In a groundbreaking shift, young Chinese women are now more educated than their husbands.
Could we see a redefinition of traditional roles, or will tensions arise as the balance tilts?
And believe it or not, Gen Z isn't as computer -savvy as you might think.
The smartphone generation may be experts on social media, but many lack the basic computer skills needed for today's jobs.
Coming to you from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Shan.
First on today's show.
Recent studies show that young Chinese women born after 1999 are now more educated than their husbands on average, a shift that has far -reaching implications.
This is happening not only in China, but in developed countries, too.
What does this mean for relationships, household decisions, and gender roles moving forward?
So tell us, what has changed, Yu Shan?
Here in China, the new study was published earlier this year in a paper by Cheng Shuzong, so he is the director of East China Normal University's Population Research Institute, which kind of stirred up heated discussion online lately after Chinese media outlets the paper reported its findings online.
So basically, Cheng's project analyzed data collected from over 12 ,000 married couples born between 1950 and 1994, taken from the China Family Panel Studies that's conducted by Peking University.
And what does the data show?
It revealed that the proportion of women marrying men with a lower educational background has steadily risen in recent decades, while the proportion of those marrying men with higher education levels has been failing.
And among the senior group born between 1950 and 1954, only less than 7 % of women married down in educational terms.
But among the younger group born between 1990 and 1994, more than a quarter did so.
So which just implicates that young people nowadays, especially young women, they don't really care too much about the educational background of their spouse upon marriage, let's say.
Well, that's your conclusion.
Yeah, that's your opinion.
I don't know if we can paint an entire female population having that opinion as well, but you know, the statistics do paint a certain picture as well.
A little bit more about the statistics among those between 1950 and 1954, 26 .9 % of husbands married down in education terms.
I don't like that term, by the way.
Married down, it's so condescending, I feel like.
But the only implication here is that someone has more educational qualifications than the other person.
Anyway, 66 .2 % of married to wives of the same education level during that period, 1950 to 1954.
But yeah, from 1990 to 1994, the figure dropped to 21 .6 % and 52 .6 % respectively.
And so we're seeing a massive, massive shift compared to what was happening in the 1950s.
And actually this is not really the only study that's pointing out such a finding because, well, this is according to an earlier paper that was published in 2022 by this scholar named Xu Qi, an associate professor from School of Sociology Nanjing University, who suggests that among couples who got married
between 2014 and 2018, around a quarter of women married men with a lower educational level than theirs.
So yeah, like more than one studies have been pointing out to this fact and I believe this is not really just the case in China as well.
This is the first time this has happened, correct?
According to the statistics?
Well, this is the first time that it's received such wide notice and also, yeah, I think as a phenomenon, this is possibly the first time in this country.
Yeah, this has happened in many other countries as well, but not all happening at the same time.
From the United States, they did some research from the Institute of Family Studies and at that time, this is 2017.
At that time, a record 25 .3 % of husbands were now married to wives who had more education than them.
So this was 2017 in the United States when that happened.
In other countries too, I kept looking, right?
Because I thought, oh, is this just China?
No, it's China and America.
So let's dig a little deeper.
In Canada from June of 2013, this is from CBC.
By gender, 64 .8 % of working age women now have a post secondary education compared with 63 .4 % of men.
This was the first time females surpassed males in overall educational attainment.
Now that doesn't reference marriage numbers at all, but I thought it was still relevant because it doesn't really matter.
What we're talking about here in our lead, we're mentioning the word marriage, right?
But take away the marriage and you're still talking about women are becoming more educated than men overall.
And it happened in Canada in 2013 for the very first time.
In Australia, it happened as well.
And in Korea, this is from September from this year.
An OECD study found that Korean women in their mid 20s and mid 30s are more educated than their male peers.
But this is a side story.
Exhibit lower rates of employment, 83 % to 76%.
And if you want to go further down that rabbit hole and dig into pay discrepancies, men are still making more money than women who have a higher education.
