NT WOMEN EMPOWERING PEERS THROUGH SCIENCE
The Territory women empowering their peers
IN remote villages in Indonesia and Timor-Leste, five environmental scientists embed themselves with the local people for months at a time to investigate fisheries, mining and food security.
The scientists are all women working on their separate PhD research at Charles Darwin University.
Associate Professor Natasha Stacey, who supervises the projects, said students increasingly focused on how women’s empowerment could benefit household incomes and food security.
“Gender directly impacts access to and control over assets, which can influence the benefits people get from agriculture,” Dr Stacey said.
“Our research contributes to addressing gender equity in environmental research studies, which can lead to improved incomes and food security.”
Dr Stacey said gender equity issues contributed to the complex challenges students faced when undertaking a social science research project in a developing country.
“Students must establish and build partnerships with government and nongovernment agencies and communities, learn new languages and live and work in remote and isolated areas for long periods of time,” she said.
“The women we have in the field seem to excel at this.”
Today marks the UN’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
Dr Stacey said women offered alternative perspectives and approaches to various fields of science.
Studies have shown that having women working in science can maximise innovation and increase knowledge.
They often offer different perspectives to problems.
“It’s important to have senior academic female role models and mentors,” she said.
“Working towards gender equity sends a positive message to potential students and early-career scientists.”
••••••• One of her students, Emily Gibson has just returned from a month in the field, working with women from 66 households on three remote islands to collect seasonal data on the diets of young children and families.
Most afternoons, she climbed a hill to get phone range so she could talk to her own 18-month-old son, Noah.
“It’s important for women to know there are rewarding careers in science, and I have been fortunate to have a supportive supervisor who understands my family situation,” she said.
Ms Gibson said the women and children who lived on three islands in eastern Indonesia had low dietary diversity, which had consequences for their health and wellbeing.
“They eat mainly rice and fish; fruit and vegetables are scarce,” she said.
“Two of the islands have no natural fresh water supply, with drinking water brought in by boat. But even on the other island, which has a fresh water spring, people don’t grow fruit and vegetables.”
Ms Gibson is looking into the link between nutrition and the people’s reliance on smallscale fisheries.
She will analyse relevant small-scale fisheries and nutrition programs, to assess if delivery is effective in remote coastal communities.
••••••• The recently established small-scale manganese mining industry in West Timor has forced communities to look at their beliefs.
Some do business with the mineral’s “spirit owner”, trading animal sacrifices for permission to take stones from the earth, while others refuse to dig up their land.
PhD candidate Hannah Ling, who has almost finished her thesis, has investigated the diversity of views towards artisanal mining across 10 communities, which
determines whether a community resists or adapts to a livelihood based on a nonrenewable resource.
“One village has refused to mine, explaining the earth has already given them everything they need and to take manganese to sell is greedy and disrespectful,” Ms Ling said.
“Some villagers mine manually using hand tools — by refusing to use heavy machinery they protect other natural resources including teak, candlenut and mango trees, and prevent landslides.
“Slow mining also helps control the impact, and keeps the activity literally in the hands of the local people rather than an outside company.”
Ms Ling said manganese mining began in West Timor just 10 years ago.
“As subsistence farmers most people independently produce their own food, but many choose to mine because it helps to buy food when drought causes crops to fail; they need to buy things like coffee, sugar and soap; and to pay for their children’s education,” she said.
“Sometimes the money is also sufficient to invest in farming practices, such as livestock and rice fields.”
•••••• In Timor-Leste, where about 40 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, Kim Hunnam hires local youths to help her collect data on fishers’ daily sardine catches.
“We decided to share the work opportunity around, and so far about 15 different youths have helped me at one of my rural field sites,” Ms Hunnam said.
“While re-training people every three months adds an extra challenge to my research, it has allowed me to establish and maintain a good relationship with the community.”
Ms Hunnam is researching the operation of small-scale sardine fisheries in TimorLeste, and the associated trade and consumption of fish.
“Sardines are highly nutritious, and essential to fishers and fish traders as both food and income,” she said.
“There has been little previous research on this fishery, so I hope my study will demonstrate its importance so it can be better supported in the future.”
Ms Hunnam chose to live in Dili while conducting her fieldwork, rather than travel to and from Darwin.
“I feel this helps me to gain a better understanding of the context, culture and language,” she said.
“Most of my research is talking to fishers and observing catches on dry land, however I did go out fishing with an old man once.
“His tiny wooden canoe seemed barely big enough for one person, let alone two of us.
“We must have stayed out for several hours, hauling in the net over and over, but we only caught seven sardines, much to the amusement of the other fishers.”
••••••• Pia Harkness arrived on Savu Island to investigate how the local people were involved in establishing Indonesia’s largest marine park, only to discover barely anyone knew it existed.
She quickly redirected her energy into understanding why conservation bodies had failed to properly engage with the people who relied on the area for their livelihoods.
“Countries are sometimes pushed to meet marine protected area targets in short timeframes, as a result of internationally driven policy,” she said.
“This approach just does not work in areas where conservation is literally a foreign concept to the people.”
Ms Harkness asked fishers to mark the locations of their fishing grounds on a map of the Savu Sea Marine National Park, and has digitised the results to locate the most commonly used fishing grounds, and build a picture of local livelihoods.
She said serious consequences could arise if fishing restrictions were imposed in poor communities, where fish provided nutrition and income for families.
“Most of the people’s fishing activities are sustainable, but they want the opportunity to modernise and increase their fishing capacity, and there are opportunities to work with them to ensure this is done sustainably,” she said.
••••••• In rural villages of eastern Timor-Leste, scientists are testing if a higher level of women’s empowerment translates into better child and maternal nutrition.
PhD candidate Gianna Bonis-Profumo, who speaks fluent Tetun after two years living and working in TimorLeste, conducts the research in the context of a project that supports households to produce vegetables, chicken and fish.
She will interview 200 mothers from four villages, in the Bauacu and Viqueque districts, four times in a year to assess seasonal changes in diets, and animal and crop production.
“Agriculture is the main livelihood for 70 per cent of the residents in Timor-Leste, but there is widespread seasonal food insecurity and malnutrition in mothers and children,” she said.
“Promoting animal-source foods is an effective approach for dietary diversity in lowincome environments.”
Ms Bonis-Profumo said global evidence showed women’s decision-making power, relative to men, had a powerful effect on child nutrition.
“Gender inequality is an important factor that cannot be ignored in efforts to reduce chronic malnutrition,” she said. “The women taking part in this project are empowered with knowledge and with some material support in productive activities like seeds, cuttings, chicken vaccination and, for some, aquaculture ponds.”