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.
