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Working oil palm: women's everyday labor in a plantation zone
Topics: Women
, Feminist Geographies
, Latin America
Keywords: oil palm plantations, labor, women, Colombia Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Saturday Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 33
Authors:
Ingrid Diaz, UNC Chapel Hill
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Abstract
Colombian rural women are joining the oil palm industry at higher rates than ever before. This process has been framed and encouraged by a combination of state policies on agro-business, post-conflict, and gender inequality over the last 20 years, with private companies' policies to recruit women as workers. This paper explores what are the implications of this process of expansion over women's bodies, decision making and larger relations with their families and communities. By exploring the conflicting ways in which women experience their insertion into the labor force, I aim to address how women are producing the nature of the plantation while simultaneously being produced by the forces that shape the plantation in the first place. Building on feminist political ecology, feminist geographies of labor, and critical agrarian studies, my paper explores a crucial topic in rural change: women workers' agency in rural areas. I will draw on the stories of women working in a black plantation in the Colombian Llanos region.
Working oil palm: women's everyday labor in a plantation zone