Lie of the land: China’s rural women struggle for land rights in the courts, despite legal protections
- In thousands of cases, courts have ignored evidence when women sue for land compensation from their village assemblies
- Women are sidelined for the sake of stability, ‘village autonomy’, legal expert says
Last week, after two years of lawsuits and two appeals, Zhou Xiaoyu (not her real name) finally received confirmation from the Zhejiang Higher People’s Court that she had lost her case.
She would not be entitled to the collective land – and compensation after its sale – in her village, even though she had more than 30 pieces of evidence proving that she had lived there all her life, including her current household registration.
The decision was made among the villagers themselves, who concluded that Zhou’s case was not valid because she married someone from outside the village. The court stayed out of what it said was the village’s democratic decision.
Zhou married her husband, who was originally from Sichuan province, in 2020. Since then, they have lived with Zhou’s parents in a village in Zhuji, Zhejiang province.
Before Zhou got married, the village went through three rounds of land acquisitions, and each time she received her share of compensation. But in 2021, during another round of acquisitions, she was voted out, she told the Post.