An Empirical Study of Land Rights of Rural Women in China.

Most women in China got the equal land rights in the initial distribution of land in the second round of contract. However, women often lose their land rights when they migrate somewhere else due to marriage or some other reasons. It is usually caused by the following four reasons. First, there is a conflict between the related legislations on the unchangeable contract rights for 30 years for the sake of protection and stability of the contract rights of farm households and Chinese custom that married rural women live in their husbands' villages, which leads Io a fact that women married within the contract term can neither get land in their husbands' villages nor take their contracted land away from their native villages and consequently the loss of their land rights. Second, the instability and inconsistence of land policies affect the continuity of the rural women's land contract rights. When local governments in many regions are adjusting land contract rights, they are deeply influenced by various informal constraints such as ethics and customs, which usually lead to the loss of land rights of migrated married women. Third, some migrated married women cannot get the land contract rights for the time being due to the limited land supply in some administrative villages. Lack or small quantity of reserved land make immigrated married women cannot get their land contract rights on time. They can only get the land after some villagers return their lands due to further education, death or marriage. In some villages with small land supply and big population, it will take a long time to get the land. Fourth, some divorced women cannot get the land contract rights due to the inequality between men and women. The contracted lands and the distributed profits from the rural collective lands are usually registered in the name of male head of the households. Once a family breaks, a rural woman is usually in a very disadvantaged position when distributing the household property such as household contracted land, land for house building and its attachment, and collective dividend. To solve the problems on the land rights of rural women, the Government should first affirm the land rights as real rights; quicken the reform of the land property right system; define the legal purview of some disposition rights including use right transfer, subcontract, lease, conversion into shares, joint operation, mortgage, and inheriting; adopt a marketalized mechanism to realize the dynamic land contract rights of married women, for example, distributing and transferring land real rights among family members or establishing cooperation within the family; conduct the shareholding reform of land operation rights and benefit rights in the villages with higher levels of industrialization and urbanization and protect the land rights of rural women by the reform of the land property right system. The Government should also strengthen the legal protection and assure the long-term land use right of the farmers particularly the rural women. The related laws such as "Law of Rural Land Contract" should be strictly implemented and the existing village custom and regulations which are contradictory to the related laws should be abolished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]