The Chinese have ordered its All-China Women’s Federation to define unmarried women older than 27 as “left over.”

The Communist government ordered the feminist group to reference “leftover women” in several articles about the growing number of educated, professional, single women aged 27-30 who have “failed’ to find a husband and are now “undesirable,” The Daily Mail reports.

“Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult,” reads one article titled “Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy.”

Leta Hong-Fincher, an American academic studying at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told The Mail: “Since 2007, the state media has aggressively disseminated the leftover term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatizing educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single.”

The derogatory label sparked an outcry among the country’s growing number of young, modern career women, who claim they have been tossed aside.

The All-China Federation of Women has recently dropped the label among criticism, but the “leftover” expression remains widely used elsewhere, according to The Mail.

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