Caring ways of resistance in postwar Sri Lanka

Abstract

Unpaid care work places a disproportionate burden on women, preventing their full economic, social and political participation. Demand for care work increases in postwar contexts and has been shown to contribute to creating everyday peace during and after war. Drawing on feminist political economy theorizing of social reproduction, this article argues that care serves a critical function in women’s postwar social movements, where the material conditions for life are eroded and women are expected to perform the majority of unpaid household care work, hindering their political participation. Two case studies from rural Sri Lanka illustrate how women use care to build feminist solidarity in the everyday lives of their social movements. Domestic unpaid care work depletes women when unsupported; the anti-microfinance Satyagraha in Hingurakgoda (2020) and the land rights struggle in Panama (2010–) demonstrate that caring ways of resistance cultivate solidarities to maintain social movements by supporting or substituting for women’s unpaid labour in maintaining their households. This article contributes to scholarship on political participation in postwar contexts by highlighting how caring ways enable women’s participation and mobilization in public protest movements. Women’s participation contributed to confronting the political economy of indebtedness and dispossession by demanding justice from the state.

Introduction

Unpaid care work, such as cooking, childcare, laundry and offering emotional support, plays an essential role in the life-giving work of social reproduction, enabling societal functioning. However, unpaid care work places a disproportionate burden and barrier, preventing women from increasing their life chances by limiting their opportunities for political, economic and social participation (Cohn and Duncanson, 2020; Kabeer et al., 2021; Koens and Gunawardana, 2021; Rai et al., 2019; Solotaroff et al., 2020). Care work occurs across multiple spaces and locations, ranging from households to the market, within both formal and informal economies. Globally undervalued and often invisible in official economic statistics, unpaid care work is performed primarily by women and girls (ILO, 2021). Care occurs amid inherent inequality, as expectations for women’s care labour are rooted in patriarchal structures, gendered norms and unequal power relations (Cohn, 2013; Ibnouf, 2019; Lingham and Johnston, 2025; Mezzadri et al., 2025). It is not surprising that care scholarship focuses on the gendered depletive impacts and the lack of state social provisioning supporting care work (e.g. Cohn and Duncanson, 2020; Stevano et al., 2021).

Feminist scholars studying the political economy of conflict have noted that the end of armed conflict does not necessarily lead to human security (Cohn and Duncanson, 2020). This article shifts focus from the depletive to the regenerative aspects of care (Rai et al., 2019) in ‘post’-war contexts when ongoing material insecurity constitutes the postwar moment (Lingham, 2024). The demand for women’s care work often increases after armed conflicts are declared to be over (Blomqvist et al., 2021; Ibnouf, 2019). This article aims to examine the importance of care practices in women’s collective mobilization and action to mitigate the ongoing gendered harms of postwar economic insecurity.

We discuss two sources of economic insecurity faced by rural women in postwar Sri Lanka: microfinance debt vis-a-vis a protest site in Hingurakgoda, Polonnaruwa District and land dispossession for tourism development in Panama, Ampara District. While microfinance and land dispossession have long histories in Sri Lanka (de Silva and Wedagedara, 2024), we specifically focus on the period following the declaration of the end of the civil war between the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan state in 2009. The details of this conflict have been well documented (see Venugopal, 2018). Briefly, following independence from Great Britain in 1948, discriminatory policies enacted by the ethnically Sinhalese-dominated government across successive decades resulted in increasing demands for a separate secessionist Tamil state in the northeast. The militant LTTE’s subsequent rise and the intensification of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism precipitated war in 1983.

This article focuses on the ‘everyday’ – the day-to-day life in an anthropological sense – of the political economy of economic development after 2009. We highlight Sri Lankan women’s experiences of social reproduction in the face of progressively worsening material conditions. Predatory microfinance loans gained popularity throughout rural Sri Lanka, with catastrophic consequences for war-affected women in the north and east, leading to gendered violence, harassment and suicides (Arambepola and Romeshun, 2019). In other similarly war-affected regions in the east, women and their families were dispossessed of cultivation land to make way for militarized tourism (Ruwanpura et al., 2020). The loss of this land undermined their livelihoods and household food security. However, these survival struggles transformed into collective organizing, protest, mobilization and resistance, with women often leading mobilization and demands for justice in these movements.

In highlighting the role that care performs in maintaining and sustaining postwar social movements, we argue that caring ways of resistance enabled two outcomes: (a) the social reproduction of resistance against depletive conditions diminishing economic security – care practices constitute both ‘a logic of action’ and ‘certain types of interactions among activists’ (Santos, 2020: 1) within organized social justice movements (Schack, 2023); and (b) they contribute to ‘everyday peace’ (Mac Ginty, 2021). Everyday peace refers to actions and ways of thinking that occur in informal spaces, including sites of care, such as women’s collective actions. Care practices are fundamental for ‘everyday peace’ during and after war, where the material basis of security has not improved following the end of armed conflict (Blomqvist et al., 2021; Mac Ginty, 2021; Vaittinen et al., 2019).

