Cashing in on marriage(2)

Headhunters employed

Liang's marriage counseling company is not the only agency in Shanghai selling the notion that a good marriage can be customized. A matchmaking company called Diamond Love and Marriage, for example, takes a more drastic approach. It hires headhunters to search for, interview and assess beautiful young women to see if they match the demands of their male clients. The annual service fee can be up to 1 million yuan and most of the clients are billionaires, which is why girls flock to the interviews.

But Liang's company is the only one targeted at women, considered the more disadvantaged sex in China's marriage market.

Liang said that the biggest pressure modern Chinese women face today is society's persistence on women retaining their traditionally domestic roles. "It's like a foot binding cloth that confines women, and as women age, they become depreciated in the marriage market."

Which is why Liang disapproves of the term shengnü (leftover women) used to describe women who are traditionally past the best age for marriage. "It's discriminatory."

Davis, Liang's husband, agreed. "It's a real problem. In the US, there are also many single or divorced women, but the difference is that these women are more independent and self-assured. They don't have as much social pressure as they have in China."

In a paper - Understanding Shengnü: the phenomenon of late marriage among Chinese professional women - published in February in the social sciences journal Symbolic Interaction, Hong Kong researcher Sandy To attributed the concept of "leftover women" to three major social reasons: men's discrimination against accomplished women, the patriarchal persistence of traditional household roles and the huge influence of parents in women's marital choices.

A leading factor

This is echoed by Xu Anqi, the director of the Family Study Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. "The belief that men should be more capable than women in a marriage is a major factor behind the leftover women phenomenon today."

With women receiving better education and landing high-level jobs, it's increasingly hard for them to find men that are more capable than they are, leaving them "left out." Similarly, it's difficult for men who are economically disadvantaged, like migrant workers, to find wives because no woman wants to marry a man less capable than her.

"This is a global trend, but Asian societies like China have a tendency to discriminate against successful women. We hurl labels like 'leftover women' and 'baigujing' (an term for elite white-collar women that means demons) at them, but in reality they are all great women. They're successful, well-read and self-reliant."

In her paper, Sandy To divided successful, professional leftover women into four categories: traditionalists, maximizers, sacrificers and innovators, in terms of how they realized their marriage goals.

While traditionalists tend not to have any concrete strategies to realize their goals, maximizers find ways to get a husband that meet the social norm - like foreign husbands who are open-minded about capable women or men superior to them economically.

Sacrificers marry down, to men of a lower economic status, and innovators look for nontraditional relationships if they don't marry.

But not every Chinese single woman is ready to become a maximizer. Many are traditionalists, waiting for that yuanfen to arrive, like Wendy Sun, a 26-year-old woman working in a media company. "I still believe in yuanfen. It's part of my world view and I don't want to change that. I don't think love can really be customized, to be honest."

But Sun does feel the pressure that, Liang says, is burdening modern Chinese women. "I'm not really keen about finding a boyfriend, but I feel pressured when my friends and relatives ask me if I'm in a relationship. It's as if my single status disappoints them," she said.

No guarantees

Liang's costly sessions have also daunted prospective clients. "It's too expensive. I might try a session if it cost a few hundred yuan, but more than 10,000 yuan with no guarantee of a result? I wouldn't go for it," said 30-year-old human resources officer Cherry Chen.

But Liang defends her prices and said the amount she charges is very little to pay for happiness. "Chinese women lack a great yearning for happiness. They don't know how to pursue it. We're willing to spend fortunes on education and careers, so why don't we make a little investment in our marriages as well? You know, a bad marriage can ruin a life and even your offspring."

According to Zhou Juemin, the director of Shanghai Matchmaking Association, many agencies have sprung up in the past few years, offering pre-marriage and marriage counseling services for women and men. There was a demand for these services, she said.

But women shouldn't have high expectations about these sessions, Zhou added. Marriage, after all, is a lifelong involvement.