Peran Ganda Perempuan, Ekologi Ruang, dan Kuasa Struktural dalam Budidaya Rumput Laut di Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan

Abstract

This study explores how women in Bontomanai and Labbakkang Villages, Pangkep Regency, South Sulawesi, take part in seaweed farming, and how settlement location, wage relations, and gender-based division of labor jointly shape the economy of coastal households. An ethnographic, qualitative method was applied, combining participant observation, in-depth interviews, and field documentation of women seaweed cultivators and processors. Findings reveal that coastal women carry a double burden, running household duties alongside active work in seeding, tying, sun-drying, and processing seaweed. Involvement patterns, however, are not uniform: women living in hamlets directly facing the sea (Binangatoa/Tanarajae) take part across the whole production cycle through a paid mutual-help (gotong royong) arrangement, whereas women in hamlets set further back from the shoreline (Kabirisi) are confined to seed-tying within an informal, broker-mediated labor market involving wage deductions. Drawing on Julian Steward's cultural ecology and Eric Wolf's notion of structural power, the study shows that ecological location is not a neutral backdrop but an active force shaping economic access and women's bargaining strength. Economically, women's earnings prove vital, at times becoming the main pillar, for fishing households whose incomes fluctuate. The study concludes that the long-standing domestic-public dichotomy applied to coastal women deserves reconsideration, since Pangkep women in practice occupy a central, not merely auxiliary, place within the local seaweed value chain.