We develop this argument by conceptualizing caring ways of resistance in social movements by drawing on social reproduction theory in the first two sections that follow. Next, we briefly historicize and outline the effects of economic development policies in Sri Lanka and their impact on women’s lives. The third section describes the data collection methods for the two case studies in Panama and Hingurakgoda. The fourth section examines each case, highlighting how care practices prove instrumental in sustaining movements in each case. We conclude by summarizing how care contributes to everyday peace in postwar contexts that do not necessarily generate a peaceful life due to ongoing economic insecurity.

Social reproduction and care work in postwar contexts

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a renewed interest in care practices, social reproduction and the fragility of their sustenance (Stevano et al., 2021). Rooted in Marxist discussions of labour, there have been varied attempts to define social reproduction from feminist perspectives (Bhattacharya, 2017; Mezzadri et al., 2025). In this article, we adopt a feminist political economy (FPE) perspective – ‘an inter-disciplinary academic field located primarily at the intersections of feminist economics, political economy, gender and development’ (Cantillon et al., 2023). We utilize the definition put forward by Elias and Rai as:

all those activities involved in the production of life. This includes biological reproduction, caring for and maintaining households and intimate relationships, the reproduction of labour, and the reproduction of the community itself, including forms of social provisioning and voluntary work. Social reproduction also includes unpaid production in the home of goods and services, as well as the reproduction of culture and ideology that stabilises (as well as sometimes challenges) dominant social relations. (Elias and Rai, 2019: 203)

Although care is not synonymous with social reproduction (Mezzadri, 2019), the type of labour within social reproduction commonly termed ‘care work’ is a central concern of analysis. Care can be defined as ‘activity that includes all we do to maintain, continue and repair our world so we might live in it as well as possible’ (Tronto, 1993: 103). This can include the unpaid labour expended on child or elder care, cooking and cleaning.

Care work is historically theorized and characterized as heavily feminized and interpellated via sociocultural norms across cultural contexts. This labour has been relegated to the feminized, unpaid ‘private’ reproductive space of households, which has historically been deemed unprofitable as per masculinist visions of political economy. Feminist scholars have challenged the artificial gendered distinction between productive and reproductive labour, citing its constitutive and integrative effects, as well as the value produced in this space, including care work in capitalist systems of accumulation (see Lingham and Johnston, 2025, for a review).

Unpaid care work is an expectation of women in Sri Lanka, entwined in the patriarchal sociocultural norms of society in Sri Lanka and elsewhere (Gamburd, 2020). It is tied to their idealized nurturing roles as mothers and wives interwoven into social norms and reflected in nationalist policy platforms (Gunawardana, 2013). Women’s care work is ‘often conflated with notions of altruism, unselfishness and self-sacrifice within family systems’ (Kottegoda, 2019: 01) required for not only social reproduction but the reproduction of the state (Gunawardana, 2013). Men do perform some elements of care work (Gunawardana, 2018); performing care work or demonstrating traits of ‘caring masculinities’ can coexist with more dominant or patriarchal masculine ideas (Nayak, 2023). However, caring masculinities are under-theorized in Sri Lanka, with most research conducted on reluctant or abusive fathers whose wives have migrated overseas.

The above discussion provides a foundation for this article but overlooks some of the critical labour that women expend as part of social reproduction and care work in war and postwar contexts (Samuels et al., 2019). In this article, we examine caring practices that contribute to the maintenance of social movements. As Mezzadri et al. (2025: 14) articulate, conceptually, social reproduction is used to examine the relationship between ‘a bundle of material practices and forms of work, subsistence, and care – unpaid and paid, waged and unwaged – underpinning the existence of all people and all economies and societies as we know them’.

Social reproduction and women’s labour that underpins it are vital for the survival of communities affected by war. Feminist political economists such as Rai et al. (2019: 562) argue that it is a ‘vital yet taken-for-granted resource for the survival of affected populations during and after conflicts, especially in war-torn urban and rural communities’ (emphasis added). Cohn and Duncanson (2020) argue that in ‘postwar recovery’ periods, care infrastructures are completely neglected, and women face increasing care burdens and exclusion from sustainable economic opportunities. Elias and Rai (2019) further highlight that various forms of violence are central in shaping everyday survival. Ignoring this aspect leads to further depletion experienced by women, eroding the notion of feminist peace (Hedström, 2018). Similarly, although not explicitly referring to conflict-affected contexts, Elias and Rai (2019: 219) frame ‘social reproduction as the everyday and everyday as social reproduction’. They draw our attention to how space, time and violence shape the mundane elements of everyday life. This reveals how varied power relations, such as gendered, class and ethnic dimensions, influence and are influenced by global political-economic processes, including the implementation of economic development policies following the financialization logic promoted by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) programming.

It is within this everyday context that rural Sri Lankan women have historically mobilized through collective resistance beyond the household. We examine this collective resistance by holding up a mirror to the gendered premise of social reproduction. Can the very care practices that can be so stultifying for women provide the basis for reimagining a repertoire of resistance that strengthens rather than depletes? With this focus on the role of care in resistance, we now shift our attention to the realm of advocacy and resistance in response to the material insecurity that most women face in postwar contexts.

