Bearing the Burden: The Plight of Women in China

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/opinion/letters/china-women.html

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To the Editor:

Re “As China Prospers, Women Watch Futures Fade” (front page, July 17), about Chinese women being squeezed out of the workplace:

Traditionally, we Chinese would take care of our elderly in the comfort of home. There is nothing wrong with aging at home. But the issue is who bears the burden of providing home-care services. With the job market turning against women, women are coerced into bearing such a burden with no monetary compensation. That’s modern-day involuntary servitude.

Moreover, Chinese women are treated worse than their ancient female ancestors. In the good old days, one woman would only need to provide services to two old folks — her in-laws — because by marriage, a woman would be wedded into the husband’s family and sever her ties with her biological parents.

However, under Communist laws, a woman is supposedly to be an equal partner in the marriage, and therefore has two sets of parents — her own and her husband’s — to lay the burdens on her shoulder. Chinese men, by the same token of traditional culture, do not perform household services, either nowadays or in the old times.

Xi LianIthaca, N.Y.The writer is a lawyer.