Clothes hang from clotheslines as a woman walks past residential buildings in Wuhan, China, on June 14, 2017.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BEIJING – A Chinese court ruled in a divorce case that a woman should receive about 50,000 Chinese yuan ($ 7,700) from her husband in compensation for five years of domestic work.
The ruling sparked an online debate this week about whether that was a fair price.
That’s about $ 128 a month, or just over $ 1,500 a year. In Chinese currency, the payout is approximately 10,000 yuan per year.
China has said that the poorest earned an average of 9,808 yuan per person per year in 2019. That figure is up from 3,416 yuan in 2015.
In this case, having grown up in Beijing’s southwestern Fangshan district, the woman’s domestic work counted towards the value of intangible property, Judge Feng Miao told state media, according to a report on Monday.
It was not immediately clear when the court decision was made. But it was the first decision to go into effect in January referring to new provisions in China’s civil code.