Women, Land and Livelihoods in Post-War Northern Sri Lanka
In post-war Sri Lanka, women navigate class, caste, gender, and religious discrimination to access land and livelihoods.
Women of war-torn Vani continue to live with poverty and trauma. Image: Amantha Perera via IPS
Before the civil war, Jaffna’s political economy was dependent on agriculture and intensive cultivation of cash crops while Vanni districts remained underdeveloped. However, the civil war in the North led to a series of displacements and restrictions that disrupted the economy of the communities dependent on agriculture, fisheries, and small industries. The end of the war in 2009 came with tremendous socio-economic challenges for these small-sized economic actors. With the sudden integration of the North with markets in the rest of the country, these households continue to suffer. In addition to these market shocks, aid actors have introduced new technologies in select industries without an understanding of the “existing institutional capacity and skills within the region”. Furthermore, the community’s social vulnerabilities - insecure income streams, disrupted education, war-related physical and mental health issues, landlessness and weak social institutions - are still in the process of being restored and addressed. These vulnerabilities have led to an inappropriate distribution of aid grants and loans, which further burden families and communities.
While this economic crisis and its disruption of the social and political lives of communities is ongoing, very few people have explored its impacts on women and gender relations more broadly. In this essay, we highlight some of the complex post-war socio-economic issues that relate to women, emphasizing women’s paid and unpaid labour within the family. We show that financial insecurity of land-based livelihoods push women to engage in waged labour. In many cases, they become the head of the households as the family primarily relies on their waged labour. We explore the factors that push these women towards waged labour along as they continue to do unpaid social reproductive labour.
Land, agrarian livelihoods and role of women
In the North of Sri Lanka, there are three types of land tenure – private land, permit land, and temple lands. These different types of land tenure shape women’s engagement in livelihood activities and social reproduction. Even if the ownership of private land lies with a woman, she often considers it to be the family’s. This can lead to several forms of exploitation as men continue to be the decision-makers who profit from women’s unpaid agricultural labour. For example, wives and daughters who work on family land alongside their husbands are not paid. Many women see their labour as an opportunity to reduce the family’s labour cost of production. Thus, in spite of having ownership, women’s access to land and control over agricultural income is limited.
“the overarching economic system and institutions play a key role in both defining gender roles and also benefiting from them.”
Women’s engagement with land is also shaped by their lack of access to cultivable and residential land, which in turn, is informed by relations of class, caste, religion, and ethnicity. For example, many hill-country Tamils who were displaced to Vanni district during the ethnic conflict faced marginalisation based on their origins and caste. Made to settle in buffer zones of the North and Eastern provinces, they often came under attack during the civil war. Despite living on these lands for decades, most of them rely on state permits as they still don’t have land titles. Furthermore, these communities are denied access to water from large tanks and ponds in the districts, limiting their chances of agricultural production and pushing them towards waged labour.
Finally, in the cases where women are allowed to live as tenants on temple lands, they are always at the risk of getting evicted. Temple lands are offered by previous landowners to temples in Tamil Nadu. Although the tenants may not be facing immediate eviction threats, they live in a constant state of fear. These women’s vulnerability is reflective of their social and political position in the community, as it is formed at the intersections of gender and class, caste, and religion.
Social reproduction and care work
Various social and political factors, norms, and identities shape whether and how women access land. How do these impact women’s participation in waged labour, as well as their role in social reproduction? Limited access to land means limited access to raw materials for social reproduction- resources like firewood and water. This inability to reproduce the household pushes women to seek waged labour that can provide them with cash to buy the raw materials they need. Lack of access to land, petty cash, and other resources burden women with the responsibility to engage in low-waged labour to support the family while men often migrate to the town and cities to find jobs. Even if they have access to small portions of land, women must engage in waged labour since production from the land barely allows their households to accumulate any assets, and in some cases, it is not even enough for sustenance. Women from marginalised castes, religions and classes are further vulnerable to exploitation. The gendered division of labor across supply chains, particularly for rural manufacturing and craft industries shapes women’s work opportunities and wages. For example, women from Northern Muslim communities displaced due to eviction by the LTTE had to engage in waged labour in larger farms and paddy fields to support their families, while most men migrated elsewhere for work. Even after returning to their lands, many Muslim women continue to engage in waged labour, while male family members migrate to towns. Women continue to live in economic uncertainty and low paid work circumstances. The shortage of male labour and the circumstances that makes female labour available for the market paves the way for low wages for women’s labour. While women are aware of this discrimination in pay, they are left with limited choices in terms of job roles, lack of safety and opportunities in the labor market. Hence, the overarching economic system and institutions play a key role in both defining gender roles and also benefiting from them.
