Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts

School of International and Public Affairs, 420 West 118th Street, Room 918, New York, NY 10027

Speaker: Ethan Michelson, James and Noriko Gines Department Chair in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Professor in Sociology, Academic Director of the IU China Gateway, Indiana University

Moderator: Yao Lu, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Using ‘big data’ computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Ethan 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 talk discusses key findings from his new book of the same name. 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. Michelson 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 event is part of the 2022-2023 lecture series on “Urbanization, Well-being, and Public Policy: China from Comparative Perspectives” and is sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by Columbia’s China Center for Social Policy.

Registration: To attend this event in-person, please register HERE. **Please note that non-CUID holders need to show proof of their primary series and one booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines.