A Chinese man has been ordered to pay his ex-wife 50,000 yuan (US$7,750) for years of unpaid housework, in a landmark divorce case that has sparked furious debate in China.
Under a new civil code that came into effect this year, divorcing spouses have the right to request compensation if they bore more responsibilities at home.
The wife, surnamed Wang, told the Beijing court that during five years of marriage she “looked after the child and managed household chores, while Chen [her husband] did not care about or participate in any other household affairs besides going to work.”
She filed a claim for extra compensation for housework and childcare duties, a Feb. 4 court statement showed.
The court ruled that Wang had indeed taken on more household responsibilities and should receive 50,000 yuan plus sole child custody, and an additional 2,000 yuan in alimony per month.
Feng Miao, the presiding judge, said that the division of property related to “tangible property,” of which it was impossible to include housework.
Housework “for example, can improve the ability of the other spouse to achieve personal, individual academic growth, and this is not reflected in the tangible property,” Feng said.
After local media reported this week that Wang had appealed — having originally requested 160,000 yuan in compensation — the ruling sparked widespread online debate over the value of women’s unpaid domestic work.
As of yesterday, the hashtag “stay-at-home wife receives 50,000 yuan housework compensation” had more than 570 million views on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo.
More than 427,000 people responded to an online poll by Chinese media outlet Pheonix Weekly, which asked if the compensation was right, wrong, too small, or too big. Almost 94 percent said it was right, but not enough, with commenters saying it underestimated the job of stay-at-home wives and mothers.
“Women should never be stay-at-home wives... When you divorce, you are left with nothing whatsoever. 50,000 yuan in housework compensation is bullshit,” one comment read.
“A full-time nanny could cost more than this for half a year, are women’s youth and feelings this cheap?” another read.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has estimated that Chinese women spend nearly four hours doing unpaid labor daily — 2.5 times that of men and higher than the average.
Marriage breakups have surged over the past two decades in China, as divorce laws were liberalized and women became more financially independent — to the concern of Beijing, which is trying to boost birthrates in an aging population.
Additional reporting by The Guardian
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS