Book: Women shut out of China's real estate-fueled wealth creation
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Book cover: Bloomsbury
China's real estate boom over the past 20 years created new wealth at an astounding rate. But Chinese women were largely shut out of this real estate bonanza, academic and journalist Leta Hong Fincher writes.
The big picture: State-backed and social pressure to marry, the association of masculinity with home ownership, and China's real estate laws meant many women handed over their salaries to pay for a mortgage in their husband's name alone.
- But now more women are choosing to forgo marriage altogether, in part due to the inequality it can foster, Hong Fincher writes in the updated 10th anniversary edition of her book "Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China."
Between the lines: The term "leftover women" refers to the derogatory — and propaganda-driven — term for women who reach the age of 27 without being married.
- The book's title also refers to how women were often left out of the real estate market.
- "Most residential real estate wealth in China is concentrated in the hands of men," she writes.
- "The extraordinary pressure on educated women to marry has had damaging consequences because so many women have been afraid to walk away from an unequal financial arrangement with their boyfriend or husband."
Details: In China, men are typically expected to own apartments if they want to get married. Parents of sons do their best to help cover down payments, and parents of daughters expect their future son-in-law to have a home.
- As a result, parents of daughters are far less likely to help buy homes for their daughters, though they may offer large sums to their sons or other male relatives for home ownership, Hong Fincher writes.
- This dynamic was exacerbated beginning in the late 2000s as Chinese state media began stigmatizing unmarried women. The government at that time was increasingly concerned about the extremely high male-to-female ratio in China due to sex-selective abortions of female fetuses.
- In such an atmosphere, women began to fear they might scare off suitors if they were too demanding, and thus they became more willing to hand over their own money to their husbands to help cover the mortgage payments for homes listed only in the man's name, according to Hong Fincher's research.
