Progress Report for SANREM Gender Cross-Cutting Research
September 28, 2008.
LTRA #5: Agroforestry and Sustainable Vegetable Production in Southeast Asian Watersheds
Title of cross-cutting gender research project: Linking Women Farmers to Local Markets:
Gendered Networks in Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam (tentative)
Lead gender researcher (name and email): Ma. Elena Chiong-Javier (clamecj@yahoo.com;
gender coordinator and lead for Philippines), Trikoesoemaningtyas (deradyti@pacific.net.id;
lead for Indonesia), Nguyen Duc Thanh (htqt@yahoo.com; lead for Vietnam)
Additional participants in gender research (names and emails): Herien Puspitawati
(herien_puspitawati@email.com), Anas Susila (anasdsusila@yahoo.com), Desiree Concepcion
Aragones (dgarganian@yahoo.com), Eulalia Cardente (local assistant, no email address),
Manuel Reyes (mannyreyes@nc.rr.com),Dang Thanh Ha (dtha66@yahoo.com), Tran Duc Luan
Specific site(s) of research (Country, region, market?):
1. Indonesia: Hambaru, Sukaluyu and Paraban Munchang Villages in Nanggung,
Subdistrict of Bogor District
2. Philippines: Songco Barangay, Lantapan Municipality, Bukidnon Province; Agora
Market in Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental Province (adjacent to Bukidnon)
3. Vietnam: Nghia Trung Commune, Bu Dang District, Bin Phuoc Province; Nghia Trung
Market
Abstract:
The study aims to describe and compare the gendered marketing networks of women farmers
that link them to local markets for their products in three countries namely Indonesia,
Philippines and Vietnam. It also seeks to determine how these networks influence the women’s
access to market information and their household bargaining status. The study employs a
qualitative multi-method approach that combines review of related literature and project
documents/ reports, in-depth interviews, participatory network mapping, and participatory
focused discussions. The study’s subjects are selected women farmers belonging to a formal
women’s association (Philippines and Vietnam) or informal women’s group (Indonesia).
A comparative description of the prevailing gender roles in the reproductive, productive, and
community spheres has already been obtained from earlier project studies particularly rapid
market assessments or market value chain studies and gender surveys. However, the review of
literature on farm women’s social networks and social capital is still ongoing. Fieldwork is also
only partially completed. For Indonesia and Philippines, the women’s market networks have
already been mapped with their participation but only analyzed preliminarily. In Vietnam, field
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data gathering concentrated first on understanding women’s involvement in local
organizations.
Critical findings thus far:
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Farm women’s involvement in marketing their products appears most active in the
Philippine study site, where it is sanctioned by both women and men as an appropriate role
for women to undertake alone and even without spouse partnership. In contrast, women’s
market participation in the Indonesian site is unusual and not normative but those few who
are active seem to have the support of male household/family members. The women’s
case in Vietnam falls somewhere in between, with their husbands sharing equally on
decisions about their actual market role and which market trader to use.
In all three countries, women farmers undertake marketing activities and seek to improve
their economic status for the sake of family, especially children’s welfare. Family-oriented
goals, rather than desire for personal empowerment, motivate them to become market
players and to advance in this role.
Preliminary results in the Philippines and Indonesia conform to the hypothesis that marketoriented networks do enable and facilitate women farmers’ marketing of agricultural crops
produced in family farms. The networks provide valuable links to suppliers of farm inputs or
goods for trading, buyers of farm products, sources of capital or credit, and market-related
information such as which products are currently in great or short supply, price fluctuations,
buyers’ preferences, and demand for new crops.
Women farmers (i.e., the study’s subjects) in the Philippines grow high-valued vegetable
crops like cabbages, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, and Chinese cabbages (called umbok) in
family farms and single-handedly market their produce, some with additional purchases
from nearby farms. However, those in Indonesia help grow household subsistence crops like
rice, vegetables and rootcrops. While they experienced growing and selling guavas and
jasmine flowers in commercial quantities in the past, now they have started to produce
katuk (green leafy vegetable eaten by lactating mothers to increase breastmilk), a SANREMintroduced crop, which will be collectively marketed through an ICRAF-identified
middleman link. In Vietnam, the women market traders initially interviewed were engaged
in selling fish and clothing in the marketplace rather than in selling food crops.
The women’s market networks in both Philippines and Indonesia are not of the onegendered type, but are comprised of a combination of female and male nodes.
Nonetheless, doing a gender count among the nodes has revealed the predominance of
female nodes. For example, seven of the 10 women subjects in the Philippines had a
female-dominated network. Moreover, the female-dominated networks averaged fewer
nodes (seven nodes per farmer).