Care as resistance, care as building everyday peace

Resistance is a core aspect of FPE analysis, which centres on women’s agency. Scholarship around resistance on FPE (Marchand and Runyan, 2010) examines organized collectives and networks, as well as more informal forms of everyday resistance. This latter concept is relevant to our article. We contend that social reproduction and the care work that sustains it are an everyday form of resistance within broader, more visible resistance movements and moments. Everyday forms of resistance, such as ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott, 1985), differ from overt political conflicts that are public and symbolic confrontations (e.g. protests). This differentiation of the forms of resistance depends on the tactics used by the subordinate group. ‘Everyday resistance’, conceived as the space for collective politics of subordinate groups (Scott, 1985), can include acts such as squatting or encroaching on state land, poaching, evasion, or acts of humour. While we build on this insight, we argue that everyday forms of care are used deliberately and openly by women. However, it may be unseen, serving as a form of unrecognized resistance, nonetheless enabling overt and often confrontational forms of collective resistance to challenge the state and call for direct reform.

Feminist theory provides insight into how women use care in their resistance movements. hooks (1990) argues that rather than being a burden, care within the household is a form of resistance. Maintaining a household is a site of resistance for Black women in the United States. The household facilitated the provision of communal care to boost the morale of the wider community, thereby enabling collective resistance to white supremacy. It further provided a space for women to grow and develop themself when faced with racial oppression outside of the home. Other scholarship has focused on mothering during war (Berry, 2022), reclaiming motherhood by Indigenous communities (Lavell-Harvard and Anderson, 2014), and Acuerpar in Central American Indigenous feminist movements (Méndez, 2023). The practices of acuerpar are pertinent to our analysis. These practices include collective, embodied presence in a particular location (‘showing up’) and ‘mutual aid’, such as cooking, childcare and cleaning. It also involves healing and spiritual practices, recognizing the psychic, spiritual and physical impacts of economic and political structures.

As noted above, Elias and Rai (2019: 217) conclude their discussion of how space, time and agency shape the everyday by focusing on women’s ‘agentic mobilisation’. In the tradition of FPE scholarship, they argue that women’s actions help to shape the everyday experience of social reproduction. However, in enacting overt forms of agency and resistance, women bear gendered costs for transgression, given the continuum of violence women navigate daily; resistance must not be romanticized, given the risk to women. Similarly, Vaittinen et al. (2019) explain that care is a complex political struggle consisting of relations of power that can lead to instances of dominance, exploitation and violence.

In this article, we extend the spatial dimension of social reproduction, which is often limited to the household and its surroundings (garden, paddy field, the rooms in the home), to include protest sites and movements. By doing so, we aim to capture how women challenge dominant social, economic and political relations that erode everyday peace. However, the often invisible relations that sustain these movements are at the core of their visible overt actions. Scholars such as hooks (1990) have long noted that in times of violence, care also provides a safe space from outside oppression, as well as a platform for resistance and liberation (hooks, 1990). We argue that in addition to shielding individuals from outside oppression, care enables them to confront and address their own internalized oppression. Using a social reproduction lens, we examine how women employ care practices across various spatial dimensions and leverage these to cultivate a feminist care ethic, comprising diverse actions, norms and behaviours that are fundamental for the survival of social movements.

Care also contributes to everyday peace. Berents (2025: 325) expands on Mac Ginty’s (2021) original definition, summarizing multidisciplinary literature to show that everyday peace:

consists of the actions, activities, interactions, and communications of those living in violence-affected and deeply divided societies, which are oriented towards safety, security, building collective responses, and navigating insecurity. It can also be a way of orienting scholarly attention to spaces overlooked in orthodox accounts of peace.

In conflict-affected contexts, everyday peace is built through feminized forms of relationality, solidarity and reciprocity rather than modes of violent domination. Just as care work in households is vital for social reproduction, so too care builds connections within systems that reproduce various forms of violence and fractures (Choi, 2021; Stavrevska, 2021; Vaittinen et al., 2019). As we argue in this article, care enables women to participate in organized resistance despite the limitations of gendered care responsibilities at home. Care supports the individual and everyday peace in their collective movements. After briefly outlining the political economy context of their actions and our methodology, we examine how women utilize care practices. We outline how they utilize these practices to develop a feminist care ethic composed of varied practices, norms and behaviours that are fundamental for the survival of social movements and for working towards futures free from violence.

Sri Lankan women’s experiences of economic development policy (1977–2022)

Economic liberalization became the defining characteristic of economic policy in Sri Lanka from 1977 onwards (Athukorala, 2022). This approach helped transition from a democratic socialist model to a market-oriented development model, after the United National Party (UNP) – a historically ‘pro-capitalist’ political party – was elected. To attract foreign investors to the export-oriented manufacturing sector, the government dismantled tariffs, exempted investors from taxes, granted tax holidays, and generally advocated that the state retreat from labour markets.

While these were all the hallmarks of ‘neoliberalism’ as defined by the diffusion of the Washington Consensus that emerged in the late 1980s (Marangos, 2009), Sri Lanka never fully realized a neoliberal agenda. Although globalization and market logic had become prevalent in everyday life by the 1990s, other aspects such as privatizing state assets and reforming labour law were only partially implemented. Although the IMF recommended ongoing liberalization, a fragmented neoliberal agenda emerged due to several factors, including the disruptions of civil war (1983–2009), related populist nationalism, pushback from organized labour, and the consolidation of presidential political power through constitutional reforms (Venugopal, 2018).

