Women's rights under the Small House Policy in Hong Kong

This article investigates how the legislature and courts in Hong Kong have been struggling to tackle the sex discrimination created by the Small House Policy (SHP). Initially introduced in 1972, the SHP provides every male indigenous villager in the New Territories with a once-in-a-lifetime housing grant, thereby excluding women from this benefit. Despite its discrimination against women, the SHP was still exempted from the New Territories Land (Exemption) Ordinance in 1994 and the Sex Discrimination Ordinance in 1995. In 2019, the judicial review of Kwok Cheuk Kin and Lui Chi Hang v The Director of Land declared that part of the SHP was unconstitutional. Still, this decision was overturned in the Court of Appeal and the Court of Final Appeal, which ruled that the SHP was constitutional in its entirety. This article examines the historical context of the SHP, discusses how the court has been interpreting and defining the SHP and, more importantly, investigates how British's indirect rule created a hostile legal environment for women and further relegated them to the groups of 'double- colonised' and 'triple-colonised'.