Regular ties established between the women farmers and certain nodes in their networks
are known as langganan in Indonesia, suki in the Philippines, and moi in Vietnam. Initial
data showed that the use of such terms confers some expected obligations and privileges
on the market partners like exclusive patronage, preferential treatment, lenient or reduced
pricing, and quality assurance of products or services exchanged.
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Overarching research question: How does the gendered nature of networks linking women to
markets impact the quality of information they receive and their bargaining power (in the
household, market, etc.)?
Specific research questions:
 How gendered are the nodes in the women farmers’ market networks? What kinds of ties
bind them to the various nodes?
 What motivate women farmers to establish ties with either the women or men nodes in
their networks?
 How do gendered networks favorably or unfavorably affect women’s market information
access and household bargaining status?
 How do women’s market networks enhance their social capital?
Did you ask the right questions? If not, what would you ask if you had to do this over again?
Research approaches and methodologies:
Four qualitative methods are being used in the study namely:
 Review of related literature and project documents/reports
 Participatory network mapping
 In-depth interview
 Participatory focused discussion
Methodological challenges and recommendations:
 Engaging women farmers to draw their network map was quite challenging. Most of them
felt self-conscious about their lack of drawing skills and seemed in a hurry to return to their
work hence the researcher did most illustrations. Gathering the women as a group and
finding a less preoccupied common time (e.g., right after marketing) may make the mapping
exercise more rewarding and fun. However, more researchers may be required to monitor
the outputs of the group.
 While it has its strengths, tapping a local woman leader to assist the researchers in
establishing contact with the subjects and understanding local nuances also has its
downside. It was at first difficult to manage the local person and prevent data
contamination. But eventually, repeated instructions on the need to preserve privacy during
the interview process paid off.
 On hindsight, the gender cross-cutting study should have followed in the wake of the
socioeconomic and gender baseline surveys and market assessments that were started in
Year 1 of the project. Then the earlier field researchers could have continued with the study
and a new researcher did not have to be hired and reoriented anew to community
situations and the study’s market and gender findings.
Development problems and what you have done to address these:
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Impacts, or how your work has had direct or indirect development impacts:
 In the course of data gathering, women’s consciousness of the gendered nature of their
roles and expectations was either awakened or heightened as they could not help but
reflect on these. The women also sounded pleased to share and reflect on their individual
accomplishments as a result of market engagement.
Training, short courses, technical assistance, etc. (include number of participants and
breakdown by gender):
Presentations, publications or other materials:
Next steps:
 Completion of literature review
 Completion of data gathering following a common research framework and qualitative tools
 Data analysis and report preparation (one working paper per country)
 Production of a common paper for publication
Brief literature review and key references: (here or attached to this document)
I. Gender roles in the Indonesia, Philippine and Vietnam research sites sourced from earlier
project documents/reports (Chiong-Javier, 2007)
Farm roles are differentiated by gender, with men taking a dominant role in commercial
crop production and women predominating in raising subsistence crops particularly in home
gardens. In Indonesia and Philippine sites, most if not almost all niches in the agricultural
production cycle that normally require arduous work are mainly handled by male spouses;
these include land preparation, planting, crop management/maintenance, fertilizer
application and/or pest control, and harvesting. In Vietnam’s case, husbands dominate only
in planting, fertilizer application, and pest control as gender equality is observed in land
preparation, crop management, and harvesting. Female participation in producing
commercial crops appears lower in the Philippine case but higher in Indonesia (however
only for irrigated and rainfed rice agriculture) and Vietnam. Women’s dominance in
subsistence crop production has been noted only in Vietnam and Philippine data.
More men rather than women also control the following agricultural domains: farm-level
decision making including purchase of farm inputs and timing of harvest or marketing;
involvement in farmers’ organizations, associations, or cooperatives (excepting
organizations formed by and for women); and participation in agricultural training and
extension services. Far fewer Indonesian wives are involved in farming organizations
compared to Vietnamese or Filipino wives. Female participation in training, though
generally low, is higher in the Philippine case when compared to the Vietnam and
Indonesian cases. Women’s limited organizational and training involvement is due to such
factors as their preoccupation with household duties, the holding of meeting or training
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during hours or times that disregard women’s work and needs, and the perceived male
orientation of many extension services.
If the men lead in productive work, it is the women who reign in reproductive roles. The
latter consists mainly of unremunerated domestic chores particularly washing clothes and
dishes, cooking meals at home and in the farm, cleaning the house, and attending to
childcare activities.
