Industrial oil palm plantations have been expanding in many countries in the global South, increasingly in Africa and Latin America, invading territories of rural populations, indigenous peoples and traditional communities in order to produce palm oil for export or agrofuel for foreign markets.
Bulletin articles
The State Government of Sarawak has issued a provisional lease for an oil palm plantation scheme to Woodijaya Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Rimbunan Hijau Sdn Bhd on Lot 197 Teraja LD and Lot 1200 Puyut LD, both which are 4,658 hectares. The 60 year lease that was issued by the State’s Lands & Surveys Department encroaches on lands belonging to the Malays of Marudi and Ibans of Lubuk Amam.
Today, many big companies have programmes aimed at emphasizing the equality of opportunities offered to women. These are companies that are concerned about showing the importance they give to incorporating women in their business strategies. This concern seems to represent a politically correct stance in a time when, fortunately, there are a growing number of policies in many countries aimed specifically at women, as a way of reducing the inequality they have historically faced. These problems of inequality are far from resolved, however.
Today, we watch as the capitalist system undergoes a major restructuring in order to keep the current order of oppression and exploitation in place.
In Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar it remains common until today that the wife will be the one who ‘owns’ the land of the paddy or upland rice fields. . Women therefore can be the ones fully responsible for maintaining those resources for the next generations.
“It is the rural women’s movements that have been at the forefront of massive public actions aimed at fighting back against the big corporations in the agri-food sector (pharmaceutical laboratories that produce transgenic seeds and toxic agrochemicals) and defending biodiversity.” (SILIPRANDI, 2013, p. 239)