Abstract
This article draws on interview data collected in 2021 from Indonesia and the Philippines to argue that activist work should fundamentally be understood as care work. The first part of the article advocates for a novel inductive theorisation of intersectional care ethics in social movement studies and activist-centred research. The second part of the article utilises this conceptual framework to discuss the paramount role of women in grassroots activist spaces both on the frontlines and behind the scenes. The stories of resistance by women activists, which comprise the core of this article, help to illustrate how the patriarchy and other structures of power may simultaneously be subverted and reproduced in grassroots community spaces.
Introduction
The feminist ethics of care, originating from moral philosophy, is a theory premised on a relational ontology. This approach has been used to explore matters of peacekeeping, public policy, domestic politics, education, international development and the caring professions (Hankivsky, 2014: 253; Barnes et al., 2015b: 4). More recently, it has served as a useful lens to consider women's role in the pandemic landscape: this includes studies about mutual aid, feminist crisis management and gendered community responses (Branicki, 2020; Lloro, 2021; Vohra and Taneja, 2021). Despite the overlapping themes that exist between community crisis response and grassroots activism, the application of feminist care ethics is not common in social movement studies (SMS). Yet, as the few exceptions have demonstrated, the ethics of care is an extremely relevant framework for understanding women's solidarity networks (Germain, 2010), the ecofeminist approach to environmental activism (Phillips, 2015; Allison, 2017) and gendered affect in activism (Kennelly, 2014). The theory of care allows us not only to dissect the motivations for activism – which are rooted in a ‘caring for’ – but also to explore the politics of collective culture and the practices of care work that sustain activist campaigns. Care ethics are also useful in addressing the prevalence of burnout and compassion fatigue in activist spaces due to what Rodgers (2010) has described as a harmful culture of selflessness which compels activists to consistently place the needs of ‘the cause’ above their own. The feminist care approach allows us to juxtapose altruistic performances with socially reified forms of emotional labour in order to expose the gendered expectations that are imposed in institutional settings as well as in grassroots organising spaces.
This article argues that the care ethics framework provides an important, multi-dimensional approach to activist-centred research. While care highlights agency through action and sacrifice, it also reveals the gendered expectation structures that lead women to take on additional labour (Andersen et al., 2022: 53). This is especially pertinent when focusing on women's work in countries of Southeast Asia, because it corresponds to the dominant gendered expectation that women undertake care work for family members (Baysa-Barredo, 2020). Gender constructions, however, are also intimately shaped by overlapping structures of oppression and power in a ‘matrix of domination’ (Collins, 1990: 228), yet the care ethics approach has not always been attentive to the multiplicity of women's lived experiences (Hankivsky, 2014). The care ethics framework, furthermore, has been criticised for perpetuating essentialism and reifying patriarchal binaries (Spelman, 1988; Puka, 1990; Puig De La Bellacasa, 2017). As such, I argue that the additional lens of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) is necessary to ground this theory in overlapping dimensions of oppression, thereby challenging dichotomies, and exposing the relationships between sexism, racism, capitalism and other structures of power.
This article stems from a wider cross-cultural project about the gendered dimensions of grassroots activist communities and do-it-yourself (DIY) culture in the Asia-Pacific, drawing on empirical findings to advocate for the use of intersectional feminist care ethics in SMS. DIY culture has implications for the practices and ideologies that underpin grassroots activist communities. The praxis of DIY in women's acts of resistance can take many forms and inevitably varies depending on the availability of resources and on the socio-political landscapes of resistance and repression in a particular area. Examples include: organising autonomous and non-hierarchical protest camps, building guerrilla gardens, sewing handmade banners for protests, self-funding political initiatives, engaging in mutual aid, dumpster diving, offering free skill-sharing workshops, creating community radio shows, etc. I undertook this project as my doctoral research in socio-cultural anthropology, using hybrid qualitative methods over 2020–2021 to collect data with women activists in Indonesia and the Philippines. The project sought to uncover the use of DIY culture and craftivism (Black and Burisch, 2011; Garber, 2013) in women's acts of resistance, while also exploring the digital shift in activist spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic (Imray Papineau, 2023). The project intentionally centred on gender dynamics, yet the theory of care emerged inductively during the stage of data analysis. While I was analysing my interviews with women activists, I realised that there was a missing component that helped me to make sense of their activism as a labour of love. Indeed, I found care ethics to be the most suitable lens through which to understand the nuances of activist work both as empowered acts of resistance and as exploitative. By acknowledging activist work as a form of care work, I argue that it is both a subversion and a reproduction of gendered expectations.
I begin by introducing the theory of care ethics and illustrate its relevance as a framework for understanding SMS and activist-centred research. I subsequently present the methods for the research and provide some context about how gender dynamics operate in both countries. In the following sections, I draw on interview excerpts from 2021 with women activists based in Indonesia and the Philippines to argue that resistance on the frontlines and organising efforts behind the scenes ultimately should be conceptualised as forms of care work.