Dominance in the agricultural marketing sphere varies per country. In Vietnam, both male
and female spouses generally share equally in the tasks of marketing their farm produce. In
contrast, marketing activities in Indonesia’s case are predominantly handled by men while
in the Philippines these are usually powered by women. Albeit Filipino wives exercise
control over the actual sale of produce both on farm or at the marketplace, their husbands
still dominate in such post-harvest tasks as sorting, grading, and transporting. Moreover,
women’s greater participation in marketing does not seem to translate easily to a greater
say in farm expenditures.
Limited data also indicate some gender differentials in the choice of agricultural crops to
grow for the market and access to/control of land resource for production purposes.
Furthermore, while women may help in planting and caring for trees, their men folk
disposes of timber and other tree products (like cacao and cashew) in the market.
II. Women’s market participation, networks and social capital sourced from related literature
That married women are extensively involved in independent income-earning activities is
often cited as a dimension of rural Southeast Asian economic life, as noted by Eder (2006).
In the Philippine case, “a long and distinguished tradition of empirical research” has
allegedly attested to women’s prominent role in the household economy through their
direct involvement in income generation and as household economic resource managers.
Other authors like Jefremovas (2000) also concluded that women farmers engaged in
commercial ventures are “good with money.”
However, Gammage (2005) has found that women who engage in production and join the
market face constraints and opportunities unlike those of their male counterparts. This is
because socio-cultural proscriptions can inhibit women’s market entry and access or limit
their economic mobility.
Women are known to draw upon a range of social networks for personal and family
livelihood (Dikito-Wachtmeister, 2001). As defined by Freeman (2006), social network is a
“social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations that are
tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas,
financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.” He explained that in its
simplest form, the network maps all the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. And
although it is said that social networks usually operate on gender lines, they are regarded as
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gender-neutral in the literature. Moreover, while networks may empower women, they are
in reality a reflection of the gendered nature of power relations between women and men
in society. It is for this reason that women often do not belong to the same networks as
men and women’s projects are generally established or managed through exclusive women
groups that may ensure women’s participation and even develop their self-confidence but
exercise less clout compared to men’s networks (Freeman, 2006). Under circumstances like
these, any attempt to empower women through social networks could result in more harm
than good (Dikito-Wachtmeister, 2001).
Literature on Philippine rural market exchanges in the early seventies already described
how market interlinkage is being enforced through suki relations between trading partners
(Szanton, 1972; Davis, 1973). Use of the term suki to refer to both the partner and the
relationship conveys voluntarily-established, personalized market arrangements governed
by norms and values of mutual reciprocity and trust. This interpretation that sukis enjoy
mutual advantages has been challenged, however, by authors like Russell (1987 cited in
Hendriksi, undated) who found that many farmers and traders are forced by their
dependence on others for resources to enter into this relationship. Hendriksi (undated), on
the other hand, demystified the “overromanticized picture of sukis” after finding out that
suki ties are not fixed models for behavior for these are subjected to continuous negotiation
between actors who are motivated by self-interests and who possess different
opportunities to enforce the ties.
References Cited
1. Chiong-Javier, Ma. Elena. 2007. Gender Coordinator’s Report on Comparative Findings
from Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, presented in the SANREM Annual Meeting in
Bolivia.
2. Davis, William G. 1973. Social Relations in a Philippine Market: Self-Interest and
Subjectivity. California: Berkeley.
3. Dikito-Wachtmeister, Mercy S. 2001. Social Capital. Publications 2020 Focus No. 06 Brief
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International
Food
Policy
Research
Institute.
http://www.ifpri.org/2020/focus/focus06/focus06_09.asp
4. Eder, James F. 2006. Gender Relations and Household Economic Planning in Rural
Philippines. In Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37 (3): 397-413.
5. Freeman, Linton. 2006. The Development of Social Network Analysis. Vancouver:
Empirical Press.
6. Gammage, Sarah, Diamond, Nancy and Packman, Melinda. 2005. USAID Greater Access
to Trade Expansion Project. Arlington, VA: Development and Training Services, Inc (dTS).
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7. Hendriksi, Maaike. (undated).
http://library.wur.nl/way/catalogue/documents/FLR13.pdf
8. Szanton, Maria Christina Blanc. 1972. A Right to Survive: Subsistence Marketing in a
Lowland Philippine Town. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
9. Jefremovas, Villia. 2000. Women are Good with Money: The Impact of Cash Cropping on
Class Relations and Gender Ideology in Northern Luzon, Philippines. In Women Farmers
and Commercial Ventures: Increasing Food Security in Developing Countries edited by
Anita Spring. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
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