Neoliberal economic policy accelerated following the military end of the war in 2009, by a contradictory, authoritarian and increasingly militarized state. Under his leadership, President Mahinda Rajapaksa (2005–2015) promoted a postwar economic development approach centred on infrastructure development, financed by Chinese and development bank loans to ‘unify’ the country, for example, by repairing or building new roads (Kadirgamar, 2013; Ruwanpura et al., 2020). Postwar ethno-nationalist development rhetoric concealed corruption within various levels of governance, political dynasties, the misuse of public funds and increasing levels of external sovereign debt (Chandrasekhar et al., 2023, cited in Ruwanpura, 2025). The country integrated more deeply with global markets and underwent rapid, poorly thought-out processes of urbanization (Kadirgamar, 2013; Ruwanpura, 2025). These trends continued through the successive presidencies of different political parties and coalitions until 2024.

Neoliberalism had mixed impacts on Sri Lankan women. Between 1977 and 2024, an increasing number of rural women entered the formal labour market. However, they also experienced growing care burdens, including during and after the war (Gunatilaka and Vithanagama, 2021; Gunawardana, 2018). Mitigating women’s care responsibilities has never been prioritized in state policies supporting social reproduction, for example, universal health, education and welfare (Kottegoda,2019; Withers and Piper, 2018).

During the immediate postwar era, land dispossession and microfinance debt reduced women’s economic security by constraining livelihoods and, consequently, women’s ability to sustain social reproduction. Many women faced various forms of violence through their encounters with state, non-state actors and institutions in their everyday lives (de Silva and Gunawardana, 2023). In 2022, as Sri Lanka plunged into an economic crisis with the government defaulting on all its foreign debts, the COVID-19 pandemic continued, and the ability to sustain the material basis of peaceful lives diminished with food insecurity, fuel shortages and impoverishment driving a mass peaceful people’s movement, the Aragalaya (Sinhala for ‘struggle’) that forced regime change (Feminist Collective for Economic Justice, 2022; Kadirgamar, 2013; Ruwanpura, 2025).

Method

This study combines findings from two separate qualitative studies on two distinct resistance movements led by rural women and their allies in Sri Lanka. The methodology was informed by feminist ontology and epistemology within a broader institutional human research ethics framework. The first case study in Hingurakgoda is taken from de Silva’s doctoral research fieldwork on the structural violence of microfinance indebtedness. De Silva engaged in participant observation as part of her ethnographic fieldwork and interviewed over 40 women borrowers across three other locations in Sri Lanka. The Hingurakgoda protest began on 8 March 2021, during the pandemic. It mobilized diverse women microfinance borrowers who were victims of predatory microfinance practices. The protest lasted 55 days; it was a part of a broader movement against microfinance debt, particularly against unregulated private microfinance.

The second case study in Panama is taken from a larger study on women’s participation in agriculture across their life course, led by Gunawardana, which commenced in 2015 (Gunawardana et al., 2018). Padmasiri was the research assistant during fieldwork; she subsequently went on to conduct further research in the area and with rural women. Follow-up interviews were conducted again by both researchers in 2017 with leading activists we met in 2015. Padmasiri maintained long-term engagements with various social movements and activists in Panama through constant text and phone contact and follow-up visits where possible. Given women’s significant leadership in this case study, we have drawn on eight interviews with women collected at various points in time between 2015 and 2017. Although this is a small sample, Padmasiri’s long-term engagement meant we were able to engage in rich, in-depth interviews.

Our research involved traversing power-laden privileges associated with various aspects of our identity and social positioning. The idea of a ‘field’ and ‘fieldwork’ is a construct historically linked to extractive knowledge creation practices by ‘western’ Global North ‘outsiders’ attempting to elucidate ‘insider’ Global South perspectives (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012). All three authors were born in Sri Lanka, are ethnically Sinhalese and identify as women. Sri Lanka has long been ‘home’ for de Silva and Padmasiri. Both commenced PhD studies in Australia. Gunawardana was born in Sri Lanka, settled in Australia with her parents as a child, but maintained strong personal and professional links. All had proficiency in the Sinhala language, knowledge of general cultural and religious practices, and maintained a sustained presence across various research and women’s activist networks over the past 10–20 years. We mobilized the inherent trust within these networks for initial introductions, an important factor in a context where social movement organizations and individuals have been targeted by state violence (Fonseka, 2023).

However, this ‘insider’ perspective did not erase the potential for epistemological violence. For example, although we were clear in continuously (re)asserting that we were independent of the organizations and movements that vouched for us, participants often mistook us for being direct participants in the movements or organizations. This made the process of informed consent murky but more important. Our approach was to ensure that our feminist methodology that combined intersectionality, ethic of care and decoloniality (Crenshaw, 1991; Tronto, 1993; Tuhiwai Smith, 2012) guided our research actions. This meant being constantly reflexive when navigating power dynamics with our interlocutors, beyond adhering to the standards set out by our institutional ethics review board and national research guidelines, starting with reflexivity.

