I do wonder if there is a relationship between social norms and attitudes towards women and suicide rates?

Seems like there must be. Social norms affect self esteem and depression. And depressed people are more likely to kill themselves than nondepressed people, yes?

And if so why wouldn't the suicide rate be higher for women in a lot of places?

I don't know about China, but certainly in Japan, suicide is considered acceptable, if not honorable, in certain instances. I don't know enough about the religion there to speak more.

However, I can compare that to Christianity, where suicide is considered to be one of the worst, if not THE worst, sins against God. The Muslim and Jewish religions may share similar prohibitions, which would suggest a possible explanation.

Perhaps women have been made to feel particularly useless in China? If I was living in a country with a horribly oppressive regime and basically had no rights at least I could tell myself that I was vital and necessary to the well-being of my children, or the children in my immediate family. Are women in China able to tell themselves that?

An interesting question: are the statistics true of women in rural [i]and[/i] urban environments? Do they change from one to the other? China is such a huge place, it's almost like saying 'Women on the planet Earth have a high this or that.' You can make those observations, but I'd like to see it narrowed down a bit. Maybe it would make more sense if I could see the detailed trends.

Sgzax, I did a little googling and found this article: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/social/2003/09/17/115741/

Seems like you were on the right tracks, according to the article it's mostly in rural areas where women are even more oppressed than in urban ones, and don't receive any education whatsoever.

"But cultural attitudes were also to blame for desperation among China's rural women. "In a woman's lifetime, she does not have any family love from the day she is born," said Song, who has carried out in-depth journalistic research into the phenomenon.

Opportunities for personal development and education were also lacking, Song found. "Girls are not sent to school, either," she said. "My impression is that in rural areas, a woman's whole life only revolves around others as long as she lives. There is not a single day that she thinks about herself."

Anyone catch that article a few weeks ago saying that the Chinese govt. is actually to convince people to quit killing their female babies because they are approaching a massive crisis level shortage of women?

Things are not looking good in China.

I wonder if the high female suicide rate has anything to do with the enforced one-child policy. Boys are so highly prized, and women are so undervalued aside from labour and the ability to bear a son, that it wouldn't surprise me if women who had a daughter, were forced to abort, had issues with infertility, or remained unmarried were at least a little depressed.

One of the purported reasons why women commit suicide less often than men is because they worry more about leaving their children behind and what will happen to them. Maybe the One Child Policy not only increases a woman's chances at desperation/depression, but also lessens the guilt that women feel over suicide?

Pure speculation, of course.

Are we sure that these are all really suicides, and not murders taking advantage of a *perception* that women in China commit suicide a lot?

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised to find that China is the only place where women outnumber men when it comes to suicide rates, considering that I thought women were much more likely to be depressed than men.

I wonder what the rates of attempted vs "successful" suicides are in various countries? I know I've read that men are more likely to use more violent forms of suicide attempt (which are more likely to be successful) whereas women are more likely to, say, swallow a bunch of pills (and then be found passed out by someone else later, and revived).

So, I wonder if what's going on in China might be partially that women are jumping off buildings (a more sure-fire way to get killed) vs using other methods that would more commonly be used by women to attempt suicide.

Hmm (don't mind me, just thinking out loud)

This reminds me of a story today in The Independent about a 29 yr old Chinese woman with approximately 23 needles that were pushed into her body (including her skull) as a baby. They have migrated throughout her body and are now in her lungs, bladder, kidney, liver, etc. She's going for surgery to have them removed, a risky and complicated set of operations.
So sad.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2953472.ece

I currently the host sister of a 16 year old Chinese lady. Earlier tonight, we were talking about hair products. She was explaining that her parents don't let her grow out her hair because they think she will get distracted with hair ties, clips, who knows what else. She says her parents don't think it is necessary to spend time on beauty, only on school. Although I do agree that school is important and I myself take very little time to get ready/mess with my hair/whatever, the fact that she can't grow out her hair because her parents think she would get distracted seems slightly ridiculous to me.

Although the suicide rate among women in China is extremely depressing, I'm not all that surprised at the increasing numbers. The pressure put on Chinese students is something I don't think I will ever be able to relate to. My exchange student, when living in China, goes to school Monday-Saturday from 7am-7pm with a two hour break for lunch.

It is curious, though, that the rate is higher among women. Maybe it has something to do with the societal gender roles in China? Maybe I'll talk to my exchange student about that tomorrow.

One strange aspect is that in most of the countries with statistics, men have at least double the suicide rate of women. Chinese men actually have relatively low rate, lower than in USA, and USA is far behind Russia and even Japan. Unlike Japanese, we rather kill someone else.

But Chinese women are much higher suicide rate then the second country in statistics, something like 20 versus 13 per 100,000.

One thing is that in Europe and USA it is rather typical for women to make ineffective suicide attempts by drug overdose. Which is sometimes lethal, but more often it is not. Chinese rural women drink pesticide -- more than half of their suicides.

By the way, according to statistics, Arabs have almost no suicides.

I know Chinese folklore has more stories with the "dutiful daughter kills herself to preserve the family honor" trope than western folklore. Indeed, [SPOILER WARNING FOR Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] when I saw the woman hurl herself into the gorge at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon I thought "What a cliche!" (Although given people's ability to defy gravity at will in that universe, maybe she wasn't killing herself.)

So this discrepancy doesn't surprise me too much.

"Opportunities for personal development and education were also lacking, Song found. 'Girls are not sent to school, either,' she said. 'My impression is that in rural areas, a woman's whole life only revolves around others as long as she lives. There is not a single day that she thinks about herself.'"

Meanwhile, some creeps would consider her "greedy" if she did manage to support herself as a single woman, later choose and love her husband instead of enduring sex for the sake of Daddy making a deal, etc.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/09/16/the_greedy_marriage/?page=3

"...Gerstel and Sarkisian stress that their main objective was not to attack marriage, but to argue for a broader conception of what marriage is and should be.

"'Finding a soul mate means turning inward - pushing aside other relationships,' they write. They put forth several alternative models for marriage as less insular and more supportive of community, including pre-industrial societies in which 'weddings are clearly community events [that] celebrate newly formed kin alliances.'..."

"(Although given people's ability to defy gravity at will in that universe, maybe she wasn't killing herself.)"

Good guess. CTHD is based on part 4 of a novel, and she's still around in part 5:

http://www.michelleyeoh.info/Movie/Ch/novels.html#part5