Indigenous Women and Livelihood

Indigenous women and their families rely heavily on farming and agricultural work for their income and livelihood. The respondents are cultivating land for rice, corn, root crops and vegetables for their own consumption with an intended surplus harvests to sell for non-food needs of their families. However, indigenous farming practices way before COVID-19 came already faced numerous challenges. Such challenges include the encroachment of large corporations into the ancestral domains, and the climate crisis. The insufficiency of income from farming have pushed indigenous women to look for other means to earn income such as handicraft making, weaving and becoming a household help or farm laborers specially for those who don’t have their own land to cultivate. With COVID-19 lockdown and strict quarantine protocols, indigenous women were confronted with even graver challenges on how they will make ends meet. Farming has become the only source of livelihood for many indigenous women and their families as other work was no longer available. Furthermore, the lockdowns posed difficulties in selling their farm products due to costly travel requirements. This has caused a significant decrease in the income of the indigenous women and their families.

'Indigenous Women and Health' is part of the Sectoral Monitoring on the Situation of Indigenous Women and Girls during the COVID-19 Pandemic by LILAK (Purple Action for Indigenous Women’s Rights) and the Commission on Human Rights Gender Equality and Women’s Rights Center, published on April 20, 2022.