Leta Hong Fincher is award-winning journalist and the first American to receive a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tsinghua University. Her book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (2014) has been positively reviewed by many publications, including The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, FT, and the Guardian. She holds a bachelors degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard, and a masters degree in East Asian Studies from Stanford. She is currently teaching at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
In her book, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Leta Hong Fincher details the structural discrimination against women that speaks to broader problems with China’s economy, politics, and development. Hong Fincher explained for YCW Shanghai how a combination of multiple factors — skyrocketing house prices, legal setbacks to married women’s property rights, a widening gender income gap, and a media campaign against unmarried “leftover” women — have contributed to a fall in status and material well-being of Chinese women relative to men.
