DefiChine in Brief

Male bachelors’ living conditions, sexuality and gender roles in a context of reduced availability of female partners in China

DefiChine focuses on specific aspects of men’s life in a context of numerical imbalance between the sexes. It has four basic objectives:

-To analyse from the theoretical and empirical point of view, men’s propensity to change the social norms governing union and family formation and mate-selection process, by adopting behaviours that compensate the changes in the sex structure, but that do not comply with the original norms;

-To understand how the reduced availability of female partners influences sexual stratification and men’s perception of women status and gender roles;

-To study the impact of a reduced availability of female partners on male sexual behaviours, and on men’s propensity to adopt non-standard behaviours in a context of significant social control;

-To analyse the living conditions of the men who remain unmarried against their will (social networks, human and social capital, socio-economic characteristics), given that forming a family within a heterosexual marriage still appears to be a prerequisite for developing social networks and getting social recognition.