Not just an Inong : Acehnese women in the midst of conflict and household livelihood

Abstract

This thesis examines Acehnese women's role in maintaining their household livelihoods during violent political conflict, and covers the following issues: How do women survivors of violent political conflict maintain their household livelihoods? What were the choices they made and the strategies they adopted?, What resources did they have at their disposal?. This study is based on field work conducted in the period of July 2003 to August 2004, during which time the region was initially under Martial Law and later began the transition to a Civil Emergency periods. I maintain two main arguments in this thesis. First, Acehnese women were caught in the intersection between the longstanding violent political conflict and their household livelihoods. Second, in such a situation, they became active survivors and the backbones of their household livelihoods coping strategies. The second argument challenges scholarly works on women and conflict that tend to view women as either passive victims or active combatants. This argument's theoretical framework is developed from the existing relevant theories in three main conceptual areas of women, coping strategies, and household livelihood sustenance, which are placed in the particular context of violent political conflict. Considering the conflict to be a multi faceted phenomenon, this thesis employs a mixture of economic, anthropological, sociological, and historical approaches. To date, there have been limited studies, on violent political conflict in Aceh which focus on how the people, especially women, survive in terms of their day to day living. The neglect of women and their livelihood issues in studies on the region actually parallels with the neglect of this issue in Conflict Studies in general, as noted by some scholarly works (Moser and Clark, 2001 ; Berger 2001 ; and Sharoni 1995). This study offers different perspective on the way women cope with the effects of the conflict on their daily lives and households livelihood.