Gender and Decision Making in Balinese Agriculture

– Jha, N

In this article, Nitish Jha draws attention to the traditionally gendered division of labor within agriculture and how women are often excluded from the decision making processes of natural resource management despite being the primary executors of these decisions. Jha specifically looks at Bali and the concept of the “subak”, or small irrigation communities focused on rice cultivation. Jha spent a significant portion of time conducting an intensive research and case studies within this region, and concluded that gender exclusion from decision-making practices negatively affects communities and environmental practices. Furthermore, he states that gender parity cannot be concluded without determining women’s role in decision-making positions. However, Jha does concede that varying identities playing into this particular community, such as the communal structure of the society and political hierarchies. While gender parity isn’t present in the decision-making, I am curious as to how the cultural history of this unique social group disparately impacts men and women in the community. The underlying assumption of the article is that gender parity implies social equality: Jha writes from the perspective of a development agency focused on restructuring the community to achieve gender parity in decision, and this bias may be ignoring some of the environmental implications of the “subak” social structure. This raises the question of whether different social identities and the maintenance of balance and equality are inherently in conflict with environmentalism.