married and having children, whether because they are afraid of putting themselves in a vulnerable position or because they worry that the burden of caregiving will become a stumbling block to realizing their individual aims. Either way, an effective intervention of state power would help put their minds at ease.

Looking back at China’s socialist era, women benefited from policies advocating equal pay, as well as public services like child care, at least in urban areas. If the Chinese government can recommit to these ideas, and build modern institutions capable of realizing them, it would go a long way toward advancing gender equality.…

Another solution is for the state to pay women formally for the informal domestic work they now do routinely, with pay based on equal compensation and non-discrimination.

Another is to revisit the gender and family structure of the society, which is more in line with the Marxist approach. The traditional family is natural on one hand but on another its sociology arose from the needs and conditions of a different social system. 

China is hardly unique in this regard. Women have fought a long battle in the liberal West against tradition and social conservatism, and they are still fighting since the battle is not yet won. 

In fact, this is another paradox of liberalism. Social class involves more than economic factors.

Sixth Tone
Why Some Chinese Women Are Embracing a ‘No Kids, No Ring’ Lifestyle
Wu Xiaoying

See also

Marx and Engels anticipated this.

International Socialist Review
Women’s liberation: The Marxist tradition
Sharon Smith

See also

Sputnik International
China’s Gender Imbalance Reaches Almost 20 Percent Among Young People Under 20