The multiple incomes - in both cash and in kind - that women bring to the household happens in conjunction with their social reproduction and care work women’s responsibilities. Whereas mainstream economists focus on a single source of income for the household, in reality a household can have multiple sources of income. For example, if the male member of the household owns land and engages in farming, he is labeled as a farmer and only the income he earns from selling to the market is taken into consideration. Women in the same family may be also providing a little money to the family by selling cooked food or tailoring, but this income is not counted as part of the family’s income. These women do not use all of their time and labour for production. The woman exerts her labour in social reproduction and spends the rest of her time in agricultural and allied activities in her land along with her family members. Their time and labour are split between production and social reproduction, or the unpaid labour of cooking, cleaning, stitching women do in households. Even though this labor of social reproduction also produces non-monetized, in-kind products, it is not recognized as such by mainstream understandings of production, which are centered on paid labour.
In rural areas, women’s domestic work involves tasks like fetching water, gathering firewood (which is one of the main sources of fuel in rural South Asia), collecting fodder (animal care is largely women’s work), and foraging for supplementary food items from local forests and commons or home gardens. For example, a few Muslim women from resettled Northern Muslims in Mullaitheevu preferred cash income generating opportunities within the domestic sphere, since they have to also take care of children, men, and elders in the family, and their needs. For them, the burden of social reproduction and care work has to be balanced with the burden of financially supporting their family. In such a context, many women resort to selling food packets, running a small shop – either grocery or tailor shop – within the household, home gardening. Women and girls also take care of children, old parents, siblings and sometimes grandchildren become the responsibility of women. For example, among Northern Muslims displaced to Puttalam, both men and women went to work as waged laborers and/or migrant workers. In such situations, older female children take the burden of caring for their younger siblings, often giving up on their own education. In short, women’s access to land and resources is both connected to their livelihoods and their unpaid labour and care work. Mainstream discussion of post-conflict Sri Lanka and policy making circles have failed to address these aspects of women’s lives in their deliberations on land and livelihoods.
A single mother operating a small business in Mullaitivu set up with a donation from the Red Cross. Image: IPS News
Gendered access to institutions
Multiple social, political, and economic institutions play a crucial role in shaping women’s access to resources for land-based livelihoods. These include institutions such as the family, religious organizations, state institutions like the Government Agent office and Divisional Secretariat, financial institutions, and the market. These institutions play a role in either supporting or creating barriers for women who strive to make a living through available land and resources needs. Although the state and private institutions use phrases like “women empowerment” and “female entrepreneurs”, and claim to support women, they are neither entirely altruistic nor without their own agendas. There has been an ‘NGOisation’ of women's issues, putting further burden on women to be financially ‘independent’ alongside engaging with other forms of drudgery. The state also uses women as workers for its programs and puts them on low paid contracts.
These institutions also regulate women’s access to land and livelihood opportunities. In the North of Sri Lanka, women from female-headed households who claim their land and housing grants after their displacement face significant challenges. Even when women win back their land, or a portion of it, from local state officials, they face issues in using their land for agricultural production. These issues vary from access to transport facilities and resources needed for agricultural livelihoods, to issues of safety and official documentation work. For instance, Muslim women from Mullaitheevu lack transport facilities to their agricultural lands from their residence and have limited access to necessary resources. This socio-political situation pushes women to work as waged laborers on large landholdings which are either close-by or with owners who provide transport.
