Left-behind Girl Child Safety Problems in Rural China

Abstract

In recent years, with the increasing number of migrant workers, the number of girls left behind in rural China has also increased sharply. Due to the lack of necessary monitoring and safe sex education, many of the girls left behind, become an object of sexual assault. Currently, the issue of safety and sex education of these left-behind Chinese rural girls has become the focus of public opinion analysis. The sexual assault cases of left behind Chinese girls show three integrating characteristics: namely diversification of sexual assault, means of sexual assault, lack of awareness about sexual assaults, which reflects a pessimistic security situation for the left-behind girls in rural China. The reasons prominently fall into three aspects: lack of impact of parenting to impart knowledge, lack of safety awareness and education efforts of the guardians, and less importance given to safety and sex education at school; through the integration of three large forces -schools, families and society-more scientific safety and sex education systems can be implemented for the left-behind rural girls, with a view to promoting the harmonious development of their physical and mental health.

The old saying “shutting the mouth of people is harder than shutting river’s mouth”, is a simple phrase but reflects the importance of the people’s opinion. In today’s highly developed information age, the public opinion has turned into a vast ocean from a river. It is in this context that the public opinions stand out as a very important factor. Public opinion analysis is based on the needs of a particular problem, in order to solve the problems, the study of thinking, deep processing and analysis of public opinion are carried out to draw conclusions[1]. Since the China's reform and opening up policy, with accelerating and unceasing process of speedy urbanization and advancements, the surplus rural labor force began to shift to coastal and inland cities on a large scale, which produced a special kind of group - rural leftbehind children, they are a group of children who are left over behind because of one or both parents migrate to work outside. Left-behind children are divided into left-behind boys and left-behind girls. Statistics shows that, due to the “patriarchal” thinking and other such influencing factors, the girls are more often left behind to stay at home as compared to boys, and the number of girls left-behind in rural areas has risen sharply in the recent years. Due to the lack of necessary supervision and safety education of rural left-behind girls, many of these girls become the object of sexual assault, which greatly affects the stability of rural society and the healthy growth of left-behind girls. After the incidents of sexual assault of these girls, the masses use various means to know the truth, followed by the never ending remarks. The problem of safety monitoring and safety education of rural left-behind girls has become the focus of public opinion. Public opinion analysis thus become the bellwether of the problem.