This study employs a case study approach, with the research conducted in the Nagari Bonjol"³ sub-district of Koto Besar, Dharmasraya Regency, West Sumatra in Indonesia. Dharmasraya District is located 220 km to the east of Padang City, the provincial capital of West Sumatra. Dharmasraya District has an area of 3025.99 km² and is generally flat, with elevations ranging between 82 to 1,525 m above sea level (BPS Dharmasraya, 2014). Dharmasraya District has extensive oil palm and rubber plantations, the most in West Sumatra (BPS West Sumatra, 2016). Most of the land in the district─88.26% of the total land area─is used for agriculture; Dharmasraya also has some low land forest covering an area of 92,950 ha.

Data, both primary and secondary, were collected between January and April 2016. The secondary data were collected from relevant agencies such as Dhamrasyara Production Forest Management Unit (PFMU), Bureau of Statistics, and the Dharmasraya Forestry Service. Primary data, meanwhile, were collected using participant observation, key informant interviews, and a household survey. In all, 13 key informants were interviewed, and these included traditional leaders (Ninikmamak"⁴ and the Datuak customary authorities), Nagari leaders, and institutional leaders. In addition, a household survey was carried out, with samples taken using simple random sampling from the list of households in the village. A total number of 27 married women were sampled.

The research work also included anthropological observation, in which the researcher stayed within the community for four months, procuring more reliable, valid, and accurate information.

Data were analyzed using descriptive–qualitative tools, with the research goal being to explain whether the ulayat forest system has ensured equality for women. Data analysis followed the approach described by Miles and Huberman using data reduction, data display, and conclusions (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

Minangkabau society follows matrilineal system in which the transgenerational link is through the maternal line. This means that ancestral land and matrilineal title passes from the grandmother to the mother, and then on to the granddaughter and her descendants in the female line (Sanday, 2002). Under this matrilineal system, women are positioned at the core of the generational family. Largely through this matrilineal social organization, the leading figure in a Minangkabau extended family, usually the oldest sister, is a symbolic “queen mother” or Bundo Kanduang (Sanday, 2002). The responsibility of the Bundo Kanduang is to teach other extended family members about customs and the adat (Sanday, 2002). Her role also includes serving as an important advisor to relatives and kinsfolk.

Among Melayu clan in Nagari Bonjol, however, power remains in the hands of the males, acting as adat functionaries. Clan leadership is male dominated, a patriarchal system commonly found in Asia where gender stereotypes are prevalent, that is, where women are seen as less capable than men on matters pertaining to the public sphere, and women’s position within the family as a whole remains weak (Lee, 2003; Kowtha, 2013), meaning they are lower in the power hierarchy (Lee, 2003).

Adat is an important element in local ideology among the Minangkabau, and that although it is constantly in use, remains highly ambiguous (Khan, 1980). Adat is usually translated by anthropologists as “customary law.” In its most general form of reference, however, adat can mean simply “the way,” as in “the way we as Minangkabau do things.” The term, therefore, is remarkably close to such anthropological concepts as culture. More often, when adat is discussed, the speaker is drawing attention to something he or she believes is unique to Minangkabau society, and in particular to something related to codes of conduct, inheritance, and those aspects of the management of property associated with the matrilineal kinship system. In this sense, adat could be translated loosely as “tradition.” That is, a single aspect of the current culture thought to be derived from the past, and hence set aside from other cultural aspects, could be cited as adat. Among the Minangkabau’s traditional sayings (papatah), adat is sometimes said to encompass syar’a or Islamic religious law (Khan, 1980). While all societies are thought to have their own forms of adat, Minangkabau adat is said to be special because it is based on the matrilineal principles set into the clans and lineages, known as kaum (Kahn, 1980). Regarding the Minangkabau group, Benda-Beckmann and Benda-Beckmann (2006) have argued that how it treats property is “[…] very interesting because it has two rather distinct forms of communal property” (p. 195). One is inheritated property based on matrilineages (pusako), and this is comprised of both immaterial and material goods, notably irrigated rice fields. The other form is ulayat or village commons─the part of a village’s territory that is not used for sedentary agriculture and that fall under the control of the village council or the heads of the villages matriclans. Both property forms have become embedded in different ways within the plural legal system and subject to different struggles between villagers, state agencies, and proponents of Islam (Benda-Beckmann & Benda-Beckmann, 2006).