The activist potential of feminist care ethics
The following offers both a literature review of feminist care ethics and an argument for the use of this approach in activist-centred research, contending that a care ethics approach also implies a primary focus on interdependence and a complementary examination of labour. Care ethics are crucial in understanding the motivations for activism, the material and affective risks for minoritised persons in activist communities and the way in which gender roles continue to be reified in progressive spaces. The centrality of interdependence to feminist care ethics is, I argue, crucial for understanding activism and activist engagement. I also suggest that we need to pay attention to the specificity of the labour involved in activism – specifically undervalued labour – as it prompts us to confront the exploitative side of care work in a capitalist society. Ideas around gendered labour and its material consequence invoke the ideas of social-reproduction feminism, which expands on the premise that women's unpaid labour is exploited yet necessary to capitalist accumulation (Bhattacharya, 2017; Ferguson, 2017; Federici, 2019). 1
Feminist care ethics can be viewed as having two main generations (Hankivsky, 2014: 253). The first generation, characterised by scholars like Carol Gilligan (1982), Nel Noddings (1984), Sara Ruddick (1989) and Virginia Held (1993) presents the ethics of care as a distinct moral theory with feminist roots. In her foundational work, Gilligan (1982) establishes feminist care ethics as a moral orientation based in the values of empathy, reciprocity and mutual concern. These earlier contributions by care ethics scholars highlight a contrast between the moral judgements of men (ethics of justice) and women (ethics of care), emphasising relationality and challenging individualism. They unpack the gendered dimensions of moral reasoning and addresses the virtues of nurturing and caring activities.
The second generation, prompted by the work of Joan Tronto (1993), investigates care as a politicised ethic to address the underlying structures of domination that uphold injustice – including but not limited to the gender hierarchy. Later work from many of the foundational care ethics scholars reflects this shift, acknowledging its potential as a political theory with liberatory potential (Held, 2006; Tronto, 2013; Gilligan, 2014). Tronto invites us to consider care as a multi-dimensional theoretical framework that is concerned with ‘democratic commitments to justice, equality and freedom for all’ (2013: 23), as it prompts a deep reflection on our own positions of power and privilege, and our relationships with others.
Outside the realm of moral philosophy, feminist care ethics has been used as a theoretical lens to analyse individual and collective phenomena with a focus on gender (Sevenhuijsen, 1998; Hankivsky, 2004; Kittay, 2011; Federici, 2012). Recent work by interdisciplinary feminists inspires my perspective on care ethics as a conceptual framework that can unpack complex sociological realities (Puig De La Bellacasa, 2017: 4; Lynch et al., 2021: 59) while challenging essentialist and binary thinking (Chatzidakis et al., 2020: 24; Wood and Skeggs, 2020: 645; de Wilde and Parry, 2022: 541).
The ethics of care – from its earliest articulations until now – centres responsibility in relationships: it reflects the central tenet that ‘self and other are interdependent’ (Gilligan, 1982: 74). An ethics of care conceptualises action and accountability that are contextually relevant, rather than being based in abstract moral principles (Mulligan and Garriga-López, 2021: 215). It explicitly recognises our ‘embeddedness’ in social and historical constellations, which can include sociodemographic and intergenerational dynamics (Held, 2006: 15). Furthermore, as articulated in Tronto's (2013) later work, care ethics strives for collective liberation through democratic practices and participatory citizenship, which aligns with the praxis of many grassroots activists.
As care ethics scholars shifted from a moral positioning to a political one, emerging work has addressed criticisms around essentialist and binary thinking (Hoagland, 1988; Houston, 1990; Puka, 1990; Hankivsky, 2004). These approaches to care challenge dichotomous thinking which links binary gender categories with assumptions about feminine and masculine performances, and they move away from essentialist categorisations and value-based orientations, seeking instead to address power at a structural level. If care ethics, as Tronto posits, should be concerned with collective liberation, then this approach must consider the burden of care work beyond a uniquely gendered lens. While my article builds on this later scholarship, I offer a more intersectional care ethics approach, which recognises a multifaceted ‘matrix of domination’ (Collins, 1990) and resists the urge to universalise care and care work (Richardson et al., 2023).
The intersectional lens is crucial for the care ethics approach in this article because it considers how overlapping social locations can produce both discrimination and privilege simultaneously (Hankivsky, 2014: 261). Social location involves categories of race, class, ability, resources, age and so forth, but it also extends to lesser-acknowledged power dynamics. In activist-centred research, we must recognise a person's risk or lived experience of criminalisation or state violence. Peasant women in the Philippines, for example, with a history of state harassment or with incarcerated relatives may be more vulnerable to state violence but simultaneously feel more empowered and more equipped to be engaged in activist struggles. An intersectional care lens is also better suited to recognise alternative models of caring, kinship and relationality that have been developed in Global South cultures, which fundamentally challenge Western notions. Following Federici's (2012) work about feminism and the commons, an intersectional care approach allows us to consider that women-led collectivisation of reproductive work, for example, is not a submission to gender roles but an acknowledgement of women's historical resistance to capitalism.
The potential of this framework ‘lies in its capacity to move between the messy everyday realities of care giving and receiving […] while applying a coherent philosophical and psychological understanding of interdependence as fundamental to the human condition’ (Barnes et al., 2015a: 243; emphasis mine. See also: Barnes et al., 2015b). By adopting an intersectional approach, we accept that power operates at various levels, meaning that resistance and repression can exist simultaneously. From this perspective, performances of care can at once be liberating and restraining; they may simultaneously subvert and reify gender roles.
