Wai jia nü: China's rural women battle for their rights
In villages still dominated by householders, women who marry an ‘outsider’ lose access to local services and compensation for expropriated collective land. With increasing levels of education and greater social connections, more and more of them are taking these kinds of disputes to court. But the road to their protection remains an uphill one.
Milan (AsiaNews) - At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Women's Forum, held a few weeks ago in Qingdao, Chinese President Xi Jinping called women ‘important promoters of human civilisation and social progress’, praising them for their ‘remarkable achievements in all areas of life’.
In reality, however, ‘the other half of the sky’ still struggles to assert its rights, gender inequality still being a deep-rooted problem in Chinese society.
Those suffering this disadvantage are mainly women living in rural areas of the country, including the so-called wai jia nü. This expression refers to those who, having married a foreigner, lose all rights derived from belonging to their native village, such as participating in local elections, benefiting from welfare services, obtaining leases for plots of land, receiving compensation for expropriated or requisitioned collective land. The situation of wai jia nü is all the more serious when one considers that these restrictions also extend to their children, who are even denied access to local schools.
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In some cases, young women bound to a partner ‘outside’ their rural community prefer to remain unmarried, rather than face dramatic consequences and be treated as ‘water thrown away’ (po chu qu de shui), to quote an old saying by which wai jia nü are usually referred to. On the other hand, a completely different treatment is reserved for men, who are free to marry whomever they wish, without risking losing their privileges.
This should come as no surprise, given that these ancient customs are perpetuated by village decision-making bodies, theoretically open to all adults in the rural community, but in fact dominated by the heads of families. Although an attempt was made in 2010 to increase the presence of women within them, through an amendment to the
Organic Law of Village Committees (Cunmin weiyuanhui zuzhifa), in reality women's influence remains limited.
Fortunately, however, a silent female resistance is taking shape in the Chinese countryside. As we read in a report recently published in The New York Times, more and more wai jia nü are deciding to take legal action to claim their rights. According to official figures, the number of court cases involving them has jumped from 450 in 2013 to 5,000 in 2019, partly due to higher levels of education and more opportunities to make social connections.
The road ahead, however, is still an uphill one, with courts often refusing to deal with such disputes and local authorities refusing to enforce any favourable rulings for fear of social unrest. Lin Lixia, a lawyer at the Qianqian law firm in Beijing, says that about 90 per cent of the lawsuits she has filed are unsuccessful.
In 2023, the weekly magazine The Economist reported on the case of Ms. Su, a plaintiff from Fujian, who, despite her victory in court, has never been compensated for her financial losses. As if this were not enough, fellow citizens started to marginalise her and a local Party cadre even insulted her by calling her a thief and belittling the value of her judicial success.
Instead,The New York Times reports the story of Ma, who was excluded from her own community in Guangdong after marrying an outsider in 1997. Although she has returned to live in her birthplace following her divorce from her husband, her situation has not changed: the local authorities continue to refuse to grant her requests, while villagers and family members accuse her of demanding what does not belong to her. Other protagonists of similar stories claim to have been harassed, beaten or arrested for trying to pursue their own interests.
Regardless of their achievements on the path to recognition of their rights, the courage shown by the wai jia nü in daring to challenge the impositions of patriarchal culture, a legacy of the Confucian tradition, is an achievement in itself. In spite of the visible effects of modernisation, in fact, the ancient conception that considers woman an appendage of man still persists in rural Chinese society. But it is with the introduction of the family responsibility system (baochan daohu) in the 1980s and the subsequent ceding of land usufruct rights to rural village members that the economic implications of gender inequality become more apparent.
Studies show that in many regions of China, although the law provides for an equal division of land, male children are granted twice as much as female children. In addition, the custom of registering leases of plots of land, houses, and deposit accounts in the name of their fathers or husbands, limits women's ability to freely enjoy the family's property and thus profit from it. If the latter's marital status then changes, because - as in the case of wai jia nü - they marry a foreigner or get divorced, the land lease and the associated benefits are often revoked.
According to some observers, a positive sign could come from the introduction of the new Law on Rural Collective Economic Organisations (Nongcun jiti jingji zuzhi fa). Approved on 28 June 2024, it will enter into force on 1 May 2025. It aims to strengthen the economic development of China's countryside, improve the welfare of its inhabitants and safeguard their rights.
In particular, Article 12 removes a number of conditions that previously had to be met to assess membership of rural communities, ensuring that all women, regardless of their marital status, are legally part of them and are entitled to enjoy the benefits that this entails. But since it is the village bodies that finally grant membership, many are sceptical about the real effectiveness of the new law: wai jia nü are still a minority, and local authorities and courts are unlikely to be willing to jeopardise the social stability of villages to protect the rights of this small group.
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