Decoupling
Gender Injustice in China's Divorce Courts

Explores how China's divorce courts have generally done less to protect abused women than to empower and enable their abusers.

Ethan Michelson (Author)

9781108738156, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 June 2023

571 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.9 cm, 0.757 kg

'Decoupling is an ambitious and fascinating study that illuminates the discrepancy between China's official promotion of gender equality and the reality faced by many women. Michelson superbly demonstrates how institutional forces and patriarchy together undermine China's marriage laws and result in systematic injustice against women in divorce courts and violence in their homes. This rich and gripping book is relevant to all gender and family scholars.' Wei-hsin Yu, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Michelson's analysis of almost 150,000 divorce trials reveals routine and egregious violations of China's own laws upholding the freedom of divorce, gender equality, and the protection of women's physical security. Using 'big data' computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Michelson reveals that women have borne the brunt of a dramatic intensification since the mid-2000s of a decades-long practice of denying divorce requests. This book takes the reader upstream to the institutional sources of China's clampdown on divorce and downstream to its devastating and highly gendered human toll, showing how judges in an overburdened court system clear their oppressive dockets at the expense of women's lawful rights and interests. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese courts, judicial decision-making, family law, gender violence, and the limits and possibilities of the globalization of law.This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Preface and acknowledgments
1. Sisyphus goes to divorce court
2. The right to decouple
3. The divorce twofer: Why court behavior is decoupled from the right to decouple
4. Studying judicial decision-making: Court decisions in Henan and Zhejiang
5. 'Many cases, few judges' and the vanishing three-judge trial
6. Tracing the origins of the divorce twofer to heavy caseloads
7. How judges gaslight domestic violence victims in divorce trials
8. Divorce denials: Judicial discourse and judicial decision-making
9. Fight or flight: Consequences of the judicial clampdown on divorce
10. Possession is nine-tenths of the law: Why wife-beaters gain child custody
11. Quantitative patterns in child custody determinations: Sons to fathers, daughters to mothers, abusers rewarded, victims punished
12. Conclusions: Assessing the impact of law by observing judicial behavior
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Family law: marriage & divorce [LNMB], Courts & procedure [LNAA], Law & society [LAQ]