All three of us occupy relatively privileged positions within Sri Lanka in terms of class, geographical location and mobility. For example, while de Silva and Padmasiri were based in Colombo, they pursued their doctoral education overseas. We could leave the ‘field’ at any time, while our interlocutors faced deepening material insecurity as the country entered a profound economic crisis in 2022 and a subsequent package of IMF-led public expenditure cuts (see below), which has impacted all aspects of their everyday lives. Moreover, we were acutely aware of our positioning as Sinhalese women when speaking with Tamil or Muslim participants. Our interaction was mediated by interpreters, which altered our dynamic. Importantly, their experiences of state violence and ethno-religious marginalization were outside of our own experiences in Sri Lanka. Our privileged position can be highlighted by contrasting the experiences of similar researchers with Tamil ethnicity, who felt compelled to conceal the fact for their own security (Perera-Rajasingham, 2019). This has left us with unresolved questions about replicating extractive research practices.

However, it was through feminist praxis, demonstrating commitment to their justice concerns via long-term engagement and revisits, participating in the daily life of protest, helping with letter writing and petitions, or sharing our research findings in blogs and non-traditional academic outputs, that we were able to enact an imperfect form of reciprocity and care consistent with decolonial feminist approaches. Moreover, participants were often happy to share their experiences and tell us their stories for awareness-raising purposes, and to give voice to their experiences as leaders and agentic actors.

Case study 1: The anti-microfinance Satyagraha in Hingurakgoda, Polonnaruwa

Predatory microfinance expanded postwar to the northern and eastern provinces, leading to rising indebtedness, harassment and suicides (de Silva and Wedagedara, 2024). The state endorsed microfinance as a key postwar economic development strategy targeting women, as did commercial financial institutions and NGOs. Exploitative practices accompanied rapid proliferation. Women were targeted as ideal borrowers. They faced excessive interest rates (e.g. some reportedly exceeding 300 per cent) as well as coercive collection methods: public shaming, surveillance and threats of asset seizure. Many women take multiple loans to repay existing ones, creating inescapable debt cycles. The group-based lending model, initially introduced to foster accountability and solidarity, often devolved into peer surveillance and control. These practices were part of a broader shift observed within development policy, from microfinance with a pro-poor orientation to commercialization and profit-driven lending (Green, 2023). By 2016, these practices created what became recognized as a rural microfinance debt crisis. Women across several districts mobilized against microfinance institutions and the state’s regulatory failures (de Silva and Gunawardana, 2023).

Concurrent with the global literature on the pitfalls of microfinance, evidence suggests that the group-based debt model commonly promoted in microfinance practices has often failed to capitalize on the social capital already present within rural communities (Shohel et al., 2023). Instead, it has contributed to the erosion of close relationships among women, reinforcing mistrust and weakening communal bonds, while significantly increasing financial vulnerability (Green, 2023).

The Collective of Women Victimised by Microfinance was formed in 2018. It was composed of farmers, small-scale entrepreneurs and daily wage workers from the north, east and central provinces. They belonged to the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups, the ethno-linguistic ‘Muslim’ group, and various religion including Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. The collective organized one-day protests, press conferences, formal letters and petitions to relevant authorities, including the Central Bank, which had some oversight of the microfinance sector and local-level administrative officials. However, those efforts had been met with limited success (Wedagedara and de Silva, 2021).

The collective therefore organized the Hingurakgoda Satyagraha, which, in Sanskrit, means ‘truth-force’ or ‘insistence on truth’. The term is used in South Asia to denote the strategic use of non-violent, peaceful, yet forceful protest actions. Their aim was to reform microfinance systems and create avenues for debt relief. Despite broader ethno-religious tensions among the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil and Muslim groups, the women came together as an ‘unbankable’ segment of society exploited by the same predatory system.

While Sri Lankan women’s cross-ethnic mobilizing on gender and peace issues is not unusual, the material basis of exploitation generated clear support for the protest from all ethnic groups. While most protesters at the Satyagraha were women victims of predatory microfinance, a smaller group of men, mostly husbands, siblings and sons, supported the action by setting up tents, bringing food, and participating in activities such as painting placards and setting up banners. Men also held various positions ranging from treasurer to convener in the collective. Importantly, the Satyagraha was supported by civil society groups, social activists, academics, students, labour unions and other political groups in solidarity with the women.

The collective viewed the protest as the beginning of more protests to come, which would evolve into a broader social movement. They planned protests throughout the country, believing that such a widespread force of rural women would make it impossible for the government to ignore crises, signifying their collective power. COVID-19 disrupted these plans, after 55 days. To maintain momentum, the women organize bi-monthly virtual meetings to stay in touch with one another and explore alternatives to microfinance through awareness sessions on alternative economic models and discussions.

Acts of care

Acts of care occurred at various sites. Most of the reproductive work that women engaged in took place in spaces such as households, which were traditionally deemed private. For instance, the preparation and provision of food for the protesters occurred in private spaces, as opposed to slogan writing and other activities that were more directly linked to the resistance, which took place in public, such as at the protest site. However, there were instances where the activities transcended from the private to the public – for instance, women with childcare responsibilities brought their children to protest sites.

Sharing the everyday debt struggle

All the women at the Satyagraha experienced significant debt-related challenges and the burdens of overindebtedness. Such financial hardship is often accompanied by feelings of shame, social isolation and alienation (Engel and Pedersen, 2019). The Satyagraha emerged as a critical space of solidarity and collective care. It functioned not only as a site of political action but also as a community through which women could articulate and share their everyday realities and financial struggles.

