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Mundane Heroines: Conflict, Ethnicity, Gender, And Female Headship In Eastern Sri Lanka

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  • Kanchana Ruwanpura
  • Jane Humphries

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Kanchana Ruwanpura & Jane Humphries, 2004. "Mundane Heroines: Conflict, Ethnicity, Gender, And Female Headship In Eastern Sri Lanka," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 173-205.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:femeco:v:10:y:2004:i:2:p:173-205
    DOI: 10.1080/1354570042000217766
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Jane Humphries, 1993. "Gender Inequality and Economic Development," International Economic Association Series, in: Dieter Bös (ed.), Economics in a Changing World, chapter 12, pages 218-233, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Sen, Amartya, 1983. "Development: Which Way Now?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 93(372), pages 742-762, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Lucia Hanmer & Eliana Rubiano & Julieth Santamaria & Diana J. Arango, 2020. "How does poverty differ among refugees? Taking a gender lens to the data on Syrian refugees in Jordan," Middle East Development Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 208-242, July.
    2. Shweta Singh, 2017. "Re-thinking the ‘Normative’ in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325: Perspectives from Sri Lanka," Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, , vol. 4(2), pages 219-238, August.
    3. Anke, Niehof, 2016. "Food And Nutrition Security As Gendered Social Practice," APSTRACT: Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce, AGRIMBA, vol. 10(2-3), pages 1-8, October.
    4. Arun Jentrick, 2023. "Women-Headed Households: Diversity and Dynamics in Post-Conflict Settings in South Asia," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(5), pages 1264-1277, May.
    5. Maneka Jayasinghe & Christine Smith, 2021. "Poverty Implications of Household Headship and Food Consumption Economies of Scales: A Case Study from Sri Lanka," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 157-185, May.

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