Insurgents: Constructing the Moro gender order in Mindanao conflict and migration

Abstract

Literature on the southern Philippines region of Mindanao has a longstanding gender gap, with relatively little attention paid to the role of women either in history or in the contemporary era, despite international and national concern about gender in the recent peace process involving the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Philippine Government. To understand both gender and conflict in Southern Philippines, I ask, how does a Moro gender order shape conflict and migration in Mindanao? Building on the work of gender scholars, I see a gender order as encompassing both social structure and a discourse of gender inequality. Through six family stories, ethnography in Davao City (July 2016-April 2017), and discourse analysis, I examine how conflict in Mindanao is built on gendered relationships. I find that gender inequality shapes the Mindanao conflict driver landlessness and the related urban migration, recruitment into armed groups, and state and insurgent group discourses about war-making and peacebuilding. I thus argue that the Moro gender order is constitutive of violent conflicts in Mindanao. To visualise the Moro gender order as a structure and discourse, I construct an inventory of gender articulations from family stories and other narratives by and about Moros - the indigenous Muslim inhabitants of Mindanao. In highlighting what I call insurgent femininity, I draw attention to Moro women's agency across Mindanao conflicts. In examining the Mindanao conflict as a site of gender practice, I advocate for an insurgent research approach that puts people at the centre and dares integrate previously opposing analytical traditions to help transform knowledge and improve peacebuilding strategies in Mindanao.

Keywords: insurgent femininity, Mindanao, family stories, gender, conflict, urban migration Show more