Forbidding The Readjustment Of Rural Land,Women’s Land Rights And Household Bargaining Power

As gender equality is one of our basic national policies, it is reasonable to confer women’s equal right to land contract with men. The protection of women’s land rights is directly related to their individual benefits, and may also have an effect on their household bargaining power, then affect the education and health situation of their children. In addition, as the feminization of agriculture is prevalent in rural China now days, protecting women’s land rights may also have a significantly effect on the households’agricultural benefits, even the sustainable development of rural society and economy.This study pays special attention to rural women’s land contract right. We are concerned about two problems. One is the affection of the forbidding land readjustment policy to the women’s land contract right, the other one is the affection of women’s land contract right to their household bargaining power. As there are some methodological weaknesses in previous literatures, we make some improvements in this research. First, we judge individual’s land holdings on the basis of actual property rights rather than the nominal property rights and we study gender differences in land contract on the individual level. Our study is in accordance with feminist methodology and may better reflect individual differences within households which may be overshadowed by household mean if we study this problem just on the household level. Meanwhile, the usage of metering methods is better for revealing the gender differences in the process of land distribution and readjustment. Second, we attempt to measure "women’s household bargaining power" with her "controlling of family finance", and then study the affection of rural women’s land contract right to their household bargaining power. We control other factors that may affect her household bargaining power. Compared to "the participation of agriculture management" which is used by the previous scholars, "the controlling of family finance" is considered to be more effective in reflecting women’s household bargaining power.After statistical analysis of the data collected from a household survey conducted in rural areas of Zhejiang\Hubei\Shaanxi Province in 2011, we’ve proved that women’s access to land is more tenuous than that of their male counterparts. Forbidding the readjustment of rural land may lead to the insecurity of women’s land rights. Women who migrate due to marriage are more likely to be landless, because of the missing of land readjustment exercised in their martial villages. Women’s land rights do not have a significantly affection to women’s household bargaining power, if the control of household finance is used to measure the household bargaining power.