When you have two or three loans, it is very difficult, and sometimes family members do not understand the pressure you feel. However, when I come to the protest, everyone has undergone a similar experience to mine. They understand me. I sometimes even feel bad for the others in our groups that we have exchanged words with, said something hurtful, because we are all struggling together. (Interview 1)

By coming together, women felt seen, heard and supported by others facing similar constraints. This collective engagement also fostered a heightened awareness and attentiveness to the unevenness of debt experiences among peers, enabling women to recognize and respond to those within their loan groups who were struggling more acutely.

Cooking

During the protest, food for consumption at the protest site was managed by women in the neighbouring villages. This involved group preparation and cooking in one of the households of the women’s collective. Women in the core group considered it their responsibility to ensure that all at the protest site were fed.

We might not have much, but we won’t let anyone go hungry here at our protest. Whatever we grow or cook at home, we can share. If not, we can all go to Sumana Akka’s place, cook something, and bring it here. (Interview 2)

The role played by Sumana Akka, also referred to as Nanda (Aunt) by the younger women, clearly highlighted the solidarity among women and the sharing of social reproductive roles. Sumana Akka was a middle-class woman who was heavily involved in all the Satyagraha activities and provided support. She and her husband were considered well-off farmers who owned paddy fields. She was not a victim of microfinance; rather, she considered herself an activist who spoke out for women’s rights in the village. She accompanied her husband to the protest site on most days and even stayed overnight. The equipment and furniture at the protest site were also from her house. Most days, cooking was done at her place, which was within walking distance of the site. Unlike most villagers who considered women borrowers irresponsible and unable to manage their household finances, women like Sumana Akka represented a group of empathetic women who supported the movement and contributed to the resistance by showing care.

Childcare responsibilities

Most women who had small children, including infants, brought them to the protest site. This was particularly evident during the Sinhalese and Hindu New Year celebrations in April. During this time, schools were closed and children were enjoying their New Year vacation. Since most women lacked care alternatives at home or with their neighbours, they brought their children with them. While the women organized activities and conducted meetings for the separate villages, special activities were introduced for the children, including games, storytelling and painting. Women with older children left them at home or with neighbours from the village. The women reflected that fellow borrowers had a great deal of support for one another, especially in fulfilling their caring responsibilities.

Production responsibilities

On days when women had to engage in cultivation activities such as harvesting, they often alternated with others so that their duties would not disrupt the protest. They also succeeded in getting other women’s organizations (cooperative movements, agri-movements) and trade unions (from the FTZs) involved in the protest, so that large numbers were always present at the protest site. When some women could not join the Satyagraha, a family member, mostly a mother or sister, was present on their behalf. One of the women at the protest site expressed:

My daughter took out the loan and found it difficult to repay, falling into debt. She has small children and cannot come to the protest. This is why I come and participate every day. (Interview 3)

Many women engaged in similar practices, highlighting their shared solidarity as victims of microfinance. There was a deep understanding among the women of the struggles they faced due to microfinance, which was reflected in their participation and the distribution of roles.

Case study 2: Women’s land rights struggle in Panama, Ampara

Panama is a coastal town in eastern Sri Lanka, comprising five small villages: Sasthrawela, Ragamwela, Ulpassa, Egodayaya and Horakanda. It traces its history back to the 1800s. The site of a previous anthropological study (see Obeyesekere, 1987), Panama consisted of mixed Tamil and Sinhala communities, primarily engaged in fishing and agricultural activities for their livelihoods. Migration to the area accelerated in the 1970s, and state authorities began reclaiming state land in 2003. Six months after the war was declared over in May 2009, local police filed trespassing charges against seven individuals, while the navy took over lands belonging to Ulpassa, Egodaya and Horekanda to begin construction of a hotel. In 2010, an armed group of men entered the areas and destroyed homes, crops and land title documents. Some people had permits and deeds, while others had occupied the land long-term.

As a result, 350 families were evicted, leading to the loss of livelihood for most villagers. Approximately 1200 acres of land were acquired with military assistance. The majority affected were Sinhalese. When we initially completed our fieldwork, a navy camp and hotel were built in the area, encircled by an elephant-proof fence (The People’s Alliance for Right to Land (PARL) Network, 2018). One affected community member observed that the fence was designed to prevent residents from accessing the land (Interview 3).

Land struggles in postwar contexts, often stemming from forced land enclosures and the appropriation of related natural resources (e.g. water sources, adjacent oceans and beaches, forests), are common. This may occur through formal development processes or informal acquisitions by elites (e.g. politicians, wealthy landowners); the land may have already been appropriated as military or high-security zones during the conflict (Lingham, 2024). In Sri Lanka, this process was most visible in rural areas, where farming communities relied on natural resources for their subsistence. Some of these spaces were state-owned and accessed through a permit system. For others, ocean fronts became strategic military garrisons, blocking access to the ocean for fishing communities (Human Rights Watch, 2018; Korf and Fünfgeld, 2006; Wickramasinghe, 2020). Moreover, populations that were expelled or displaced during the conflict faced greater barriers to resettlement after 2009.

