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Mundane heroines: conflict, ethnicity, gender, and female headship in Eastern Sri Lanka

Mundane heroines: conflict, ethnicity, gender, and female headship in Eastern Sri Lanka
Mundane heroines: conflict, ethnicity, gender, and female headship in Eastern Sri Lanka
For the last twenty years, eastern Sri Lanka has witnessed a bitter and bloody civil conflict. This paper explores the experience of female-headed households in the region. Only partially the product of war, such households cannot be bundled together as a social problem with a single solution. Our study endorses the feminist suspicion of falsely homogenizing accounts of women's lives and suggests instead an alternative emphasis on the many ways in which gendered relations of dominance and subordination are maintained. With its co-existing Muslim, Tamil, and Sinhala groups, eastern Sri Lanka facilitates the exploration of ethnicity as a source of variation. The households included in this study share a common structure and face the same economic problems, yet ethnic differences divide them. The paper charts the problems, strategies, and partial triumphs of these lone mothers and proposes policies to help them in their mundane but heroic struggle
Female headship, gender, ethnicity, eastern Sri Lanka, conflict, kinship and community
1354-5701
173-205
Ruwanpura, K.N.
6ac0c791-abeb-484a-b747-1ecc99d3b800
Humphries, J.
5f2172b2-3930-4009-aeb3-699921de2544
Ruwanpura, K.N.
6ac0c791-abeb-484a-b747-1ecc99d3b800
Humphries, J.
5f2172b2-3930-4009-aeb3-699921de2544

Ruwanpura, K.N. and Humphries, J. (2004) Mundane heroines: conflict, ethnicity, gender, and female headship in Eastern Sri Lanka. Feminist Economics, 10 (2), 173-205. (doi:10.1080/1354570042000217766).

Record type: Article

Abstract

For the last twenty years, eastern Sri Lanka has witnessed a bitter and bloody civil conflict. This paper explores the experience of female-headed households in the region. Only partially the product of war, such households cannot be bundled together as a social problem with a single solution. Our study endorses the feminist suspicion of falsely homogenizing accounts of women's lives and suggests instead an alternative emphasis on the many ways in which gendered relations of dominance and subordination are maintained. With its co-existing Muslim, Tamil, and Sinhala groups, eastern Sri Lanka facilitates the exploration of ethnicity as a source of variation. The households included in this study share a common structure and face the same economic problems, yet ethnic differences divide them. The paper charts the problems, strategies, and partial triumphs of these lone mothers and proposes policies to help them in their mundane but heroic struggle

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More information

Published date: 25 June 2004
Keywords: Female headship, gender, ethnicity, eastern Sri Lanka, conflict, kinship and community
Organisations: Economy Culture & Space

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 69656
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/69656
ISSN: 1354-5701
PURE UUID: 80698b6b-1402-47a6-9a07-93fc8d2bd2b0

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 25 Nov 2009
Last modified: 13 Mar 2024 19:41

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Contributors

Author: K.N. Ruwanpura
Author: J. Humphries

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