Deforestation, production strategies and gender division of labor: a case study among Subanun households in Lakewood, Zamboanga del Sur [Philippines]

Results of the study showed that: 1.) Aerial stereographic photographs and satellite data showed that from 541,127 ha of forest cover in 1962, the forest cover of Zamboanga peninsula [Philippines] went down to 204,800 ha; 2.) The sequence of massive deforestation in Zamboanga del Sur, particularly in the municipality of Lakewood, is rooted from extensive timber farming; 3.) Logging operations attracted migrant population in Lakewood area resulting to increase and decrease of population on several barangays [villages]; 4.) The decline in the forest cover over Lakewood forced the Subanun community to shift from banglayan (extensive) to gamut-banglayan (intensive) land use. This shift was accompanied by the adoption of corn and paddy rice; 5.) Households that remained cultivating upland rice show a bilateral balance of gender relationship. Male and female equally participated in the acquisition of grain inputs, planting, crop tending, weeding, harvesting, preparation for storage and control of disposal; 6.) Household that shifted to corn cultivation show that acquisition of grain input, planting, crop tending, control of disposal became specific tasks for male. Female's contribution in the field was limited to weeding and harvesting; 7.) Households that shifted to paddy rice cultivation excluded most of Subanun females from the field and from helping during harvest season; 8.) The exclusion of Subanun females from their acess to land (bathal) made gathering of wild vegetables, care for small domestic animals, meat preservation, grain grinding, cooking, water fetching and mat weaving specifically women's work since these tasks closely associated with cooking. Gathering egg, hunting, fishing, care for big domestic animals, firewood gathering and lumbering became specifically male's work because of its affinity with their work in the bathal; 9.) Military operation on the area also contributed to the sharpening of this gender division of labor when Subanun household were pluck out from their swidden farm to live in hamlet communities close to the military camp; and 10.) The Subanun kinship system needs to be scrutinized to see how structural violence interplays with gender division of labor based on crops and, in turn, how the changes in land use affect the Subanun kinship relations