Although Chinese marriage law states that men and women are equal, implementation of the law in divorce cases reveal gender disparities. In divorce lawsuits, women are often left without remedies for domestic violence and mothers lose custody of their children. Rural women face the additional disadvantage of lacking resources to help them navigate the divorce process. How are gender disparities revealed when women seek divorce in China?
Ke Li joins the National Committee in an interview recorded on November 21, 2024 to share her research into the processes and challenges rural women go through to obtain a divorce in China.
Ke Li
Ke Li is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the John Jay College of the City University of New York. Li’s research focuses on law and society, knowledge practices, and gender politics in contemporary China. Her book, Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China, was published by Stanford University Press in 2022. Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic data, Marriage Unbound shows how women’s legal mobilization and rights contention can forge new ground for our understanding of law and politics, as well as power and inequality, in an authoritarian context.
She also researches LGBTQ activism and impact litigation in Chinese society and how state- and society-sponsored knowledge moves come to shape judicial decision-making. Together, these two inquiries, she to connects several adjacent research areas: law and society, the sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies.