Depriving women farmers of land rights will set back China
Tim Hanstad says women's names must be included in new national registration system
China is launching what is perhaps the most ambitious land registration system in history, seeking to document and protect property rights to more than one billion plots of land across the countryside.
The goal is that, by 2018, the land allocated to every single household will be documented - providing farmers with increased tenure security at a time of unprecedented land development.
However, there is one group who may not reap many of the benefits from this enormous step forward for rural development: women farmers.
Beijing has not issued guidelines on exactly how farmers' names are to be documented in the land registries, leaving each province free to develop its own system. Thus far, 13 provinces and municipalities have issued policy documents that require the protection of women's equal rights to land in the registration process. Others should follow their lead to ensure the significant and much-needed benefits of the national effort are shared by both men and women.
The exclusion of some women farmers from land registries may seem like a small question for technocrats to ponder. But it poses a significant danger to the economic and social status of tens of millions of Chinese women.
Currently, national laws say that women's rights to land are equal to men's. But, in reality, rural women often face significant challenges in trying to exercise their rights to land.
For example, currently, twin land documents, precursors to the land registration effort, document a farmer's rights: land contracts and land certificates. According to our latest survey of farmers across 17 provinces in 2011, women's names are included on only 17 per cent of land contracts and 38 per cent of land certificates.