In Panama, local community-based organizations and movements, such as the People’s Alliance for the Right to Land (PARL), and international NGOs, including Oxfam, supported displaced community members through training, awareness programmes and assistance in navigating local institutions, such as the Human Rights Commission. Numerous court rulings and recommendations from the Cabinet and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka have proved ineffectual (Wickramasinghe, 2020; PARL, 2020), and successive governments have refused to return the land to the people. There was also an attempt by the government to grant alternative land to the villagers (PARL, 2018). However, the movement has slowed down for various reasons, including changes in government in 2015 and again in 2019, the Easter Sunday attack and its aftermath in 2019, the global pandemic, and the economic and political crises that began in 2022.

Women’s leadership and shifts in gender roles among leaders

Rural Sri Lankan women view land as a source of economic security, allowing them to engage in subsistence cultivation and establish their own livelihoods. Island-wide, only 16 per cent of privately owned land was owned by women at the time of the research (FAO, 2018). Land is of material importance to living a secure and peaceful life, as one activist explained to us in Panama:

because I have land, I can grow something, eat it and live. If not, I would have been destituted. (Interview 4)

Women took on prominent leadership roles in the Panama struggle, as they lost access to cultivation land, which helped them generate income through chena cultivation (an ancient system of shifting, or slash-and-burn cultivation). A portion of the contested lands was passed on as an inheritance from parents to the current owners, who claim a right to the land through title deeds, permits and long-time usages. Therefore, losing access to the land economically disadvantaged the women:

they need these lands because it is their livelihood. That is why you see many women interested in this land struggle. These lands matter greatly to the women. (Interview 5)

Traditional gender norms about women’s political participation in public space would have prohibited such overt action in the past, but their engagement was changing these norms:

before, there was a stigma against females participating in village meetings and so on, but that is no longer there; the attitude has changed. With this land struggle, we have been able to change people’s minds about female participation in public spaces. People think that we must act on the decisions that women make. Therefore, they are changing their mind about women. (Interview 7)

Women engaged directly and indirectly in the movement. As their movement matured, some moved from grassroots organizing, confronting power, to joining formal political parties and seeking election to the local council. Other women engaged with the local council through its citizens forum. Most engaged actively through the Panama Pattuwa Surakeeme Sanvidanaya (Panama Area Protection Organisation or PPPO), which engaged in confrontation with the state, including protests and demonstrations. Others indirectly contributed through care activities, helping to sustain the struggle. In this article, we will focus primarily on the third aspect, which emphasizes care activities initiated by women, contributing to sustaining the more extensive resistance activities. Women were motivated by collective concerns; they believed that the land did not belong to one single person but to their families and future generations. As such, the resistance movement and the sharing of care aspects were also seen as contributing to the struggle and, more broadly, to the well-being of the Panama community.

Acts of care

Childcare responsibilities

In Panama, the gendered division of labour meant that men engaged mainly in paddy cultivation or fishing, which required them to spend time away from their homes. When women engaged in chena work and the land movement, childcare became a vital issue. Several reported that their children accompanied them during activities related to the land movement, such as local protests. Others reported that they were supported by kin when travelling to Colombo for meetings and protests (Interview 5) or even attending local meetings:

I do not stay at home every week; I have about 3 to 4 meetings to attend. I must leave my children elsewhere and attend these meetings . . . My children do not like to come with me to meetings, so I leave them at my sister’s house. (Interview 6)

This interviewee further commented that her husband did most of the cooking at home, which was significant as her role in the movement included the time-consuming work of maintaining correspondence with officials and other organizations. She worked closely with other civil society organizations, including those based outside her home. Other interviewees also noted some visible shifts, with some men taking on more childcare, cooking and cleaning in both 2015 and 2017.

Another villager, whose husband was the main organizer of the PPPO, oversaw their children’s education, maintained the house and ensured all the children’s needs were met. She also engaged in income-generating activities. She shared that she did this to free up her husband’s time to engage in the struggle, and that the benefit of this care work was for the struggle, not just for her children and household.

I mostly stay home. I do everything, including the kids’ schoolwork. A lot of my husband’s attention and focus goes to the land struggle, so I do everything related to the kids’ schooling and maintain the house. We are fighting for everyone’s land, not just ours, to do something for the benefit of everyone in this village. (Interview 10)

Cooking

Cooking was seen to bond and enact camaraderie and solidarity. It was a time and space to engage in conversation and strategize activities. While this was a common occurrence throughout the movement’s life, it was most evident when, in 2016, villagers re-entered their land in a symbolic act to reclaim it. The women who participated did so with their children and stayed for several nights, cooking meals collectively:

When we were allowed to enter the land the other day, about 70 women came forward. When I asked them, ‘Do you want to stay the night?’ they said, ‘Yes, we absolutely do.’ There were these little pots; they cooked there and stayed. (Interview 13)

Cooking was significant not only because of their courage in physically reclaiming the land despite the threat of possible violence, but also because this everyday act of social reproduction became a part of their resistance. Food was a form of sustenance for the movement. For example, some women chose not to participate in this action and instead provided additional food for the protesters. Sometimes, this cooking was remunerated by organizations involved in mobilizing the community.

