Unexpected nvboshi: The Making of New Womanhood in Contemporary China

Chinese female PhDs or nvboshi have been constantly stigmatised as the ‘third gender’ by the society and media in China. Previous studies have primarily focused on discussing their relationship and marriage within the ‘leftover women’ discourse. However, the exploration of their lived experiences has not attracted scholarly attention. This thesis aims at illustrating the real life of nvboshi in contemporary society. More specifically, this thesis examines the difficulties and barriers Chinese nvboshi face in their daily lives and their coping strategies accordingly. Drawing on Yan Yunxiang’s work on Chinese individualisation, through conducting semi-structured interviews with thirty-three nvboshi, I explore their lived experiences in terms of their relationship and singleness, career barriers and development, as well as the negotiations between individual desires and family obligations. My findings reveal that there exists two different perceptions of singleness among these nvboshi: undesirable singleness and celebrated singleness. Instead of being left out in the marriage market, most of these nvboshi choose to embrace singleness and construct the individualised single lifestyles through self-reliance, which reflects these women’s pursuit of living a life of one’s own. Meanwhile, these nvboshi place a high value on their own career advancement and have navigated various strategies to deal with the structural constraints in the workplace. Moreover, facing the conflict between individual desires and family obligations, these nvboshi have strived to develop individual agency to seek a balance, rather than making a sacrifice for the family. By examining their experiences and practices, I find that these nvboshi have employed individual strategies and constant negotiations to navigate a patriarchal culture in ways that support their own development and individual desires in their lives. Therefore, I argue that these women have constructed a striving and desiring womanhood in contemporary Chinese society.