’Leftover Women’or’Blossoming Women’

Urbanization and modernization have driven an increasing number of women into the social labor market. The gradual rise of respect towards women in society and family is now rewriting the pattern of women’s self-development. In bygone days, it was really a great achievement for women to take care of children and husband and to bear a son to carry on the family name, a glory worth carving onto the merit steles and extolling by refined memorial arches. At present, if we take into account the rocketing ratio of the unmarried in metropolis, the soaring chances to file for divorce and the delay of age for first marriage, it seems that women don’t need to rely on men to fulfill their values as in the old times. What’s more, it is ever getting difficult for ’particular’Shanghai women to get married with’reliable’ men under the circumstance that the housing and marriage in urban areas is ever getting more expensive. What does marriage mean to Shanghai women nowadays? Why, with the soaring housing price, do the public attach more attention to’leftover’women (spinster) instead of to’leftover’ men (bachelor)? Is there an inter-relationship between’leftover’women (spinster) and ’women in blossom’?In2007, the "leftover women" is officially admitted into the new entry, since then, public opinion and mass media have been trying to change the low position of appreciate "leftover women", by stating that those women have their own values, by quoting phrases such as’blossoming women’or’women with triumph’to show their values to describe a woman emerging from a restriction of the social structure, to find yourself, find the real nature and play to the utmost. With elder unmarried women as objects of my study in Shanghai, this paper combines anthropological fieldwork methods, by recording the voices of the women themselves, analysis of the male in the eyes of them to find "leftover women" and "blossoming women" causes and combined with anthropological fieldwork methods, this present paper is dedicated to analyzing the image of’leftover women’in males’eye and the causes and driving force behind’blossoming women’ through these women’s own voices.This thesis is divided into four parts:I raised the research questions and make research plans in the first chapter. The first Chapter also focuses on discussions on the long history about domestic and foreign leftover women based on vertical and horizontal, and the thesis also collects and summarizes the late marriage phenomenon and "leftover women" phenomenon. Chapter II centers on the growing experience of those’leftover women’ based on interview related to their family background to uncover the relation behind and also this chapter tries to unveil whether’leftover women’ really want to get married or not. Chapter III describes "blossoming women’s" work and lifestyle, and also males’ opinions on’leftover women’. The fourth chapter serves for conclusions and discussions, concluding that behind the driving forces are the imagination of the media and public opinion on tendency to blame the innocent. At the end of the thesis, I make reasonable suggestions for further study and prospects for the future.