Developing from the Margins: A Gender-Sensitive Approach in the Formalisation of Household Weaving Industry in West Kalimantan

Abstraksi

Women in border areas generally experience both economic and gender inequality which render them marginal. While an infrastructure-focused development has been massively started, an issue of women’s subordination remains unaddressed. In Sambas district, West Kalimantan, limited access to education and employment and strong patriarchal culture have triggered men to broker migration among women to work in Malaysia—where economic opportunities can be better accessed—through ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ channels. Being vulnerable to exploitation, women engage in “everyday resistances” by earning money from weaving industry in their households. This paper uses feminist standpoint approach to explore Sambas women’s stories and experiences to resist inequality by transforming their traditional Malay culture-based weaving skill to economic benefits. By analyzing gender and cultural interplay among these women weavers, this paper finds that the weaving industry has potentials to address gender inequality and boost local development. However, unequal gender relations which perceive women’s work as informal and undervalued, hinder the optimization of economic benefits from weaving industry. Henceforth, this paper draws on a feminist concept of “Gender and Development” (GAD) and suggests that a gender-sensitive and bottom-up approach in a development framework should be designed. For West Kalimantan context, this framework may encompass a formalisation of household weaving as a culture-based economy practice which takes into account the gender roles identification and needs assessment within a specific cultural setting in the society. While the government provides relevant facilities and regulations to enable this framework, more spaces should be given to the women weavers to emancipate themselves.