As feminist scholarship and activism has highlighted, care work, both in its paid and unpaid manifestations, is fundamental to the basic functioning of a society or collective but is regarded as inferior to other forms of labour (Wood and Skeggs, 2020: 645). This is due to its traditional association with women and emotionality, and thus with weakness, and its relegation to the private sphere (Tronto, 1993: 112). In the activist context, care stretches across both public and private spheres, evident in front-facing roles and in behind-the-scenes work.
Given that many grassroots activists prioritise interdependence in their collective structure and in their activities (e.g. practising mutual aid), a care ethics framework allows us to analyse various aspects of this activism as relational processes that are intended towards a more caring and just society (Richardson et al., 2023). Activist culture is often informed by notions of the collective and antithetical to liberal individualist morality, and thus more suitable to analyse from a care ethics perspective, as it embraces our social embeddedness and our motivations for altruist action (Dutt and Kohfeldt, 2018; Ring, 2021). On the flip side, the care lens is also helpful for understanding the consequences of activist burnout, which is often attributed to cultures of guilt (e.g. not doing enough for the cause) and compassion fatigue (Kennelly, 2014; Gorski and Chen, 2015; Conner et al., 2023).
Throughout this article, I will invoke the key point of interdependence and argue that its centrality in grassroots activist communities is best examined through an intersectional care lens. Resistance in activism relies on the emotional, material and ideological support of others. In the Indonesian context, interdependence is additionally reflected in the concept of gotong royong, which signifies mutual cooperation (Bowen, 1986). It is perhaps even more relevant to the Filipino concept of kapwa because it speaks to the value of a shared identity among peers or shared values that bind a collective (Enriquez, 1994). In both cases, there is an underlying belief that people need each other – or at least that they are better off when they work together rather than apart.
In Indonesia and the Philippines, like in most countries across the globe, grassroots activist spaces either are occupied by people of less powerful cohorts fighting a struggle or prioritise solidarity work to meet the overlooked needs of marginalised demographics. The intersectional care lens invites us to consider how material and structural inequalities shape practices and expectations in activist spaces. As mentioned, an intersectional care ethics framework allows us to challenge binaries in order to create multiple possibilities. Tronto's (2013) concept of ‘get-out passes’, for example, stipulates that some persons (usually men) utilise social roles to deny responsibilities of care, one of these being the ‘protection pass’. At first glance, the role of ‘protector’ is juxtaposed to the role of ‘carer’, but it is argued that protection can also be deemed a form of care. This approach allows us to challenge the patriarchal discourse in which men – or the more powerful – are assumed as the protectors, and rejects false dualisms like that of ‘carer/protector’. As I will examine in this article, women activists often do both: they perform resistance in ways that simultaneously demonstrate affective care and tangibly seek to protect their kin, land and community.
To be involved in activism and to take action is to put one's politics into practice, which ultimately stems from a sense of care. The radical potential of care ethics is evident not only in activists’ pursuit of social change but also in their sense of community responsibility. We must, however, be careful not to glorify either activist work or care work without holding to account the structures that create a demand for undervalued, unpaid labour. This will be explored in more detail throughout the remainder of the article.
Methods
The findings in this article draw on semi-structured interviews conducted online in 2021 with activists in Indonesia and the Philippines. These countries were selected given my prior fieldwork experience and existing research networks in each country. The data was collected as part of a cross-cultural PhD research project on grassroots activist communities, for which ethical clearance was granted. 2 Eleven activists were formally interviewed in Indonesia and six in the Philippines. The questions of the interview focused around four central themes: personal activist involvement, cultural particularities of the activist space, gendered experiences and the impacts of Covid-19. Participants were recruited through existing networks and subsequently through snowball sampling. The majority of participants in the Philippines were affiliated with peasant and rural advocacy groups, while participants in Indonesia were mainly environmental activists and women's rights advocates. As part of the recruitment criteria, participants had to self-identify as being part of a grassroots activist group specifically, though the parameters of this definition varied across different communities and regions. Most participants were unpaid in their activist roles, but a minority occupied paid positions within slightly more formal organisations. The interviews were complemented with participant observation in online spaces (e.g. monitoring activist websites, social media pages and chat groups) as well as long-term informal engagement with activists in both countries. 3 The interviews were transcribed and coded in NVivo alongside field notes and observations. The coding system reflected the four central themes of the interview guide, which are based on the project's research questions concerning DIY culture in women's resistance (e.g. craftivism, sustainability, aesthetics, political organising culture), gender, socio-cultural contexts and Covid-19. Through discussions about activist culture during the pandemic, concerns around burnout, emotional labour, compassion fatigue and the (un)sustainability of grassroots organising prompted me to reflect more deeply about how to understand and how to frame activist work and its gendered dimension.