But that's a different story for a different show.
My point is, is that now that we're seeing this shift happening in many different countries around the world where women are more educated than men, then naturally that means when they get married, they're more likely to have a higher education level than their husband.
Not always, but if the statistics hold true from one field to the other field, then it's not hard to see why.
That's interesting, but I don't know if I would jump into that conclusion for the Chinese study because it's still only looked at those who actually tied the knot in this country.
And what explains this major improvement in more women achieving college education?
So according to Cheng, who conducted this latest study, he attributed the trend to the growing number of Chinese women gaining a higher education, because ever since 2009, women have outnumbered men in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Chinese universities.
So this is like a reversal of the gender education gap that has also taken place in several western countries as well.
And on a policy level, China's growth enrollment rate of higher education has also showed improvements in general, especially after the action plan on the revitalization of education was issued by the Minister of Education in 1999.
So already at the turn of the century, this is happening and it's slowly affecting generations and generations of female students.
And ever since then, the scale of higher education in China began to expand quickly.
In 2002, the growth entrance rate reached 15%, indicating that China was entering the era of mass higher education.
And then a decade later by 2012, the rate rose to 30%, all pointing to the same fact that more and more higher educational opportunities were given to both genders.
So I believe this is where we kind of need to attribute the trend to, because nowadays women are receiving, say, girls are receiving equal educational chances as boys.
To reference that American story that I brought up a moment ago from CNBC from 2017, at that time, from the National Center for Education Statistics, 56 % of college students were women at that time.
So the number of college students, the female to male ratio, women outnumbered them in university and therefore we're seeing that trend.
And what's interesting to me is that this supersedes culture.
We're not talking about Asia versus North America here.
We're seeing this trend all over the world, it seems.
Well, this is something definitely to do with policy, with the general climate and stability of a society, as well as educational resources available to all.
These are factors that are at play here.
And when you look at China's higher education, well, only did college education resume fully for all since 1976.
And it only took this many decades for women to actively participate and receive a proper basic education, mandatory education, and then have the ability to compete fairly and join higher education.
And we're seeing the results of that here in China.
And also, if you look at the population, also gender ratio of those joining the different levels of education, it reflects the bigger picture, too.
In primary school stage, I believe the net enrollment rate of primary school aged girls and boys were all around 99 .9 % in 2022.
And then when we were looking at the high school stage, also in 2022, there were over 21 million high school female students, which takes up almost 50 % of all high school students here in China.
And in vocational school stage, still back in 2022, there were 7 .5 million and 7 .9 million female students in secondary vocational schools and higher undergraduate and junior colleges, respectively.
And last but not least, in the higher educational stage, there were 29 million female students in higher educational institutions, taking up 50%.
So let's say this is a half -half kind of situation, and we definitely see the increase of female students here in the Chinese educational scenario.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Because the statistics that I gave from the United States and from Korea found that the women were outnumbering the men, right?
Those statistics that you just shared, Yushan, you could have easily said the number of men in those classrooms is roughly 50%, meaning no one outnumbers the other.
So back to your point, Huiyang, you were right when you said, well, maybe in other countries, those statistics might add up when you look at the number of female students in classrooms versus males and then transfer those over to marriages.
But if we talk about the Chinese classrooms, those aren't the same numbers.
It's basically 50 -50, but yet now women are, again, I don't love this term, but marrying down, statistically speaking.
See what I mean? The numbers don't add up here, so there's something more behind it.
I think so too. Also to circle back to a point you made just now, Steve, what do you think is contributing to in all those various countries that women tend to do better in school?
I don't know about population numbers, and I don't know about school performance either.
So I'm not sure if it's fair to say that they outperform their male counterparts in the classroom.
But if we do look at the number of people who are graduating with certain types of degrees, for example, in Australia, 61 % of Australian bachelor degree graduates each year are now women.
55 % of new Ph .D. and master's degree holders are women.
So there, statistically, they are outnumbering the men.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're outperforming them, test taking and things like that, but they're certainly outnumbering them in terms of their degrees.
So what's the reason?
You made the point earlier, Huyang, about how a long time ago women started to pursue their education, perhaps more so than they did before, became more important to them.
Again, I'm speculating here, but now we've talked about changing trends in society where perhaps people are focusing more on their careers.
Women are focusing more on their careers and their education now, maybe than they were before, where priority number one may have been getting married or starting a family or something like that.
Maybe it's due to a priority shift in cultures, different cultures around the world, where that's become less of a priority and it's been replaced by education.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that, Steve.
What I noticed is that more and more families nowadays are willing to invest in their children's education, even at the very early stage.
So from the cultivation point of view of the parents, they already have this idea that education is an important way to change the children's destiny and that both for the boys and for the girls, they should be provided with equal attention and support.
So at that level, I do see the changing of perspectives as time goes by.
This might be a side point, talking about unintended consequences.
The only child policy might have benefited the girls born in especially cities or counties where there is educational resources available for girls.
And given when you only have one child in the family, for a lot of parents, especially in East Asia where parents do prioritize kids' education, then it's almost like a no brainer.
They shower resources of the family on the kid, on the girl, so or regardless of the gender so that she or he will do well academically.
And in our traditional Confucius influenced culture, better education usually makes you think that, oh, better future in terms of pay, in terms of your existence and presence in society as such.
And also I wonder maybe girls doing well in a school might be explained even earlier on in standardized education for little girls.
They often develop language and reading skills earlier, which can give them an advantage in school settings focused on literacy and communication.
Also, schools generally reward orderly organized behaviors that align more closely with girls socialization and just the setup of schools, standardized education in a way might benefit girls a little bit more than boys.
That's research going on around the world.
Just to reference the numbers that you presented earlier in different countries, it seems to speak to a similar story.
And guys, why does this matter?
Why do you think this is getting the researchers attention that, oh, women's higher education attainment rates has something to do with further implications in marriage and other aspects in society?
I think ultimately this is a changing of social structure in a way because now that we're talking about females marrying down, quote unquote, marrying down on their spouses with a female part having a higher educational level, that kind of impacts the family planning decisions in a way.
Because in this way, the way I see it is that women now could have a bigger say or a bigger right of speech in deciding on the family that she wants to build for herself or for her individual family.
Say how many kids you want, what kind of family that you want to build with your spouse.
So unlike previously, when females are so relying on their male counterparts nowadays, it's a shared responsibility, it's a shared task and shared decision making process as well.
I think we're making some assumptions with this topic as well.
Women are marrying down, OK, are they marrying?
We'd have to look at marriage statistics.
Ages. Are they marrying people who are in the group that they studied?
Are they marrying someone who is at the same age, meaning they've gone through the same educational process and the woman has happens to be more educated than the man?
Or is the woman marrying a man that's perhaps younger than her who hasn't finished his education just yet?
I'm only playing devil's advocate here.
I'm saying that there there there are different ways to look at this.
One of the things that I thought was interesting data shows kind of a shift.
Maybe it's a shift.
Maybe it's not on how men see their potential partners.
They say that male respondents in a survey that was conducted, they have a higher acceptance of having partners older than them.
Really? Yeah, 69. This is a high number.
Sixty nine point eight percent of male respondents said, yep, no problem.
Having a partner older than I am is not an issue for me.
They think age differences don't really affect marriage and love.
But only fifty four point one percent of female respondents said, OK, if the man is younger than me, that's OK for me.
Thirty one percent, a little over thirty one percent said that the age gap will affect communication and interaction, whereas only six point four percent of men said the same thing.
And this is from China.
To me, fifty four percent of female respondents accept younger partners.
Hello, that is a huge percentage.
Yeah. Because traditionally, women didn't want to marry guys who are younger than them, I would think.
As a relatively younger of Chinese women, I don't belong to that fifty four percent.
But can I also just make a point?
It doesn't say how much older.
Right. Right. These days, if you think, you know, men or women, a couple of years younger or older, that's nothing.
Right. Which again is this seems to supersede culture.
You know, the last time I looked at marriage statistics from Canada, the average age of marriage, I think it was around, you know, 30 for men, 28 for women, 31 for men, 29 for women, something like that.
But inside those numbers, you can see the man is older than the woman.
And that's kind of typical of how it goes around the world.
I don't I don't know why that's a whole other, you know, pot of beans to dig into.
But with this with this topic and with these statistics, there's just so much to to unpack here.
And yeah, it's not just on the age differentiation, but also on the family division of labor as well, because according to the same source, Steve just called it on about 51 percent of male respondents can accept the new type of family division of labor, which means that men lead inside while women lead
outside, which is like controversial to the stereotypical view of the guys should be working out while the girls stay inside to manage family affairs.
It seems that feels so archaic now, doesn't it?
But also as somebody who actually dates in China, really, I wonder if those guys have a different interpretation of what men leads inside or outside means.
Because what did you say?
Over half of those respondents.
It sounds like a super progressive bunch.
But in real life, I do question.
Do that many men, are they willing to accept that?
Yeah, again, what does this mean?
Men lead inside, women lead outside.
Is it like are you a house husband or is it like you do housework just as your wife would do?
You contribute just as much.
Or does it mean that your wife makes more than than you do financially speaking?
Can I ask you a question?
Of course, if you don't mind.
My sister used to be a hotel executive and I remember her complaining to me when she was in her dating days.
She's married with children now.
But she said she found it hard to date because men and this is in Canada.
Men were often threatened by her position and her success.
She said they wouldn't outrightly say it, but she could feel it.
And she had a very hard time having a successful relationship because career wise, she was an executive for a big hotel chain.
And many men found that threatening.
I wonder, you know, you just mentioned as someone who's dating in Beijing.
Do you feel that sometimes as a successful career woman?
Wow. First of all, that's like showering accolades at me.
I am not a huge executive of a big chain company.
You're a very successful career woman, though.
First of all, I don't see myself to be successful or whatever it is.
So it's not really bothered me that much.
You know what might be threatening to men?
You work in a job that requires you to be vocal.
A woman with a mind and speaks her mind for her job and a microphone.
So that part certainly doesn't make me feel like it is a strong suit in the dating market.
Oh, interesting. They might fear, oh, am I going to be the topic of the next segment on round table?
Exactly. You know what?
That's going to happen.
It's just I'm not going to name your name.
And traditionally, women have been more likely to, I'll reference this, none of us seem to like, marry up in terms of social status, education or income, a phenomena known as hypergamy.
And this trend is often rooted in historical social structures where men were seen as the primary breadwinners and women sought financial security or upward mobility through marriage.
But on the other hand, men have traditionally been more likely to, quote unquote, marry down and that's called hypogamy or marry within their social strata.
And these patterns are changing today as we've demonstrated on today's show with increasing numbers of women outpacing men in education, creating shifts in marriage dynamics.
However, economic disparities such as the gender pay gap still influence these trends.
And the latest figures we found is that the gender pay gap is close to 13 percent in this country.
And this is according to a study from Jaupian in 2024.
So talking about these changes as the first step.
But the next step is we need to talk about or we need to see changes in some of these more structural and systematic inequalities.
I agree. This is from a website called AllSorter.
And this is the headline.
U .S. employees are 93 .6 percent more likely to have a male CEO.
They analyzed one thousand of the world's largest companies and they found that of the one thousand companies, only six point four percent sixty four of the company's CEOs were women.
Nine hundred and thirty six were male.
So I think we're going to see the shift start to head in the other direction, considering women have higher education, perhaps now than men in many countries around the world.
While gender equality is still a work in process, women's rising education attainment is already reshaping the marriage and dating market, challenging old norms and opening doors for change.