Much of the work about Minangkabau matriliny and adat focus on heartland of Minangkabau (darek) where subsistence economy is supported by irrigated rice fields. In this setting, Blackwood (2000) stated that “families and lineages are oriented around the mother and her daughters and sons; rice farming and life-cycle ceremonies are organized by and through women and their brother”(p.1). This form of matriliny empowers women as controllers of land and houses, creating an obvious dissonance with the masculinist discourses of the state, Islam, and capitalism. In this setting property relation has developed into inherited property haratopusako (see Benda-Beckmann & Benda-Beckmann, 2006, for detail). In the rantau area of Minangkabau, i.e., in Nagari Bonjol, dryland rice was the main crop using a shifting cultivation system. This system was practiced in ulayat land. When the world economy entered the Nagari during Dutch colonial time and intensified in the late 1980s, rubber, a market-oriented commodity, was planted, replacing dry land rice. The role of clan leader is central in issuing permits pertaining to which part of the forest land can be cleared for rubber cultivation.

As we found within the Melayu Clan in Nagari Bonjol, the concept of ulayat is a bit different. With the ulayat of the Melayu clan, access can be granted to Nagari members from outside the Melayu clan. This happens particularly when population densities are very low. For members of the Melayu clan, both male and female, if access to the land in the forest is granted, they can clear forest land according to their wishes. However, over the last two decades the role of the adat leaders has become more important with regard to forest land clearance activities. Because authority over such activities resides in the hands of the adat functionaries, their actions have gradually diverged from the clan’s usual customs.

Ribot and Peluso (2003) stated that “property rights is a bundle of rights that transforms into a “bundle of powers” regarding access, and advocated for locating these powers within the social and political-economic contexts that shape people’s abilities to benefit from resources”(p. 153). They used certain categories to illustrate the kinds of power relations that can affect rights-based access mechanisms; these are accessibility to technology, capital, markets, labor, knowledge, authority, identity, and social relations. As has happened in our case, the holders of power make an effort to control access and ownership over natural resources to maintain their power and benefit from the natural resources. The power holders, exclusively male, fully control access to ulayat land for their own benefit. As they have full control over ulayat land, they grant access to non-members by way of land transactions, sometimes to the private sector, without consulting clan members or Nagari members in advance, as they are supposed to do. This represents a deviation from the clan’s ulayat land rules (Afrizal, 2007).

Literature on the Minangkabau agrees that the rights holder ulayat land is the Mamak Kepala Warisor MKW (Navis, 1986). As mentioned earlier, ulayat forest in Nagari Bonjol falls under the control of the Melayu clan. It is unclear what the actual size of the ulayat forest is, but it is estimated to be more than 33,000 ha (Mutolib et al., 2015). Even though the forest is owned by all the clan’s members, it is managed by a Datuak called DBK (acronym for anonymous), the ulayat ruler. Besides DBK, the ulayat forest is also managed by several MKWs. In the hands of Datuak the ulayat ruler and MKW, the forest is maintained in accordance with the Melayu clan’s needs. The MKW obligation is to manage the ulayat forest for the welfare of all its members. In this case it is already very clear that women in the Malayu clan in Nagari Bonjol have equal rights with men to acquire, manage, and control the forests for the needs of her life with the approval of the MKW.

After ulayat forest is opened into plantation or agriculture land, the status is changed from ulayat to haratopusako and inherited for the next generation through maternal lineage. The authority of MKW is only as a forest Manager of ulayat forest, not as the owner. Ulayat forest is communally owned by all members of the Melayu clan. According to customary rules, the clan’s ulayat land should be treated as the clan’s asset as a whole, and so should be used for the benefit of all clan members. Therefore, a member who wants to farm inside the forest is permitted to clear the forest, and the size of land to be cleared depends on the permission granted by the communal ruler (Mutolib et al., 2015).