Gender in Indonesia and the Philippines
Before introducing the findings, I briefly provide socio-cultural and historical elements that inform the present gender context in both Indonesia and the Philippines. In Indonesia, the impact of patriarchal structures is most visible in rural areas, where high poverty levels, low education and social beliefs about gender roles stifle women's participation in life outside the home (Diprose et al., 2019). The restriction of women's rights has also increased alongside Islamic conservatism, in which women are often relegated to the domestic sphere, and deviance from gender or sexual norms is demonised (Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan, 2022). While the teachings of Islam emphasise benefits for both sexes, there are limitations for women due to public piety and censorship of sexual expression (Nilan, 2009: 335). Since the beginning of the Reformasi era (1998), efforts to expand the country's overall democratisation (Davidson, 2018) have had implications for gender equality, notably in the areas of marriage law (e.g. raising the minimum age of marriage for women from 16 to 19 in the Marriage Act of 2019), gender-based violence (e.g. defining marital rape as a crime in the 2022 Sexual Violence Crime Law) and representation in electoral politics (e.g. the 2003 law enforcing gender quotas in all levels of elections) (Robinson, 2023). Yet, other bills, such as the 2022 revised criminal code aiming to criminalise sex outside marriage, passed into law in December 2022, further restrict women and members of the queer community (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Abortion remains illegal in Indonesia despite reports that over one million abortions are performed annually, posing high risks to pregnant women and practitioners (Bulbeck, 2009: 178). Men continue to be ‘breadwinners’ in the majority of urban as well as rural settings: 4 this role often means that men are also domestic authority figures, responsible for most decision-making, thus creating a significant barrier to women's social and political participation (Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan, 2022). Even though a feminist movement was brewing in post-independence Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s, ‘political women’ were demonised through the government narrative about their involvement in the 1965/1966 coup (Sekolah Pemikiran Perempuan, 2022). This moral panic about women in politics endures today.
In the Philippines, there have been significant advancements for women in terms of wages, as well as educational and political gains: overall, the country ranked 17 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report in 2021 (Hocking, 2022). However, this does not account for the informal work sector, and therefore peasants and other rural workers are typically not reflected in these figures. This is noteworthy because conservative patriarchal beliefs are far more prevalent in rural settings and these attitudes towards gender play a determining role in women's participation both in the local economy and in political spaces (Bejeno, 2021). The rural sector in the Philippines is characterised by the Spanish colonists’ hacienda system, wherein hacienderos (landlords) can exercise control over the farm workers of the native community, largely due to sharecropping and debt relations (Venus, 2014). Despite agrarian reforms, the hacienda system remains in place in many parts of the country where workers are particularly prone to exploitation due to financial dependency on the landowners. Women subjected to this semi-feudal system often face displacement, dispossession, food insecurity, poverty and violence from state authorities (Garcia, 2021). Despite progress and impressive global rankings, the Philippines is considered one of the most dangerous countries in Asia for women. High rates of sexual violence and rape occur due to a lack of legal accountability, restricted access to health resources (e.g. contraception) and insufficient sex education (Hocking, 2022).
There are clearly considerable economic, cultural and political differences across the islands and regions of both these archipelagic countries. In my research, all participants were based in urban centres but often travelled to remote or rural areas to engage in advocacy work with locals. In Indonesia, for example, feminist activists based in the city of Yogyakarta travelled to the Kulon Progo regency to work with farmers fighting for their land. In the Philippines, all respondents were based in Metro Manila, but some travelled primarily to haciendas in Central Luzon while others carried out mutual aid in parts of Negros, Leyte and Mindanao. It is therefore difficult to offer a comprehensive account of the political economy and agrarian settings which inform gender dynamics not only for activists but for all women living in these areas. 5
Grand gestures of care: women on the frontlines
In this section, I argue that women pursuing frontline resistance and direct action are performing care by physically using their bodies to protect or oppose a cause they feel strongly about. The body may become a chain or an obstacle that blocks access or prohibits certain activities from taking place. I call these ‘grand gestures’ of care, which implies a degree of risk and sacrifice. For example, it is through deep attachment to one's land and village that activists may sacrifice time and risk their safety to protect it from developers in a blockading action. The idea of frontline resistance as a manifestation of care will be explored here, drawing on findings from women activists in Indonesia and the Philippines.
I begin with an excerpt that highlights the leadership of women in rural communities; these are women who engage in political organising and resistance even if they do not label themselves as activists: Even in communities where there are no organisations of women, it's really the female farmers [who lead]. It's really inspiring because their leaders are often women farmers. […] When we started immersing and learning more, archiving, writing, co-creating with them, we learn that it's really the women who are at the forefront of this struggle. There are so many inspiring stories that we could share, how the women farmers would inspire their community and also sacrifice their safety. (Philippines, B)
The notion of sacrifice is important here, as it ties into the earlier comment about care and resistance. Women farmers are described as the protectors, those willing to compromise their safety for the community. The safety of farmers and advocates can be swiftly jeopardised, as the Philippines remains one of the most dangerous countries for political activists and land defenders, especially when it comes to environmental activism and land grabbing (Dressler, 2021: 2).
