ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of rural women leaders in achieving access to justice and rights protection of women villagers in China. It argues that women leaders do participate in dispute resolution at village level and have the potential to make a greater contribution to improving the rights of women villagers and their access to justice in rural China. The chapter starts by placing rural women leaders in the power structure of village governance and analyses the resulting gender implications. It also suggests that an empowerment process for rural women leaders offers the possibility of turning the women against women' model into a women for/with women' model, thus helping to transform bottom-up power and changing the gender-equality landscape in rural China. The chapter examines how rural women leaders interact with the grassroots justice system and the power structure behind it at institutional. The PRC People's Mediation Law 2010 also requires that there are women members on the people's mediation committee.
