Growing number of educated, professional, urban females aged¹ 27-30 have 'failed' to find a husband.

 

'Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult,' reads one article titled 'Leftover² Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy'.

 

The derogatory（贬损的） name has caused an outcry among millions of ambitious young and educated females who claim they have been thrown on the scrap³ heap（废料堆） - and who bemoan⁴ the low quality of suitors.

 

And census⁵ figures show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.

 

The proportion of unmarried males that age is over a third higher - but Chinese men tend to 'marry down' both in terms of age and educational attainment⁶.

 

'There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women,' Huang Yuanyuan, a confident and single 29-year-old who works in a Beijing radio station, told the BBC.

 

'The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men,' she said.

 

But the Chinese Bridget Joneses are fighting back, demanding the government ban the 'left over women' term.

 

The All-China Federation⁷ of Women has recently dropped the label and now refers to 'old' unmarried women - but the left over expression remains⁸ widely used elsewhere.

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