Even though this land is passed on and women are entitled to use it, only men have full authority over management of the communal forest. In reality, women in the Melayu clan do not have the right to manage it. Such a weak position for the women represents an unequal practice in terms of forest land management. This unequal practice is maintained in order to benefit the men. The practice of ulayat forest management as communal property in Melayu clan is not conducted according to Minangkabau concept; it is conducted to the detriment of women. However, this is not an isolated case, as the same also happens in other parts of the world, such in Gujarat, India, where gender inequality exists in terms of water access rights, favoring the males (Upadhyay, 2004).

During the forest concessionaire era, ulayat rights holders did not engage in forest management activities, as the regime in place at that time gave little or no room for the community to manage the forest, even though the forest was claimed by the community as their own. In concept and in practice, there should be no gender inequality when accessing the ulayat forest land; the land may be used by the community for agriculture, so as to accommodate population growth. However, things changed when the community regained control over the forest land, with greater regional autonomy introduced and with the return of the Nagari government system. At this time, gender inequality emerged within the Melayu’s management of the ulayat forest, as rights holders began to deviate from Minangkabau customs. Two pieces of evidences exist to prove this inequality: Ulayat forest land transactions made with non-members, and manipulation of the NESHP plot distribution process. As will be shown in more detail later, these two deviations from common practice have led to women losing their rights over ulayat land, and they are now not consulted when the land is sold. Again, this is not an isolated case, as studies elsewhere have shown how women sometimes experience inequality and injustice when it comes to natural resource management (e.g., Upadhyay, 2004; Samma & Johnson-Ross, 2007).

Under Minangkabau customs, ulayat forest land is communally owned. Therefore, it is forbidden from being sold. However, much of this land in the study area has recently been sold by the Melayu clan leaders. It is difficult to pinpoint a specific reason for this, but in earlier times the land was sold at a low price to high-ranking military personel and government officials. It is also clear the ulayat rights holders had close links with these influential figures, facilitating the land sales. Unfortunately, the proceeds from the sale of this land were retained by the rights holders for their own benefit. The women, on the other hand, with no rights to manage the forest land, are not involved in making decisions related to the fate of the forest land, and in fact only three men have this authority, but the sales process itself involves two others figures at the nagari level. Table 1 shows that only the men hold the power and authority to manage the ulayat forest.

The price of land varies according to its position in the forest and the slope (Mutolib et al., 2015), but a price that is considered cheap ranges between IDR 2,500,000 and 10,000,000 per hectare (USD 200 to USD 800)."⁵ The size of the land sold varies between 20 and 500 ha (Mutolib et al., 2015). At such a cheap price, this forest land has become an attractive proposition for outsiders. The buyers come from various professions and backgrounds outside the Dharmasraya District. There is no limit on how much land can be bought; all buyers are allowed to buy different sizes, though in Indonesia or in the case of the Dhamasraya, it is only public figures who can buy large pieces of land. One key informant, who happens to be an MKW, described some of those who have bought ulayat forest land from him, as shown in Table 2.

As mentioned earlier, a few years after the logging concessions ceased, the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry (MoF) converted half the production forest into oil palm plantations, for which the Nucleus Estate Small Holder Oil Palm Plantation (NESHP) development model was adopted."⁶ A private company was appointed as a nucleus estate by the government, while smallholdings were meant to be distributed among Nagari members. The clan was represented by the ulayat ruler, MKW and Ninik Mamak, and several men agreed to release their forest land to the private oil palm company. In turn, they demanded that the corporation give 500 families in Nagari Bonjo l1,000 ha of small holding oil palm plantation plots so they could work the land as smallholders. As part of the plan, every household was to get a 2 ha plot of smallholding. The aim of this agreement was to compensate local people for the transfer of ulayat land to a private company. It was also expected that the NESHP would improve the economic position of the clan’s members.

