Rural Women's Land Right And Their Risk Of Domestic Violence:A China's Empirical Study

Domestic violence is a social problem which receives concern widely for it not only brings both physiological and psychological injuries to the victims,but also threatens the harmony and stability of the society.In most of cases involving domestic violence,women are the main victims.Due to the relatively backward economic and cultural level and the traditional feudal custom,the risk of domestic violence from intimate partners in rural areas is often higher.This relatively high risk of domestic violence in rural area has aroused more attention of scholars.Meanwhile,China has implemented a wide range of land contract policy on the basis of the collective ownership land since the reform and opening-up policy.To ensure rural women enjoy the same land rights as men,the government also brought about a series of policies and regulations.To a certain extent,although the implementation of relevant policies is also restricted by traditional custom,these actions have played an important and positive impact on the level of gender equality and the promotion of women status in rural areas.Using the data of the Third Wave of China's Women Social Status Survey undertaken in 2010,this thesis focuses on the rural women's experiencing of domestic violence and discusses the relationship between their risk of domestic violence from their spouses and their land right.Meanwhile,the thesis controls the individual variables and regional fixed effects of the respondents.In order to identify the causal relationship between land right of women in rural areas and lower possibility of domestic violence from intimate partners,this thesis uses two amendment policies introduced in 2001 as natural experiments.And then a difference-in difference design is adopted to compare the degree change of domestic violence between urban women and rural women.In addition,this thesis analyzes and excludes the potential problems that may exist in the model,such as the omitted variables,endogenous problems from key variables,the adverse selection,and so on.The empirical results show that the rural women who have the right of land contracted management are less threatened than the rural women lacking the contractual right of land in various forms of domestic violence,including beating,forced sex and restricting personal freedom.And the causal effect between the right of contractual land and lower risk of domestic violence in rural women is justified.After obtaining a more robust result of causal identification,this thesis also discusses the mechanism that how the land contract management right influenced the risk of domestic violence.The empirical results and theoretical analysis preliminarily support the theory of bargain model and gender theory in the field of domestic violence research.That is to say,women with land right have more bargaining power within intimate relationships or marriage,thus promoting their family status and further reducing their risk of experiencing domestic violence.