About the book: Leta Hong Fincher’s landmark book Leftover Women shone a light on the resurgence of gender inequality in 21st-century China. Ten years on, women in China continue to experience a dramatic rolling back of rights and gains in the increasingly patriarchal political climate of the Xi Jinping era.
Leftover Women explores the structural discrimination against women and the broader problems with China’s economy, politics, and development that lie behind them. This updated edition includes a new preface exploring developments in China in the 10 years since the book’s original publication, including the new “three child policy”, the growth in online feminist and LGBTQ activism and the state’s increasingly repressive moves against dissent.
About the author: Leta has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Dissent Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC, CNN and others. She won the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for her China reporting. Fluent in Mandarin, Leta is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University’s Department of Sociology in Beijing and is currently a Research Associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. She has a master’s degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree with high honors from Harvard University.