Pag-ani sa Gahum (Harvesting Power): A Critical Place-Based Inquiry Into the Labor Agency of Female Contractual Pineapple Plantation Workers in Bukidnon

Abstract

The Del Monte pineapple plantation in Manolo Fortich, Bukidnon, established during the American colonial period, stands as a historical testament to land dispossession, foreign agribusiness control, and the entrenchment of export-oriented agriculture in the Philippine countryside. Over time, it has evolved into a symbol of enduring structural exploitation, where rural labor, particularly that of women, remains precarious, subcontracted, and invisibilized. Within this context, the study explores the labor agency of female workers employed through manpower agencies, whose roles are shaped by intersecting forces of class, gender, and colonial-capitalist development. Using a critical place-based approach and grounded in feminist political economy and intersectionality, the research draws on interviews and focus group discussions to examine how these women perceive, navigate, and act within a labor regime marked by coercion, surveillance, and disposability. Findings reveal that women's labor agency is not wholly absent but is exercised in fragmented and context-specific ways, often through quiet resilience, informal negotiations, and intermittent acts of reworking and resistance. However, these forms of agency are significantly constrained by multiple intersecting structures: the subcontracted labor system, gendered labor hierarchies, rights exclusion, disciplinary workplace regimes, and socio-political marginalization. The plantation functions not only as a site of production but as a space of control, where women’s economic roles are disciplined through social surveillance, quota-based pressure, and exclusion from formal organizing mechanisms. Despite these conditions, the study underscores that women’s everyday assertions of agency, albeit limited in scope, offer critical insights into the latent potential for collective resistance and political consciousness. It underscores the need to recognize and link localized, everyday expressions of agency to broader grassroots organizing and policy advocacy. In doing so, it emphasizes the importance of recognizing informal and localized acts of resistance as building blocks toward more coordinated and transformative social change.