Women, the Environment, and Development: Resistance Strategies of Women Tea Producers to Inequality

Abstract

On February 6, 1924, Law No.407 authorised the government to cultivate hazelnuts, oranges, lemons, tangerines, and tea in Rize province and the Borçka district. The law also established support and incentive principles for tea cultivation. This study investigates intra-household struggles over labour and land in a village in Pazar, Rize, which has undergone significant ecological and social transformation since the 1950s, driven by principles of development, prosperity, and self-sufficiency. Employing a feminist political ecology framework, the analysis explores gendered power relations within households that accompanied the transition from subsistence production to state-supported commercial tea cultivation, as well as the agency of women tea producers. Based on approximately one year of ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with 24 tea producers, the findings demonstrate that tea cultivation is marked by gender-based inequalities in labour and ownership, and that women tea producers respond to these inequalities through various forms of “everyday resistance.”