Rich Women, Smart Women: How Social Status, Gender, and Marriage Decisions Affect Wealthy Women in Modern World

In late 2003, having just begun my PhD program, I travelled to Beijing toundertake nine months of full-time language study. It was the second time I hadlived in China. I brought with me the requisite home comforts, some readingmaterial, and what I thought were the beginnings of my PhD topic. But myexperiences during this period of language study not only provided me with abetter grasp of the Chinese language, they also pointed my research in anentirely new direction.As a young woman undertaking a PhD program, I soon found that my identityand status was something of a curiosity - perhaps even something of aconcern. Almost every time that someone I met asked me what I did in myhome country, and I told them that I was doing my PhD, they seemed perturbed."Don't you want to get married?", people asked. "Oh, you're one of the ThirdSex", they would say knowingly.