Women’s land activism and gendered citizenship in the urbanising Pearl River Delta

Abstract

In light of the unequal access to urban citizenship resulting from the household registration system ( hukou), an increasing number of scholarly works have pointed out how a system of citizenship stratification has emerged in urbanising China. However, this stratification has seldom been analysed in terms of gender. Rural women, situated at the bottom of the hierarchy of differentiated citizenship, often suffer gender-based discrimination and tumble still further down the hierarchy. Specifically, women are vulnerable to economic and social dispossession in the process of the displacement of rural populations and renegotiation of land rights. Owing to the custom of patrilocal residence, women who have ‘married out’ ( waijianü) have been excluded from rights, participation and entitlement to collective land property. By creating a class of rural female non-citizens, rural communities have deprived waijianü of opportunities to share land-related revenue realised in the process of urbanisation, further perpetuating male dominance just as local economies and society are in flux. Through a case study of these conflicts in Guangdong, this paper explores how women have challenged gendered citizenship in the process of urbanisation.