Skip to main content

Networking with Women Community Organizers and Activists








Rare finds

It is quite rare to find women activists working on women workers' issues in the oil palm plantations of Indonesia. They are generally part of the administration but very few are involved in organizing workers. Generally, NGOs organizing labour are very focused on broad issues like wages, land grabbing and unfair treatment by capitalists and agribusinesses. The focus on women is minimal as a target group for organizing and considered for supplementary activities to support the men who are being organized. 
They may have be aware of gender inequality but this does not extend to efforts to implement gender mainstreaming in the programmes and campaigns. There is still an obvious gap and women are not benefiting from programmes. A higher level of commitment and focus is required to ensure women benefit from labour organizing.

Solidarity

As a feminist researcher working on social justice issues affecting women in the oil palm industry, I want to establish a network linking women with similar interests, both activists and researchers. Thus fa, I have managed to connect with two dynamic women who are enthused about their work. I started communicating with Intan Cinditiara of Sawith Watch in 2011 when I was preparing my proposal for my current fellowship. It was a pleasure to discover that she had similar interests. We have been in touch though via formal communications. However, yesterday I discovered her brilliant blog about her experiences working with women workers in oil palm plantations. Her description of their lives and analysis revealed the inequality present in the lives of these women. Her most current writing can be found at her Jarijemari Blog. 

At present, I am based at Perhimpunan Lentera Rakyat (Lentera) in Rantau Prapat, North Sumatera. This is a grass roots based organization working on plantation workers' issues. They work extends beyond the borders of North Sumatera. Though she is new to the organization, she is passionate about the issues affecting women. One of the things which struck me about her ability to analyze the exploitation which the women experienced on a daily basis. She spoke about the lack of latrines for women working in plantations. Most of them would have to relieve themselves in secluded areas which offers very little privacy. She also mentioned that women were of exposed to sexual harassment by management staff of plantations. Affected women would not report the violence for fear of their spouses losing their jobs. The reality is unemployment is extremely high in Indonesia, it is a matter of survival for the working classes to hold on to their jobs. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day One: Household Interviews

Meeting Mrs Panaso  We reached our final respondent for the day, Mrs Panaso at almost 1 pm. Her house was a typical traditional house. It had no rooms, some wooden shelves inside and a lot of bundles. The walls were made of kalakat which is woven oil palm fronds. The fronds are woven and painted over with shellac to make it water proof. Oil palm the fronds are dried until they turn yellow and then used for kalakat.  Mrs Panaso was a very slim woman of 60 with a shock of dyed brown hair. She is cheerful by nature and very accomodating. She was about to start her lunch of small dried fish, rice and fluffy brown dish of something I did not recognize.  Mrs Panaso's deep well Her house had an open air kitchen which was a cheerful and warm place. She used fire wood for her cooking. She also had a deep well from which she obtained her water supply. The metal pump looked unwieldy to manoeuvre and I wondered how she managed. Mrs Panaso's open stove ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning to Mentor

Background I had a wonderful opportunity to attend a useful workshop organized by the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) in collaboration with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS). The workshop was entitled 'Women Mentoring Development Programme' was attended by over 40 women from various fields: civil society, small and medium level entrepreneurs, training and education.  The training was conducted in English by two master trainers who have had experience in mentoring women entrepreneurs. They presented a comprehensive workshop structure which included personal mastery, skills mastery and process mastery. We started with discovering our basic personality attributes to understand our prominent characteristics. We were introduced to a local developed personality assessment tool the LEONARD Personality Inventory. It was quite interesting to discover one's strength and shortcomings based on the analysis.  I am going to highlight some of the elements of the worksh...
1 comment
Read more

Giant Slayers - Asian Agri vs. Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia 1992

PT Andalas IntiAgro Lestari I surveyed this plantation yesterday which is located in Aek Kuo, Labuhanbatu Utara. It is part of the plantations under Asian Agri (Oil Palm Producer) in North Sumatra. There about 400 workers employed in this plantation, non-management staff. There are various tasks done by workers, harvesting, spraying, fertilizing and general work. Women work as daily wage workers or as 'buruh harian lepas' as they are known here. They earn IDR 61,000 per day ( RM19.29) working from 6.30 am to 1.30 pm. They carry out a range of tasks - spraying (semprot), segregation fertilizer (menguntil), weeding, census taking, maintenance and fertilizing (memupuk).  Women's participation Women are recruited by the management of the plantation but not as permanent workers with benefits. These women's husbands work on the plantation and are permanent workers or 'SKU'. The work tasked to women is part of the plantation's production. Some ...
Post a Comment
Read more