CCPL Zoom Webinar Book Talk:
Decoupling: Gender Injustice in China’s Divorce Courts (CUP, 2022)
with the author – Ethan Michelson

28 JULY 2022 (THUR) 21:00-22:3O (HK TIME)

Ethan Michelson’s book analyzes almost 150,000 divorce trials in China and 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.

AUTHOR:
Ethan Michelson, Professor of Sociology, Indiana University Bloomington

DISCUSSANTS:
Sida Liu, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

Qian Liu, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Calgary

CHAIR:
Ying Xia, Assistant Professor of Law, HKU

This webinar is organized by the Centre for Comparative and Public Law, HKU and will be held via Zoom Meeting. Prior registration is required. For inquiries, please email Phoenix To at .