One day, I was watching videos on YouTube and a video caught my attention. The name of the documentary was “Iron Girls to Leftovers” and it addressed a social problem in China concerning women.
In China, unmarried women older than 27 years are declared leftover women. This puts pressure on women to marry and leave their careers in order to fulfill the society’s expectations of women, to stay at home raising children and taking care of their husbands.
In the documentary, women who fell in the category of “unwanted” were bombarded everywhere to get married. TV shows, publicity and even the family pushed women to lower their standards in order to find someone. According to an article in The Telegraph, leftover women have been highly portrayed as greedy and materialistic, which in most cases is not true.
I am not saying that getting married and becoming a wife is a bad thing; it is a call that some women have in their life. However, for those women who do not feel interested in marriage, their calling is to remain single and continue in God’s plans. Society should not pressure them and even bombard them to fulfill its expectations.
Even though this social problem is really prominent in China, I think that the whole world has this problem too, but on different levels. I come from a background in which chauvinism dominates in different aspects of life, and at some point, I felt the pressure to give up my dreams and keep the tradition. Some consequences I have seen of this pressure on women to fulfill the couple-based ideology are low self-esteem, creating the thought that if you have no special someone you have failed as a woman. There is pressure to beg for love and settle for any guy who proposes that you be in a relationship; it does not matter if the guy respects you or is a total jerk.
We, as daughters of God, do not need to feel this way. God has a plan for each one of us. Some of them are fulfilling his plan through marriage and others through singleness.
I have had the opportunity to meet women who have a complete life even though they are single. They have shown me that you can have a complete life by being yourself, of course God plays a huge role in her life.
These women have a strong spirit and they are connected to God in a deeper way. Their passions and their actions enhance the name of God. Ladies, do not be afraid of challenging the society’s ideology because the ultimate person who knows what will be in your future is God. Trust him!
Velazquez is a senior majoring in communication. She can be reached at VelazquezM@jbu.edu.