One of the most interesting findings from the experiences of frontline resistance is a commonality shared between stories in the Philippines and Indonesia. This is described in the interviews as a strategy when forming human blockades to stop authorities or workers from entering a site. Women, especially older women, take the first line of defence, on the one hand because they are perceived as calmer and less likely to escalate a situation of confrontation into physical violence, and on the other hand due to societal norms proscribing harm to women (particularly the elderly). I will first share a story from the Philippines, and then link it with examples from Indonesia. Beyond the tactical aspect, the following excerpt also presents a very powerful and inspiring portrayal of resistance by women of Hacienda Yulo, a community displaced due to construction for massive developments led by Ayala, one of the country's biggest tycoons: We went [to Hacienda Yulo] last month because the farmers have been experiencing a series of harassment. They have been wiping out the barangays, the communities there, displacing farmers so that they can continue the golf course. The women there, the senior citizens in Hacienda Yulo, created a human barricade when the goons started coming into the community with their guns. They started shouting ‘I am death’, or ‘I am Kamatayan’ in Filipino, ‘and who[ever] will resist, I will shoot’. And the goons were wearing masks, like scary, skull masks. The organisations are aware that if you put the men in the front of the battle, they will not be able to stop themselves from physically fighting back. They often put older women in the front of the encounters. The older women [were] held at gunpoint. […] We have a lot of videos and pictures that went viral online of the women talking to the goons and saying put your gun down. It's considered a success, that particular encounter, because they were able to stop the goons from entering their barangay. They had to leave. […] Listening to the women also telling us how they were so willing to sacrifice, they were willing to use their bodies as a shield, to literally protect the community from these harassers … that's really inspiring, and also heartbreaking because most of them are senior citizens, they’re really old women. (Philippines, B)
This story depicts a powerful picture of women holding their ground and protecting their community from development projects. The element of sacrifice emerges here again, as the elderly women described their commitment and care for the barangay by way of using their body as a shield. The elderly women are perceived to be more suitable for this role than their male counterparts due to their sense of calm resolve and their ability to communicate despite the intensity of the confrontation, i.e. asking the military goons to lower their weapons. In the Indonesian context, elderly women frontline fighters are also described as such: Every time there's a fight against the government for land grabbing, […] the fighters will be called like Ibu Ibu [mothers] Kandung, Ibu Ibu Kulon Progo, because most of the people who are fighting are women. I was watching a webinar about these people, and they were saying that one of the tactics that they do for the fights in their respective region is actually to put the Ibu Ibu at the front of the movement, on purpose, because they are less likely to be bothered by the police and they are more calm. They’re not easily riled up. Some of them even bring their sewing. In one village, all the ladies would bring all their weaving kits to the strike so that they’re calm while they’re striking. (Indonesia, C)
Once again, the women fighters – or mothers, as they are more aptly named – are considered as the calm front of resistance. They are assumed to be naturally less prone to agitation, but they also enhance their sense of tranquillity and composure by engaging in sewing and weaving while they occupy the frontlines. This example depicts a powerful visual, whereby groups of elderly women are striking or blockading a site together while collectively undertaking some form of textile arts. In fact, Febriana Firdaus has interviewed women who participate in these kinds of actions in her film Tanah Ibu Kami (2020) and shows footage of women with their traditional weaves. Frontline activism, despite its dangers, could be perceived as an embodiment of these women's deep sense of care, love and nurture towards land and kin.
The next quote speaks to the advantage that women activists may have by virtue of a broader social taboo: ‘In Indonesia, it's a hugely patriarchal society still. But in public, it's also very condemned if you raise your hands against a woman. It kind of works towards our advantage when it comes to confrontation with police’ (Indonesia, C). There are two major points to excavate here: first, that patriarchal norms existing in society also seep into activist movements. Second, it is deemed unacceptable for men – including police – to physically harm women in public. What this really indicates is that physical violence against women is relegated to private spaces or occurs behind closed doors where it cannot be scrutinised by members of the public. Women on the frontlines, therefore, may enjoy the ‘safety’ of this social taboo as long as there is attention from the media and the public, but that does not ensure immunity from police and military retaliation once the cameras are off and the supporters are gone. In fact, women defenders have argued that they face increased gender violence, trafficking and sexual exploitation when extractive industries enter their villages to pursue development work (Women Human Rights Defenders, 2021). Despite the increased risk that comes from frontline action, women's acts of resistance in public spaces can serve as an incredibly rich and empowering experience of personal agency and community building.
These descriptions highlight a deep sense of interdependence, which is not only orientated towards other people (e.g. villagers) but also towards land, nature and the intangible spirit of home. I argue that these examples of direct action and frontline resistance should be understood as manifestations of care. Using one's body as a tool for protest risks compromising one's physical and emotional well-being to protect something meaningful. The element of sacrifice demonstrates, in some cases, that the welfare of the collective or the survival of the land supersedes the safety and welfare of the individual and evokes the importance of interdependence. In her study of peasant women in the Philippines, Bejeno remarks that: ‘[O]ften, the blue guards respect women and do not harm them, which therefore leads to the protection of the rest of the group members. It is a common narrative among the two organisations that the blue guards, who are all men, hesitate in acting brutally and violently when engaging with women. Women are not seen as a threat’ (2021: 166).
