Industrious Women: Resource Use and Gender Norms among the Kalanguya of the Philippines

Abstract

Natural resource use and management are not altogether free from the norms and values people attach to women’s and men’s labor. Among the Kalanguya of the northern Philippines, the norm of the industrious woman has been reconstituted historically: as validating women’s esteemed place in the community as livestock raisers and subsequently as a means to control women’s labor in agriculture. This study will: (a) discuss the constructions of gender and gender norms within the Kalanguya institutions of marriage and religion, and how these have been reinforced or transformed historically; (b) show how Kalanguya people are conscious of, negotiate, reproduce, and re-work gender values and norms; and (c) show how these cultural norms and constructions of gender deploy people to engage in particular resource use activities.