“When the discourse is pushing towards entrepreneurial efforts and success stories, women who do not have the space, environment, and time to engage in such entrepreneurial activities are left behind.”
Women are further marginalised based on their religion and caste identities in the war-torn North and East of Sri Lanka. For instance, Northern Muslim women of Musali, an area in Mannar district, have been trying to claim housing grants provided through resettlement schemes, which are often denied since these “female-headed households” do not meet the conditions put forward by the local state authorities. One such condition is that the family should reside at least in a hut in that land for the village head to visit and approve the grant. Women, who have been living in Puttalam (a district to which many Northern Muslims were displaced to), find it difficult to move to and from Musali leaving behind young children in Puttalam. These grants are denied if the family consists only of the mother and a child. Furthermore, local authorities from state institutions marginalise women based on their social identity. Local authorities in the North, who are often ethnic Tamils, have denied state resettlement grants to Northern Muslims in Vanni saying that they displaced themselves “on their will” in the 1990s, and that these grants, instead, are for those who were affected in the last phase of the civil war. The state’s acts of discrimination further restrict access to residential and agricultural land to those who are resettling.
Households that do have access to either or both residential and agricultural land also need institutional support to attempt production activities given their limited natural, technological, and financial resources. However, most state and private institutional support is given to individuals who engage in livelihood activities. This push towards individualised production, as opposed to collective efforts in production, burdens women who take up both tasks of production and social reproduction. As shown in the report “Debt, Credit, Livelihoods and Women’s Co-operation in War-Torn Northern Sri Lanka”, by Kadirgamar and Kuhanendran, local officials preferred to showcase emblematic “entrepreneurs”; stories of “self-made” successful rural women who ran a business and even employed other women’. These “entrepreneurial success” stories are legitimised through national awards. This “approach of creating women “entrepreneurs” is also promoted and projected by international donors and their local partners”. When the discourse is pushing towards entrepreneurial efforts and success stories, women who do not have the space, environment, and time to engage in such entrepreneurial activities are left behind. In other words, women social identities and economic positions shapes whether they are eligible for this genre of state support.
Women and Rural Politics
The intersection of multiple factors like class, caste identities, religion and racial identities, social and political institutions plays a crucial role in shaping women’s access to land, resources and livelihoods. As we show, women are not a homogeneous category and that they experience different forms of marginalization. That said, women are also not mere victims who need to be protected. Women from the margins exert a complex form of agency when formally or informally resist oppressive structures. For instance, Northern Muslim women displaced to Puttalam engaged in waged labour to meet the economic needs of the family. These women express enthusiasm about engaging in income-generating activities for the family. Their participation in farming, running shops, selling food, stitching clothes or other work ensures and enhances their well-being. While oppressive structures continue to marginalize women, women still resist these structures by taking their family’s survival in their own hands. These everyday acts are instances of resistance to social and political institutions, and entrenched systems of oppression.
Women protesting against the impact of micro-finance loans. Image: CADTM
Although we might not see a lot of organised protest in the rural North, there are many instances of overt and covert resistance to these institutions. For example, financial institutions like banks deny women loans and grants due to a perceived lack of creditworthiness. This has pushed women to seek financial aid from informal providers and microfinance companies and worsened their conditions, often leading women to take one loan to pay off the interest on the other. These women have organized massive protests against microfinance companies which led to the regulation of interest rates to some extent and the establishment of alternative financial institutions like the credit cooperatives. Yet another example of resistance is when Muslim and Tamil women form development centers to support each other through funds and livelihood activities. These attempts at establishing their own institutions are examples of resistance to the existing male-centered, entrepreneurial focused financial institutions that marginalise women from seeking necessary financial support for livelihood activities. Resistance of women from the margins might not be a strong or dominant organized struggle, but one cannot deny these acts of resistance.
Yathursha Ulakentheran is a recent graduate from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and is works as an Independent Researcher.
Suganya Kandeepan is a Research Officer in the Northern Cooperative Development Bank in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
Shafiya Rafaithu is a recent graduate from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and is currently employed as an Independent Researcher.