Oil Palm Expansion: Aspects and Gender Roles in Rural Oil Palm Farm Households

This paper comprehends that commercialization in Indonesia, especially in the plantation sector, has increased every year. In this paper, the focus of this research is on oil palm plantations which are expected to increase every year. One of the actors playing a role in this expansion is farmer households. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and describe gender aspects and roles in oil palm farmer households. This research used qualitative and quantitative approaches. There were 20 informants in the study for qualitative data and 80 respondents for quantitative data. The types of data used in this research were secondary data and primary data. Primary data were obtained through observation, in-depth interviews, and questionnaires, while secondary data were obtained from literature studies and documents related to this paper. The results of this study reveal that this expansion changes and influences gender aspects in oil palm farmer households, such as increasing women’s working time due to entering productive sectors, and the emergence of new sources of economic income for women.