Women and Tree Monocultures
Sexual violence and loss of access to land and water are specific impacts that women face when large-scale tree plantations take over community land. Once established, these industrial plantations interfere with food production and women's ability to move freely on their own land. That is why in many places affected by industrial tree plantations, women take the lead in organizing their communities and defending their territories.
Oil palm plantations are one of the most unsafe spaces for women, not only because of their vulnerable working status packed with injustices and precarities, but also because of the potential for sexual violence and harassment. (Available in Indonesian).
Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.
Exploitative working conditions in the oil palm plantations’ industry in Indonesia are persistent and the main victims are mostly women. Although this situation is often overlooked, the production process of the world’s largest producer of palm oil is strongly influenced by its existence.
From rapes, forced body searches and searches of private spaces, to the risk of losing their lives: this article calls on us not to be accomplices to the violence women living around tree plantations in Cameroon suffer.
The expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia has turned women into landless food buyers and cheap labour, with no adequate safety and health protection, for the plantation companies. (Available in Indonesian).
A woman from the village of Mbonjo 1, Cameroon, which has witnessed the impact of industrial palm oil plantations and the constant presence of the military, calls for international solidarity and protection of right to life and freedom.
Women suffer many types of violence committed by oil palm plantations companies’ employers, security forces, police and military, which subsequently reinforce patriarchy and their roles and relations within society in general. (Available in Indonesian).
Covered under the shade of oil palm companies in Cameroon: A recount of the abuses that women suffer
Plantations are increasingly surrounding and engulfing communities. Women must walk through company-occupied lands in order to seek their livelihoods. This, among other things, can cost them their lives.
