Gender Equality in the Agricultural Sector: Lessons Learned from the Baduy Indigenous Community in Indonesia

Abstract

The Baduy people are one of the indigenous communities living in Indonesia at present. The community upholds traditional ways of life based on a customary construction whose application is preserved to date. The study aims to analyse the gender system in the Baduy indigenous community through a qualitative approach, especially in the agricultural field. The research results indicate a division of responsibilities in relation to scope, roles, work, access, control of kinship relationships, marriage patterns, and inheritance patterns between women and men in the community from both productive and domestic perspectives. These differences, however, were not observed to lead to inequality since the system’s value derives from the Baduy community’s cultural construction that guarantees, maintains, and protects gender equality. Moreover, the present study shows us that traditionality is not a factor of gender inequality; traditional cultural constructions have their own mechanisms to create gender equality.