Ingrid Diaz

INGRID DIAZ, then a graduate student at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was awarded funding in October 2022 to aid research on “Feminizing the Agrarian Frontier: Labor, Gender, and Plantations in the Llanos of Colombia,” supervised by Dr. Gabriela Valdivia. This research analyses the feminization of the workforce in palm oil plantations, following the case of a Black plantation village in Colombia. Through ethnographic and historical research, the project traces the multiple actors, scales, discourses, and practices that have led to a greater incorporation of women into a traditionally male-dominated sector. The research analyzes gender equity programs and policies deployed by the state and private companies and contrasts them with the everyday experiences of women on the plantation and at home. The research argues that women have had a twofold role in the everyday running of the plantation: one as wage workers on the plantation and another as caregivers of their male relatives who are, at the same time, workers for the plantation. Women experience this double burden of labor as exhaustion and sickness and, at the same time, as the possibility of giving their kids and family a better future.