Mainland Universities Increasingly Female-Dominated: The Chain Reactions of the Feminization Era Are Just Beginning

When it comes to mainland China's population, many people stereotype it as suffering from declining birth rates and a dwindling demographic dividend due to decades of the one-child policy. Over the past decade, the relaxation to the 'two-child policy' was intended to 'encourage births,' while the long-standing scenario remained one of 'more men than women.' Counterintuitively, however, the structure of higher education in the mainland has already experienced a quiet, dramatic shift away from 'more men than women.' In 2022, of the 4.68 million undergraduate admissions (bachelor's level) in the mainland, 2.95 million were women and only 1.73 million were men. This will have profound impacts on the employment, marriage, and other social issues regarding university graduates over the next 20 years in the mainland. These are topics worthy of attention and reflection.