Publication : Report

State oil palm plantations of the New Order were based on a family model, in which women and men were incorporated as workers and farmers through their membership in households. The tendency over the past “neoliberal” decade has been towards casualization and sub-contracting, with the consequence that men and women must compete for work as individuals. Families are relegated to the periphery of the system, making coherent households more difficult to sustain. The contemporary plantation labour regime accentuates the spatial dispersal of family members, as it draws women casual workers from one place, and men contract workers from another in order to maximize “efficiency” and profit. This arrangement emerged at the nexus of ethnic stereotypes and historically constituted labour reserves, combined with the calculative logic adopted by workers themselves as they seek to protect themselves and provide for their families.

Information Source : WPS 225 The Gendered Dynamics of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Labour Regime

• National University of Singapore