Across China, many women with rural hukou are systematically denied lucrative village land rights. Village assemblies, ostensibly autonomous local political organizations, decide who is a member of the rural collective and thus has access to revenue from collectively-owned lands. These male-dominated bodies routinely vote out women who have married men from outside the village. Men are not subject to the same exclusion. Now—due in part to both rising land values and increased awareness about their rights—women across the country are taking to court to sue for their rights. From Vivian Wang for The New York Times:
For decades, women in this situation had little recourse. Some accepted their deprivation as normal. But there are signs of a quiet resistance unfolding as women have become more educated and found more ways to connect with one another. The number of court rulings involving the words “married-out women” jumped to nearly 5,000 five years ago from 450 in 2013, according to official data.
[…] On paper, the women’s legal chances look good. Scholarly analyses have found that many court rulings in these cases favor married-out women.
But those are the cases that make it to court, not those that judges throw out or officials force into out-of-court mediation. And villages often refuse to recognize rulings against them — as was the case for several of the Guangdong women.
[…] “From the perspective of maintaining social stability, local governments or courts are definitely more inclined to protect the benefits of the majority,” said [Lin Lixia, a legal advocate at Qianqian Law Firm in Beijing who has worked on women’s land rights for 20 years.] She said she received 40 to 50 inquiries a year, and that about 90 percent of her lawsuits were unsuccessful. [Source]
While women are seeing some victories in the courts, their practical gains remain limited. In 2023, The Economist wrote on the same issue, covering a case in Fujian province in which a plaintiff known as Mrs. Su won in court but has been been denied, at least thus far, the money legally owed her:
After Mrs Su’s legal victory, she says neighbors turned “vicious”. A local official told her she was a thief who should be arrested, and called court judgments good only “for wiping your arse”. Surprisingly often, villages reject a court’s jurisdiction over land rules that they set, and in truth the law is fuzzy. Defying the ruling, Lüchuwu officials have offered Mrs Su ever-larger sums to settle the case, though always less than 50,000 yuan. She wants her land rights acknowledged, though, and village bosses are not budging. She shares a name and ancestors with neighbors, she sighs. “But now nobody talks to me. It’s all about money, right?”
Mrs Su is surely correct. A neighbor, asked about the recent lawsuits, snaps that she lost out on land revenues from her own home village after she married a man from Lüchuwu. That being so, she does not see why any other married-out woman should fare better. Over tiny cups of tea in his office, the village party secretary, Su Qiang, describes long months of negotiations between women plaintiffs and village section chiefs, haggling over possible cash settlements. Puffing his way through a chain of Zhonghua cigarettes, Mr Su agrees that the sticking point is rights to land. [Source]
In June, the National People’s Congress passed a law that devolves more power to village assemblies, the political bodies that control collective land rights on paper. (In practice, the Party holds sway.) While some experts worry that the new provision does not do enough to address rural women’s legal rights, others believe the new law makes significant progress towards protecting their rights. From Xinlu Liang at The South China Morning Post:
In particular, Article 12 of the new law removes a slew of conditions that previously had to be met when evaluating membership [in rural collectives]. These included considerations such as historical context, practical realities, procedural fairness and public recognition.
[…] Article 12 also specifies the circumstances under which newly married individuals and newborns should obtain membership in a rural collective economic organization, ensuring that women who move to their husband’s hometown after marriage can obtain legal membership, and also providing legal protection for children. Previously, babies born to “married-out” women were often excluded from collectives.
“This is indeed a significant step forward,” said [Lin Lixia from Qianqian Law Firm in Beijing], who has been tracking the issue of “married-out” women losing their land rights since 2004. A large number of affected rural children in provinces like Guangxi, Shandong and Zhejiang have lost their rights to land. [Source]
