You are in a big trouble, young lady!
November 8th, a community group called ‘Our Feminism’ in Sina (Chinese social media) held a on line voting on legalise the bearing rights of single women in China.
The topic of voting is: “Do you support the Bearing Rights of single women”?
In one week, there are nearly 8000 people participate the voting online, among them, 97% people support the Bearing right, only three present do not think they should have the right because it is against the traditional value of China.
Although there are no specific law that forbid the bearing right of women, but in reality, single mother's are facing all kinds of 'punishment'.
The bearing right of single women are tightened together with the 'marriage'. Every child would have a birth certificate when they were born, but in order to get a berth certificate, there need to be a marriage licence exist. It means that giving birth to a child without getting marriage is against the system, it belongs to having a child 'out of the system'. According to the law, if you have a child who is not in the system, like second child or the child without marriage, you need to pay a quite big amount of penalty to the authority. In the reality, most of the single mothers could not afford the penalty.
Even more, the child who was born with a single mother have no right to register to the HUKOU (citizenship certificate) and register to a school. This means that the whole life of the child was unfair the minute she/he was born.
The feminist group are organizing the public event to arise the attention of the society to the single mothers, trying to give them and their child a fair life like others.
These situations are making single mother’s life more and more difficult. So in China, if you are pregnant without getting marry, you are in big trouble.
But still, there are many obstacles in the way of getting the single mother in the law. children without marriage is illegal in China, the director of Population study Institute in Renmin University of China believes that the <The Law of population and family planning of People’s Republic of China> is made for the purpose of protecting Chinese women’s reproductive health care and guarantee the population rating of China. While receiving the interview of “Online China”, he said that there are not such a thing called “Absolute Child-Bearing Right”, bearing right is for two person, both mother and father. “Bearing children without getting married is illegal” he said, ”it is against to the “Marriage Law”.
In the online voting, the “Bearing Right” are listed as blew:
1. Open the national and international sperm bank towards single women in China.
2. Single women should have the same right as married women during the maternity, including allowance, maternity leave and pregnancy.
3. For children who was born in single family, they should have the same right as other children in schooling, household registration and vaccinate.
4. Public opinion should guide the whole society’s awareness, acceptance and respect of the single mother. (stop discrimination towards single mother in the media)
5. Single mother should be the first Guardian of the children.