Women are ostracised by unfounded witchcraft labels

Witchcraft labels are a mechanism to harm female competitors and profoundly affect the structure of social networks, according to new UCL-led research. The study quantifies the impact of witchcraft labels, such as 'zhu' used in rural China, on communities including their influence on social life and how social networks are structured. The team, including researchers from UCL, Lanzhou University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, worked with five villages in rural China where they found 13.7% of households - normally those headed by a relatively wealthy woman - are stigmatised with a witchcraft label associated with the threat of food poisoning.  "We found quite high levels of belief in some women being 'poison givers' - labelled zhu or zhubu - sometimes translated as witch in this rural area of China. They are thought to poison you if you eat at their house, which is completely unfounded. We show that the label bears no meaningful information about the qualities of an individual but has profound social implications," explained study first author, Professor Ruth Mace (UCL Anthropology). "Households without the label avoid zhu-labelled households - they do not have relationships with them or share economics gifts or farming help. To mitigate this, households carrying the label associate with, help and find spouses with each other and we found they are no less cooperative than non-zhu labelled individuals." The researchers assessed cooperation between labelled and non-labelled households by giving individuals endowments of money which they could share with an anonymous member of their village.