Battle of the Sexes

As a final year college student, we should be enjoying the last few months of each other's company. Instead, most of us are getting “pre-graduation anxiety”. Future careers and further study are becoming much talked about topics among us. Even sitting in class, classmates will ask you about your future plan. I happen to have been asked the same question the other day. Dying to get out of school and pursue my childhood dream to be a writer, I told him that I wanted to start working before doing any further study. He nodded, and expressed his feeling toward educated women. I was totally shocked by his response.

Living under the influence of multi-cultural environment, it was hard for me to believe that a guy my age would describe women who choose study and have a career over marriage as “leftover”. He thought that women would concentrate on their work only because they could not find a man when they reached their 30s. It is like they are the unwanted left out by the guys. Guys are now referring this situation as midlife crisis for girls. More importantly, he was not the first Chinese guy that I had met with such an ignorant attitude. I just couldn’t help but wonder, are men really that intimidated by women’s success? Or have the brains of Chinese men not evolved since the Qing Dynasty?

Once women received education, it’s common for them to have relatively high standards when it comes to choosing a partner. Also, many women now seek for financial and emotional independence. Men are not a women's everything, we just choose to have them to be part of our lives. Marriage doesn’t mean everything anymore, and men get intimidated by the fact that women can do just fine without them.

In the past, Chinese girls didn’t get as many chances to go to school as boys. Even in wealthy families, the ultimate goal for every girl was to get married with an eligible bachelor. Nowadays, women can hold leadership positions in Congress, own business, and become doctors. A new era has arrived. Women are no longer seen as “birth machine”. We have the same ability in a variety of fields, and, in some fields, have even stronger abilities than they do.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that men could be replaced by women and I’m not against marriage. I’m just saying that two sexes should have equal opportunity to obtain what they deserve. Negative comments regarding women who would rather fall in love with their BlackBerrys than walk down the aisle are just disrespectful. Why are single, twenty-something men are said to be ambitious, while women of the same age described as “leftover”? Women standing up for themselves, is battle yet to be fought in China.

My article published in HerZine 2010 Issue 1, English magazine of UIC