"Hi, I'm Irina from G2. Since I participated in a floating woman volunteer activity during the summer holiday. I began to pay attention to this group, and recently I had a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of them. It also gives me a better understanding of the composition and operation of the society we live in. Everyone, every group, plays a role that cannot be ignored in society."

Another "she"

"My name is Milian Xiong. My daily working hours are 5.30-16.30. I am responsible for the office and corridor, stairs, bathrooms, trash cans, window sills, glass, water dispensers, printers and other public areas.”

When we talk about Ulink, the first thing that comes to mind is the teachers, a predominantly female group. But in recent months, I have begun to pay attention to another female group at Ulink.

Milian Xiong is the janitor responsible for 3-4th floor of Cambridge Building. She is a typical floating woman. Floating women refer to the group of women who leave their hometowns and enter the city to work. They account for 48.3% of the national floating labor force, and this number continues to grow.

The first time I encountered this group was a volunteer event during the summer vacation. Lixia Qi, the organizer of the event, is also a floating woman. Because she is well aware of the problems faced by this group, she founded a public welfare organization and called on more people to support this group.

In participating in the activities she organized, I found out that this group plays an important role in my life but they are almost completely invisible and face many problems.

Unlike our female teachers, floating women like Milian Xiong generally have a low level of education. Most of them are engaged in low-income occupations in cities, such as cleaning, babysitting, manufacturing, etc. A city cannot operate without them, but the city's high cost of living, community integration, children's education and other problems set up many obstacles for them to live in the city.

High living cost

▲"In leisure time, my friend and I organised exhibition about floating women"

During the interview with floating women, I learned that their main challenges center around housing rent, language and community integration.

“The rent of our house is rising every year. It is not big, but now the rent is as high as my salary. After paying the rent every month, I don't have any money left to enjoy and save.” A floating woman who worked in a restaurant mentioned in the interview.

Due to the continuous rise in rents every year, floating women are facing an increasingly serious rental problem. If the rent continues to rise, they will need to move to the suburbs.

Faced with the rent problem, few floating women revealed in the interview that they would choose to communicate with the landlord to try to solve the problem. However, the owners always prevaricate with utilities and other reasons, so that floating women always end up paying the rising rent, which makes their cost of living significantly higher. They hope that the government can introduce relevant policies to subsidize the rent of the non-local population, or set a rent ceiling according to the size of the property.

Hard to integrate to the community

In the process of trying to interview the school cleaner, I found that their accent was very strong. Sometimes, we can't fully understand each other.

The language barrier of floating women makes it difficult for them to integrate in the new community. A floating woman who also worked in a restaurant told me: "I used to work in Chongming, but people there are used to speaking Chongming dialect, so I was naturally excluded. It's really difficult to integrate with the community if we don't know how to speak the dialect. So I have lived in many places, almost every district in Shanghai, and now I plan to settle down in Pudong.” 

Language is an important factor contributing to regional differences and regional barriers, and this factor is difficult to eliminate naturally. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, I wonder if the community can provide some lessons to popularize Mandarin and advocate the use of Mandarin in the workplace, so as to ensure that floating workers can integrate into the local community.

Although there are many charity events for supporting floating women, I find that the problems faced by them are still very serious. I asked the Beijing Mulanhuakai public welfare organization, and learned some of the reasons. The head of the organization told me that in their statistics, most of the people who participated in the activities are those who already know about this group, or those who paid attention to their organization, rather than those who came into contact with the group for the first time. And due to financial constraints, most of their activity venues are in less conspicuous buildings, rather than popular locations.

At the end

Floating women deserve a lot more public attention. Giving them enough attention and help can greatly promote the harmonious and stable development of a city.

Imagine that without their dedication, the environment of the school would not have been so beautiful and tidy, and the garbage on the table hygiene of the school restaurant would not have been cleaned up in time... While cheering for the women in various fields, we should also shift our focus to these less dazzling women behind the scenes.