Left-Behind Women

Posted on 13 August 2010.

Tian Jinzhen's husband left home in 2002 to work as a miner in another area of China. Her son and daughter also live away from home in order to attend high school and college respectively.

Tian's daily work includes collecting firewood deep in the mountains, attending to domestic chores, taking care of her parents in-law and growing nearly two hectares of tobacco, corn and rice. The family members are usually all together just once a year for the annual Spring Festival.

Tian is typical of the many "left-behind women" who stay in their village while their husbands head for other parts of China to earn a living. More than half the women in her village in Hunan province have husbands who have migrated to cities to gain better paid jobs. Many rural villages seem to consist purely of women, children, the elderly and the physically disabled.

Following a two-year survey ending in December 2008, researchers found that the "left-behind population" in China's rural areas included 20 million children, 20 million elderly people and 47 million wives. The numbers have continued to grow.

Eight percent of the women surveyed said that they were facing a crisis in their marriage. Thirty percent of the women suffered from chronic diseases. 62.9 percent of them were described as "physically overstrained".

Each year Tian Jinzhen ploughs the family's cropland and carries 40 kg of grain - about her own weight - in a single harvesting trip. "Other women carry up to 50 kg, but I'm not as strong," says Tian. "When it's time to get up at dawn, I really want to be asleep forever. But I struggle to stand up because the whole family rely on me and I cannot let them down."

Tian's dream is that her village will be able to set up a collectively-owned business to promote locally-made products on the national market. "When our village becomes rich, residents will find jobs close to their home and no one will be left behind anymore," she says. (People's Daily)

Pray for China's "left-behind women" who so often struggle on their own with very little support.

Pray that these women would find support from one another and that they might gain relief from the constant physical strain.

Pray for their marriages, as they are separated from their husbands for much of the year, and for their children, apart from one or even both parents as they go through their formative years.

Pray that better economic policies will be enacted that work to keep families together and still enable them to earn a reasonable living.

Pray that the Lord would raise up labourers specifically to reach these women and others left behind in the villages with the Gospel.