When women occupy the frontlines as a tactical strategy, as the examples in Indonesia and the Philippines illustrate, it both reproduces and subverts gender norms. On one hand, the traditional perceptions of femininity – characterised by docility and pacifism – are being weaponised to keep authorities at bay. The perception of a ‘calm disposition’ can be a testament to healthy emotional regulation, but it can also connote passivity or a soothing ‘feminine’ character. Thus, there is a perpetuation of feminine stereotypes, and this may subject women to greater risk of harassment or violence. On the other hand, it is a powerful indicator not only that women belong in contentious spaces but also that they are better equipped than men to face direct confrontation from authorities. In this sense, the ‘feminine’ is linked to the ideal of the protector, which has historically been male dominated.
An intersectional care ethics approach encourages us to situate acts of resistance within a multi-dimensional framework. While it might be argued that using elderly women on the frontline points to an assumption about the disposability of women's bodies rather than their unique de-escalation abilities, I suggest that multiple perspectives can be entertained simultaneously. Women can be hailed as protectors and – at the same time – be made vulnerable through embodying their normative gender role, which may be perceived as docile, pacifist and acquiescent. An intersectional care ethics emphasises the moral obligations that lie at the heart of a deep ‘caring towards’ or ‘caring about’ that motivates women activists to take self-sacrificing action. This approach additionally considers how overlapping factors like age and cultural background may produce representations of powerful resistance and subversion by matriarchal figures and woman elders. By the same token, however, this lens invokes a reflection on the way our society values certain bodies over others (Butler, 1993) and considers the social burden placed on women – specifically older women of colour – to put their bodies in unsafe positions to defend land and kin. Rather than dissecting the effectiveness of an action tactic – which is common in SMS – an intersectional care framework invites us to reflect on the gendered, racialised and classed matrix that underpins the value exchange between a woman's labour and the gestures of care that she embodies in an activist context.
Moreover, we must not over-romanticise these ‘grand gestures’ of care, because they reveal systematic injustice. Women should neither have to risk their lives to protect their homes from displacement nor be harassed, jailed and murdered by the state because of their involvement in activist and social justice efforts. While it is compelling to applaud women for their tenacity, it is equally necessary to place accountability on the institutions and corporations that create these situations of injustice. Due to the high-risk factors of frontline activism – which are often heightened in Southeast Asian countries and ‘backsliding democracies’ (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2021) – strategies of collective care are essential to cultivating viable and sustainable activist communities.
Nurturing the activist ecosystem: women behind the scenes
Women play a pivotal role in the ‘behind-the-scenes’ caretaking of grassroots activist communities. Behind-the-scenes work includes check-ins with peers to monitor the state of their well-being, cooking for the collective, minding children, establishing conflict resolution processes and so forth. This section will delve deeper into the inner workings of grassroots communities, shining a spotlight on the gritty, unseen and under-appreciated work that cultivates activist ecosystems. I argue that women may be afforded fewer opportunities to occupy front-facing roles and to resist on the frontlines, because they are weighed down by the burden of unpaid labour and managing the complex layers of care work that are required for movement viability. As seen in the examples above, there are numerous instances of women taking frontline roles, but I contend that gendered expectations and assumptions can recreate patterns of political exclusion for women, which may reduce opportunities for activist participation overall.
Among the findings from Indonesian activist groups, there are several examples of communal care between activists. The following two interview passages discuss strategies used within the collective to mitigate burnout. Most of these rely on online platforms, given the constraints of the pandemic in 2021 when the interviews were conducted. These range from virtual ‘hangouts’ to counselling support services. Such initiatives can provide much-needed aid to activists suffering from increased mental health challenges. The following quote discusses welfare practices in a grassroots climate movement: We do a bunch of hangout sessions, an open Zoom where people discuss. We also have a WhatsApp group called Family. Anybody can just talk shit, [say] whatever they feel like there. And outside of that, we have a working group called ‘well-being’, where we actively remind people to be that emotional support in the family group or outside. In terms of burnout […] This is something I personally [did]: after every event I would check up on them and send them cookies and random things, to make sure they’re OK and to make sure they stay in the movement. (Indonesia, C)
Another example of behind-the-scenes care work in activist communities involves conflict resolution mechanisms. Interpersonal issues are inevitable in grassroots spaces, just as they are everywhere. The important matter, then, is to establish how conflict is resolved without a) reproducing the power structures and hierarchies of the capitalist system, b) ignoring the issue and allowing it to be reproduced elsewhere or c) involving authorities like the police. Drawing on their anarcha-feminist and abolitionist stance, a political feminist collective in Yogyakarta decided to implement the theory of restorative justice
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in their accountability protocols when dealing with cases of sexual violence: Usually, when there's a sexual assault, people [are] just going to kick out the perpetrator directly. But we decided to deal with the two cases, like for the perpetrators and then also for the survivors. So, the perpetrators can take accountability and then learn about something, and it could be talking about this issue so that their patriarchal mindset will change, or at least they know what they did is wrong, and it won’t happen again. That's what we do now with this issue [around] sexual harassment or sexual violence. (Indonesia, E)
By deciding to use this measure of community accountability in their collective, these activists are performing an immense amount of affective labour – not only in establishing the procedure but also in carrying it out when there is an incident of sexual violence. This showcases a deep commitment to their political values, while also revealing a great deal of care. When processes of accountability are successful, both the perpetrator and the victim benefit, and neither are isolated or ostracised from their community as a result. This again highlights the value of interdependence, not only within the activist group but more broadly as a society. On the flip side, this procedure requires considerable emotional labour from the women in the collective, with the added risk of re-traumatising or causing burnout for those leading the process. There is no compensation or support for the women who invest their time and energy in community accountability protocols. The intersectional care lens prompts us to reflect on the benefits and pitfalls of value-led politics, wherein women (working-class queer women in this case) are guided by a sense of responsibility and care that can result in substantial material and emotional burdens. This approach centres the moral impetus of safeguarding community members and challenges discourses of hegemonic masculinity in suggesting that perpetrators of sexual violence can be held accountable and change their behaviour. Simultaneously, this approach once again highlights that the obligation is left to women – and, in this situation specifically, that the responsibility falls to women who are not professionally trained, who face resource precarity and who have themselves experienced forms of state and sexual violence. The intersectional care lens accentuates how caring activities led by the oppressed – including forms of grassroots activism – benefit the functioning of a social world beyond the oppressed themselves, but do not wholly liberate those who are performing care. The moral obligation of care may in fact reify gendered power dynamics. There is merit, nonetheless, in the emancipatory potential of aligning politics and practices in a way that liberates the community from capitalist and carceral modes of punishment.