I knew NAFSO ¹ was coming, and I felt bad because they were coming here for our work. So, when I heard that they hadn’t had lunch, I gave them the food I had prepared for my family. This is what I do mostly . . . When there is a protest, many people come to the village, and I prepare food for them, for which I get paid. (Interview 10)

Food sharing among women in Panama has traditional roots, stemming from the strong kinship ties that connect different families in the area. In several of our interviews, women recounted how they would reduce the time spent cooking in their day-to-day life, which they could spend instead on cultivating or other household tasks.

We share when we cook vegetables. When I cook one, my two sisters give two, and my mother gives one. That makes three [more] vegetables. (Interview 9)

Mutual help in cultivation

Cultivation for rural Sri Lankan women had both financial and subsistence aspects. In Panama, the women used any earnings from the chena cultivation to support their daily survival:

Many women support themselves through their own livelihoods. There are chena cultivations on the whole strip towards the seashore. Around three to four women are cleaning the chena cultivations, all of whom are women. [I am] glad and feel content seeing how they have grown them. (Interview 11)

Women shared with us that they would help each other in their chena cultivation by working in the chenas of family members, primarily at no charge (Interviews 8, 12). All these collective and individual activities ensure the food security of the close-knit Panama community, while also freeing up time for participation in activism.

Providing security

The women depended on collective support for security; a greater sense of security and solidarity was felt when they were mobilizing with other women known to them. In protesting and canvassing, a close-knit group of women would stay together, especially during overnight work (Interview 8). Some women were readily available during the protest to spend the night with these women:

She was a huge help during this struggle, even coming at night . . . You just call her, and she will be there. She was a great strength to us in this fight. (Interview 6)

Beyond the movement itself, after losing their cultivation land, an alternative means of income generation was running homestays for tourists. However, having strangers in their homes generated feelings of insecurity. As a precaution, some women slept at their neighbours’ homes, providing a sense of security that enabled them to sustain income-generating activities:

Recently, we had some people, and I gave them our room, my son’s room, and the [inaudible] room. I did not have a place to sleep. I was afraid to sleep in the lounge because my husband was not home that day. So, I slept at my neighbour’s house that night. (Interview 10)

General security was also a focal point of their activism. Through the citizens’ forum activities, women engaged with the Divisional Secretariat offices to investigate the security needs of villagers. These included the provision of electric lampposts to illuminate the streets, allowing women to travel safely. Other achievements included improving general welfare, such as vaccinating the village’s stray dogs and addressing the hospital’s medicine shortage (Interview 11).

Conclusion

This article argues that while care work often reproduces women’s depleting conditions postwar, women resisting through collective movements utilize ‘caring ways of resistance’ to build feminist solidarity in their everyday lives. Two Sri Lankan postwar social movements in Hingurakgoda and Panama demonstrate how practices such as collective cooking, shared childcare and security provisioning foster ‘everyday peace’ through the continuation of struggles against postwar economic policy injustices.

These case studies illustrate how care practices were not only embedded in the everyday lives of rural women but also proved foundational for the political mobilization that characterized the Satyagraha and sustained the land rights struggle; caring ways of resistance enabled the social reproduction of movements that sustain life. We demonstrate how domestic reproductive labour, including cooking, caregiving and fulfilling familial obligations, was not suspended but rather transposed into the collective domain, blurring the boundaries between public and private, as well as resistance and reproduction. Protest and resistance movements became spaces where embodied and affective labour became visible, collectively experienced and politically consequential.

This convergence of care and resistance foregrounds a central analytic contribution: the very practices historically viewed as constraining women’s autonomy – namely care labour – can serve as the basis for political subjectivity and collective struggle. In conditions where the material basis of life is completely depleted, care itself can be reimagined as a repertoire of resistance, rebellion and reproduction. Where debt had become deeply individualized and isolating, sharing food, child-rearing and emotional support functioned as material and symbolic resistance to neoliberal financialization. Similarly, where the military–tourism complex dispossessed communities of land, sharing food, childcare and security provisioning created conditions for collective resistance and organization.

Women’s collective care practices contained an explicit recognition of the mutual experience of exploitation across ethnic and religious lines, and an implicit acknowledgment of common gender norms and expectations about the gender division of labour, irrespective of ethnicity or religion. Thus, solidarity emerged from gendered, embodied experiences of sustaining their lives during crises and supporting one another’s calls for justice. These cases offer an alternative imaginary of collective mobilization – one where resistance does not require a departure from the intimate practices of everyday life but is constituted through and alongside them. This is a departure from both the masculinist assumptions underlying who should participate politically and feminist literature that emphasizes care work as a barrier to participation. This imaginary shows us how political power can be mobilized for greater security, through sustaining life rather than security discourses promoting state-led violence.

Caring ways of resistance foster everyday peace in postwar contexts where material insecurity persists despite the formal end of conflict. Operating through the logic of caring ways of resistance to navigate violent structures creates mutual recognition and support, inherently rejecting the destructive logic of ethno-nationalist war. We acknowledge care work can be exploitative and depleting without adequate support, and women’s networks are replete with their own power dynamics that can be profoundly uncaring. However, care remains one of the most significant aspects of developing and sustaining everyday peace. Thus, we emphasize new avenues for research that explore how care work transforms depletive conditions into regenerative possibilities for collective action.