In fact, had some of the women not threatened to commit suicide and the local media not highlighted their plight, it's possible that the local court would turn down their case. The hearing ended in June, but still no verdict has been passed.

Says Li Chengying's Xi'an-based lawyer Che Xiaogang the verdict may have been delayed because of the possible resistance to its implementation. "The preference for sons is imbedded in people's minds, especially in rural areas, and it's difficult to shake it off just through laws and regulations."

An All-China Women's Federation survey that covered 30 provinces and municipalities shows 31 percent of the women without arable land don't get any plot under their name and 44 percent lose any such claim after marriage.

"I didn't know society was so negligent towards protection of rural women and denial of their rights was so severe and widespread," says CWLLS dean Guo Jianfei. And to think that in some areas more women are married and live in villages they are born in nowadays.

Professor of the Party School of CPC Central Committee Li Huiying says the existing land allocation system, too, has raised people's preference for a son. The area of land a family gets is fixed for three decades irrespective of the increase in the number of family members. This makes a plot originally under the head of a woman automatically pass to her brother or brothers when she is married outside the village. A woman is a double loser, so to say, because in most cases she hardly gets a plot under her name in her husbands' villages. The reason: no extra land for allocation.

Experts have suggested changes in the rural land allocation system to end this discrimination because along with power allocation, it has fueled people's preference for sons. And that has created an imbalance in gender ratio in rural areas.

The gender ratio for newborns in 2005 was about 123 boys for every 100 girls in rural areas, compared to the national average of 119.5:100, says Population and Family Planning Commission director Zhang Weiqing. According to the UN, a healthy gender ratio should be 107 boys to 100 girls - the fewer the boys the better. But ideally, a society should have a gender ratio of 1:1.

Change, however, is occurring. Some local governments have come up with regulations since last year, banning discrimination against married women in public resources allocation. For instance, last year the standing committees of local people's congresses in Guangdong and Hubei provinces implemented rules that no village committee has the right to force women to register their residency outside even if they are not married in the places of their birth. The rules also bar village committees from denying women equal share of the financial benefits. Also, people's courts in Guangdong have been told not to refuse any complaints from women in such cases.

Hailing these rules as a step forward in local government awareness, Li Ying says, a country's laws should be effective enough to protect the dignity of its people.

(China Daily, March 7, 2008)