Care work also plays a substantial role in activist communities of the Philippines. Given the high stakes of activism, there is a pressing need to look after those who are targeted, and to care for an activist's family if they are jailed or killed. Moreover, since many of my interviewees work in the peasant advocacy sector, they highlight the need to engage in traditional domestic work to allow rural women to attend meetings and participate in action. This highlights a key argument: the resistance on the frontlines can only be accomplished if others are doing the care work behind the scenes. This a reflection of the premise that the functioning of our social world relies on care work.
The following passages describe how activist groups practise care for one another as a way of coping with the recurring exposure to violence. The first excerpt notes how repression has already impacted the mental health of the volunteers and explains that the current crackdown on activists is only making things worse: The majority of our volunteers are students or young people, and most of us are diagnosed with clinical or major depression, ADHD and other conditions. We are constantly exposed to news about peasant killings. Just this week, the person who I met in 2019, […] just last Sunday he was killed. He was shot eight times on his way home to his kids. It's like every day, it's triggering. This week, it's Holy Week here, but the crackdown is so much worse. They would illegally arrest [activists] or plant evidence so that they can arrest the activist. Or they would kill them, just like that. It's very exhausting, but through collective action, we somehow survive. (Philippines, B)
Despite the weight of this reality, the passage ends on a somewhat hopeful note: ‘through collective action, we somehow survive’. Once again, the notion of interdependence, echoed through the sentiment of collective action, is recognised as crucial to the survival of the group. Mutual support, understanding and compassion must be practised to counteract the burden of emotional distress caused by the constant exposure to arrests, kidnappings and murders. But this excerpt reminds us that the emotional labour required to participate in activism is extremely high and that the risk of adverse mental health impacts is significant. The care lens exposes the reality that a deep sense of ‘caring for’ can also lead to personal harm due to an activist culture in which selflessness is detrimentally glorified. If the moral obligation of affective labour – as well as social reproductive labour – is uncritically left to women and essentialised as feminine, then ‘nurturing’ and ‘caring’ dimensions of activism will perforce be assumed by women. The intersectional lens further posits that women of colour, queer and gender non-conforming women, working-class women and older women are driven by a moral obligation that stems from a lived experience of overlapping oppression. While the altruistic pursuit of social justice can be empowering and provide a sense of fulfilment, an intersectional care approach to activism reminds us that there is a profound asymmetry between the caring activities of women at the grassroots level and the carelessness peddled through capitalism, patriarchy, extractivism and imperialism. Grassroots activism, as shaped by care ethics, is only sustainable in a realm where caring activities are valued, supported and treated as indispensable.
In our conversation about burnout, another participant highlighted the interdependence of self and community care in maintaining the group's viability: At the beginning of our calls there's a kamusta, a ‘how are you’ kind of thing, where you can share whatever you like. I’m thinking about Audre Lorde's talk about self-care as an act of political warfare and how we have to look after ourselves. And not, of course, in an individualistic, neoliberal self-care way; but in that we do have to maintain our well-being so that we’ll have enough to give. And so, that's one thing, being able to work through it as a group. (Philippines, E)
In this passage, we see a desire to foster a politicised culture of care. The participant starts by mentioning the ‘kamusta’, a way of checking in at the beginning of calls. She then draws on Audre Lorde's (1988) conception of self-care and ties this into a discourse of interdependence. She is careful to mention that she does not view self-care in the individualist sense – which has largely been co-opted as a consumerist ploy – but rather in the sense that personal welfare is the baseline of community welfare.
