Single? Female? Over 30? Chinese companies bring in ‘dating leave’ for Lunar New Year
- Unmarried thirty-something women workers urged to go forth and date with an extra eight days of holiday over the traditional break
Two companies behind a Song dynasty-themed tourist attraction in eastern China are giving their thirty-something single women employees extra time off during the Lunar New Year to “go home and date”.
In a notice on Monday, Hangzhou Songcheng Performance and Hangzhou Songcheng Tourism Management said unmarried women over 30 in “non-frontline” roles would be granted an extra eight days of “dating leave” on top of the traditional seven-day break.
Those workers also had the option to extend the dating leave, the notice said.
Single women over 30 are commonly regarded as “leftover women” in China due to long-held conservative beliefs that women who remain unmarried beyond their mid-twenties are less desirable to men.
But as more women focus on careers, many are marrying later or opting not to marry at all.
There were more than 200 million single adults in China in 2015 and the marriage rate has fallen every year since 2013, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
