Taking the latest round of lawmaking in China as a point of departure, this article provides an in-depth examination of women’s land rights on paper and their dispossession of land in reality. To explain the gap between the two, I draw on the extant literature as well as my field research in southwestern China to illustrate the mechanisms responsible for unequal access to farmland between women and men. In illuminating these mechanisms, this article unpacks how, over the past four decades, the combination of ostensibly gender-neutral state policies, seemingly progressive legislation, and ingrained cultural prescriptions and practices has produced profoundly gendered disparities in land use. If state policies and legislation are indeed part of the problem, they must be part of the solution. Decisionmakers at the commanding heights, however, have showed little will to effect sweeping changes aimed at safeguarding women’s access to land. Instead, they have opted for piecemeal, fragmented, and localized measures in the hope of chipping away at gender inequality in land possession and management. These tepid measures will have grave implications for women’s land use and rights contention in the years to come.
Triangulation in participation: Dynamic approaches for science-practice interaction in land-use decision making in rural China