The last interview excerpt for this section changes tone slightly. Here, we return to the idea that care work is necessary for frontline resistance to take place. In most peasant communities, gender roles reproducing the public and private sphere divide endure, meaning that women are expected to complete domestic chores and be responsible for child-minding (Agarwal, 1994). While these traditional gendered expectations are not unique, the emphasis here is that these women are often excluded from politics to begin with (Morgan, 2017). For them to attend meetings and events, advocates must step in and undertake the care work in their place. An organiser for peasant women advocacy explains: Peasant women, because of the feudal thinking, think that young women should only be in the house. When we go to the localities […], we have to ensure that the household work of peasant women [is] accomplished before they leave their house for the meeting. Also, we have to understand that during meetings they have to bring their children, especially those who are still young mothers. We make some adjustments, and we have to designate a member who will take care of the children while their parents are focused on our discussions. […] Also, if you really want to get the sympathy of the women whom you are organising with, you have to stay in their house. You have to do what they are doing. They wash the clothes; they clean the house. We will also do that. Also, we have to go to their field and help [with] planting. (Philippines, C)
As demonstrated in this quote, part of the activist work is to make whatever adjustments are necessary to allow local women the opportunity to be politically engaged. This ranges from child minding to domestic chores. Furthermore, to gain the trust and sympathy of the peasant women, advocates must immerse themselves and show an authentic concern for their struggle.
We can identify the theme of care here in multiple ways: on one hand, there is care in the unpaid labour that must be carried out to free up time for activist involvement; and on the other hand, there is a deep sense of care for peasant women and a genuine desire to see them, as local leaders, participating in organising meetings and resisting on the frontlines. The intersectional care ethics approach allows us to recognise the cultural and historical dimensions that shape gendered expectations in post-colonial settings like the Philippines, and specifically in rural areas where feudal thinking persists. Through this lens, we can agree that advocates are both caring for rural women while also reifying traditional gender roles. Patriarchal assumptions are not confronted, but the burden of care work is distributed among other women to facilitate other avenues of empowerment and perhaps even of challenging gender expectations.
If grassroots activist communities can be perceived as ecosystems, we could imagine how the integrity of each part is linked to and dependent on one another. Through this lens, we can better understand how grassroots collectives tend to crumble when certain parts are neglected and do not receive the care and attention they deserve. The cultivation of healthy activist ecosystems, in which all the parts are given attention and recognised as mutually linked, is not possible without the immense labour of love that is performed by women, gender non-conforming people and people of colour. 7
In her study of grassroots feminist makerspaces, Ring (2021: 174–177) finds that women are often left with the care work, both physical and emotional, to maintain the functionality of the collective workspace. There is always an expectation that things will be ‘taken care of’ (Davies, 2017: 88), which falls upon the people who have been socialised to pick up these tasks. While the expectation of performing labour contributes to the devaluation of caring activities, there is also a feminist argument in grassroots feminist makerspaces that care work is an effective strategy for mutual support and burnout prevention (Ring, 2021: 191). Most activists interviewed across Indonesia and the Philippines discussed the concern of burnout and raised examples of self- and collective care that are implemented to help prevent this. The intersectional approach prompts us to consider how particular socio-cultural contexts and class-based differences also shape expectations regarding care roles, and the degree of ‘choice’ women have in rejecting these roles.
Given that care work is both feminised and undervalued, it follows that caring contributions and behind-the-scenes work that women perform in activist spaces often goes unnoticed. Yet, as my study underscores, it must be carried out to sustain the activist ecosystem and its community's well-being. Although it offers the material and emotional conditions to satisfy basic human needs and serves an essential function for the reproduction of the labour force – both in formal and activist settings – it is often underpaid (or unpaid) and largely unacknowledged (Tricontinental, 2020: 39–40). In practice, care is essential, but socially, it is undermined. Activism and resistance in order to bring about social change, likewise, are often misrepresented and demonised, even if they are working towards a greater collective good and arguably constitute the backbone of participatory democracy.
Conclusion
In this article, I have explored two sides of women's engagement in activism: from resistance on the frontlines to community maintenance behind the scenes. The lens of feminist care ethics has been applied in both sections, which helps to highlight the feminisation of care, and the inescapability of interdependence, but also the need to bring in the lens of intersectionality to highlight overlapping oppressions and to explore how binaries are challenged.
Activist-centred studies should utilise a care ethics approach because it exposes inequality in spaces that are often touted as progressive and egalitarian. Through the recognition of and emphasis on interdependence, we can examine the subversive potential of care as resistance. The application of an intersectional lens helps to identify the subtle exploitation of care as undervalued personal labour. Moreover, this lens also allows us to take the weight off the category of gender in our analysis of care and care work. This means that we can equally apply an intersectional care ethics approach to the experiences of men and gender-fluid activists in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines who similarly navigate high risk (e.g. resource precarity, state violence) and are impacted by a matrix of domination. While this article has focused uniquely on the experiences of women activists, future research in this field should consider how persons of other genders similarly undertake care work through their activist engagement.
Care ethics are a foundational element that shape grassroots activist practices and are key in building and maintaining resilient communities facing government repression, stigmatisation and unstable socio-economic climates. While this conceptual framework provides an important, multi-dimensional approach to SMS, its application extends far beyond this field. There are many valuable lessons from the activist realm that merit consideration in other spaces, including: burnout mitigation strategies, ways to create a healthy work culture and solutions to interpersonal conflict without involving authorities. Future research into the cultures and practices of women activists in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the Global South could help uncover the day-to-day grassroots care strategies deployed in precarious environments. Furthermore, this will become increasingly pertinent as we face more climate disasters and their aftermath. If we agree that activist work does in fact consist of care work, we should pay close attention to the role of caretaking in crisis responses.
