Weapon of the Weak: Why Women Prefer to Use the Courts in China

• In Event: Courts and Gender Issues in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

When do people resort to the courts to resolve their grievances toward the government in a hybrid regime? Drawing on a unique nationwide representative sample consisting of about 4,000 valid responses, we conducted a conjoint experiment to identify how different plaintiff and defendant traits are associated with the use of administrative litigation in urban China.

Noticeably, we find that our female respondents, compared with their male counterparts, exhibit a higher propensity to think that women in the country should use the courts to defend their legal rights and interests. Further analysis shows that such propensity is particularly salient among female respondents who have not filed any litigations in the courts, who do not receive higher education, and who are neither members of the Communist Party nor state-unit employees.

We argue that Chinese respondents view the law and courts as weapons for the weak, given that only those the social capital and political resources in Chinese society are better positioned to cope with their conflicts with local governments through informal dispute resolution. The fact that these perceptions only emerge among our female respondents also corroborates a gendered gap in women’s socioeconomic status in contemporary China. Our findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of legal mobilization in authoritarian or hybrid regimes. Our novel empirical evidence also sheds light on the preferences of marginalized groups in the use of alternative dispute resolution in non-democratic countries.

Authors

• Xiaohong Yu

• Chao-yo Cheng, Birkbeck, University of London

• Chao Ma, University of International Business and Economics

• Zhaoyang Sun, Tsinghua University