Image of Socio-cultural factors affecting women smallholders: the case of ethnic minority women in the highlands of Southeast Asia

Agriculture and Environmental Studies

Socio-cultural factors affecting women smallholders: the case of ethnic minority women in the highlands of Southeast Asia

Download PDF

In the highlands of Southeast Asia, agriculture is deeply embedded in sociocultural organizations in the society, where safety nets and reciprocal support are established through women’s unpaid labor contribution to farming. However, many research frameworks employed in agricultural research tend to focus on crops and their economic value. As a result, women’s contribution to and constraints on agriculture associated to sociocultural value is not fully explored, reinforcing gender inequality in knowledge production in agricultural scholarship.

Drawing on feminist approaches to political economy, this chapter explores women’s unpaid labor contribution to agriculture through a case study on ethnic Thai young married couples in Northern Vietnam. The authors' findings show that women’s unpaid labor contribution to agriculture is vital to sustain safety nets and receive reciprocal support from kin, compensating precarious off-farm economic activities performed by men. Ethnic minority women need to be positioned as key actors for agricultural development in Asia.

Detail Information
Publication Information
Cambridge, UK : Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing Limited.,
Number of Pages
20 pages
ISBN
9781801468053
Language
English
ISSN
-
Subject(s)
-
Description
Chapter taken from: Sachs, C. and Castellanos, P. (ed.), Women and smallholder farming: Addressing global inequities in agriculture, Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing, Cambridge, UK, 2024, (ISBN: 978 1 80146 805 3; (www.bdspublishing.com)
Citation
Other Information
Type
Book Chapter
Part Of Series
Burleigh Dodds Series in Agricultural Science
DOI Identifier
https://doi.org/10.19103/AS.2024.0148.06
Related Publications

No Related Publications available

Comments