Women Sue Village Committees for Denying Them Land Rights

Twenty-eight women in a village in Hohhot city, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, have waited since November 2005 for the court judgment in a suit against their village committee, according to a May 22 article in China Women's News, posted on the All China Women's Federation (ACWF) Web site. The village committee denied the women land contracting rights when it reallocated collectively owned village land. The committee justified the decision by saying that the women did not have rights to collectively owned village property because they had married men from other villages, according to a May 15 Xinhua article (in Chinese).

Since August 2005, women in three similar cases have won lawsuits against their village committees, alleging the village bodies denied them land contracting rights guaranteed under the Law on Land Contract in Rural Areas (LLCRA) and the Law on the Protection of Interests and Rights of Women (LPIRW). A woman in a village in Chengdu city, Sichuan province, sued village authorities after they denied her land compensation rights, according to a November 2, 2005, Xinhua article (in Chinese) posted on the Xuzhou ACWF Web site. The village authorities refused to compensate the woman for requisitioning her land, finding her a non-resident for the purpose of distributing land compensation despite the fact that she had not changed her hukou (household registration) status to her husband's village and continued to pay agricultural tax in her original village. The Gaoxin District People's Court found that her hukou registration demonstrated that she was a member of the village collective economic organization and should receive her share of the land compensation, and that village rules suggesting that women who marry out of the village must shift their hukou registration to their husband's village improperly limited women's freedom of residence. Courts ruled in favor of different groups of women in similar lawsuits in Wulanchabu city, Inner Mongolia, in April 2006, according to an April 12 People's Court Daily article (in Chinese), and in Tongcheng city, Anhui province, in August 2005, according to a November 9, 2005, Gongyi Shibao article (in Chinese).

The 2002 LLCRA and the LPIRW, enacted in 1992 and amended in 2005, both have provisions guaranteeing women the same land rights as men. Article 32 of the LPIRW says that women have equal rights with men with regard to rural land rights, including land contracts and compensation for requisitioned land; Article 55 provides that villages cannot infringe upon the right of a woman to participate in the village collective economic organization because she is married, unmarried, or widowed, and that women can sue in court if these rights are violated and no other recourse, such as mediation or arbitration, is available. Article 6 of the LLCRA protects women's right to contract land, and Article 30 provides that if a woman marries out of her village and does not contract land in her new village, she can retain the contract to her land in her original village.

According to a March 7 China Court Network article (in Chinese), Ang Mao, a female member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, noted that existing law does not specify the qualifications for membership in rural collective economic organizations. According to a July 29, 2005, China Court Network article (in Chinese), the Supreme People's Court has requested that the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress issue a legislative interpretation regarding this question. Under the 1998 Organic Law of the Village Committees of the People's Republic of China, village committees are autonomous institutions of village self-government. Village committees have made decisions concerning eligibility to receive shares of collectively owned village assets that legitimate discrimination against migrants, including women, who have moved out of the village. [See the CECC's 2004 Annual Report, Section III(f), Freedom of Residence and Travel.] Current discriminatory practices threaten women's property rights. According to a recent survey conducted by the ACWF, 70 percent of people without land in China are women, and among those, 43.8 percent lost land after they married and 0.7 percent of women lost land after a divorce, as reported in a May 22 China Youth Daily article (in Chinese).