Gendered community-based waste management and the feminization of environmental responsibility in Greater Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

This article investigates gender dynamics in the practices of community-based waste management in households and local communities in the Greater Jakarta region of Indonesia, using a Feminist Political Ecology framework. We argue that community-based waste management, which was established as a decentralized waste management system, reinforces gender inequality by relying on women feeling responsible for waste management in their homes and communities and doing related care work. While our focused ethnographic studies in Bogor District, Tangerang City, and Depok City in 2021–2022 found diverse local waste management systems involving both formal and informal enterprises, the practices across these sites were clearly gendered, with women engaged in underpaid care work. We trace this gendered division of labor to the continued influence of ibuism, the ideology of the Indonesian state that deems women responsible for household and community hygiene, in effect feminizing environmental responsibility. We argue that, to become truly sustainable, waste management practices must be designed with men and women in communities, and address various forms of gender inequality and the gendered impact of community waste practices on health.

Keywords:

• Gendered waste management
• community-based waste management
• feminization of environmental responsibility
• plastic waste
• health

Acknowledgments

We thank the Carlsberg Foundation for funding the Plastic Lives consortium’s workshops in Aarhus through the Semper Ardens: Accelerate grant (CF-20-0151), and the Center for Social Science and Global Health from the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science and Research for the seed grant that made our fieldwork possible. The editing process of this article was also funded by the Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) on behalf of the Indonesia Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology and managed by Universitas Indonesia under PRIME Program (Grant No. PRJ/120/2021). This work was also supported by the PUTI Q2 Research and Publication Grant Number NKB-1212/UN2.RST/HKP.05.00/2022 from Universitas Indonesia. We thank Gauri Pathak for allowing us to discuss our finding in a workshop supported by a Carlsberg Foundation Young Researcher Fellowship. We are grateful to Mark Nichter, Eileen Moyer, and all members of the Plastic Lives Consortium for their input.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests.

Notes

Notes

1 https://tangerangdaily.id/ekologi/pertumbuhan-penduduk-jadi-faktor-volume-sampah-meningkat-di-kota-tangerang/.

2 The rectangular shape is men’s domain and the diamond shape is women’s domain.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diana Teresa Pakasi

Diana Teresa Pakasi is the chair of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies and an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitas Indonesia.

Anita Hardon

Anita Hardon is a professor and chair of the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Irwan Martua Hidayana

Irwan Martua Hidayana is an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology and a senior research fellow at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at Universitas Indonesia.

Putri Rahmadhani

Putri Rahmadhani is a researcher at the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies at Universitas Indonesia.