Unfortunately, after the palm plantations had been developed by the oil palm company, the ulayat ruler and signatories to the agreement (only the men involved) did not distribute the smallholder oil palm plantation plots fairly to Nagari members. They shared the land only with prominent men in the area, Nagari and their close relatives. This represents a clear evidence of an abuse of power and created an unequal situation. Such injustice was rooted in the lack of women’s involvement during the signing of the MoU between the adat rulers and the company: in other words, it was solely a men’s affair. The men took advantage of this situation to manipulate the distribution of the NESHP plots, by assigning their own close family and friends as recipients of the smallholding plantation plots. Also, they did not register all members of the Nagari Bonjol community, who mainly belonged to the Melayu clan. Many of the men who did receive land gave it to their wives, children, and relatives to conceal their misdeed. Moreover, many of these plots were given to Melayu men living outside Nagari Bonjol.⁷

The selling of ulayat forest land and the manipulation of the NESHP plot distribution process disadvantages women, as they lose the chance to inherit their ulayat land following the female line. However, there has been little or no resistance from the women regarding this issue. While we were at the research site, a lot of women refused to speak to us about how exactly the ulayat forest is managed and whether they feel the management is fair or not. Talking about sales of ulayat forest land and the distribution of oil palm plantation plots is also taboo for the women; they were afraid to talk about it even though what the Melayu clan men were doing was wrong according to the tradition.

We also heard an interesting story from a group of Melayu women about their suffering due to ulayat land sales and the unfair NESHP plot distribution process.The group consisted of five women 50 to over 100 years of old. They belong to Melayu clan who live in an ancestral house called arumahgadang."⁸ They recounted to us the difficulties they experience as Melayu women due to the actions of male Melayu clan adat functionaries. The story is related to the manipulation of the NESHP plot distribution process, as illustrated below:

We (the Melayu clan) do have an enormous amount of ulayat forest land, but we (women) do not have any rights to manage the land. We may open-up the forest for farming, but we do not have money for gardening. They (the Melayu men) are indeed our brothers, but they have deceived us. Mr. A (a Melayu man) is my nephew, a son of my relatives, but even he deceived us. We were supposed to get a 2ha plot per family, and if we had received the oil palm plantation land we would now have between 1 and 2 million in income monthly. But, the land was not shared equally and is now being controlled by Mr. A and his family (his wife’s family). Mr. Alives in his wife’s Nagari other than Bonjol, but he is an adat functionary of the Melayu clan who has authority over managing the ulayat forest, including negotiating the sale of the land to other parties such as the oil palm companies, and in distributing the NESHP plots. Despite this, Mr. A still visits us at our rumahgadangon a regular basis. Even though he has deceived us (the female members of the Melayu clan), Mr. A does not hesitate to meet us. For him, looking after his own family is more important than looking after his matrilineal extended family. We are bonded as one clan family, but these days money related matters are more important than kinship bonds and family.

These comments reveal that actually women are angry about the sale of ulayat land, but that they have no power to influence it. In this case, it was the woman’s brother who sold the land. There is also no forum at which they can speak out, for they rely totally on their male kin to manage sociocultural and economic affairs of the matrilineal social unit, such as weddings, funerals and house construction activities, as well as to represent the clan in public.

Gender inequality is not perpetuated exclusively through differential access to and control over material resources. Gender norms and stereotypes reinforce gendered identities and constrain the behaviour of women and men in ways that can lead to inequality (Ridgeway, 2011; UNDP, 2015). As we found out in our study area, gender inequalities have led to a very low level of education among the women of Nagari Bonjol, and the issue of gender equality is considered taboo. Why then are the women being oppressed? There are at least three possible reasons for this: the weak position of women in society, their low level of education, and the perception that speaking out about gender inequality is a taboo subject.

In a patrilineal kinship structure, people descended from the father’s side are given priority, meaning people trace their origins through their male ancestors (Haviland, 1990). In such a situation, succession and inheritance are handed down from the senior male of one generation to the senior male of the next within the kinship group (Vubo, 2005). In a matrilineal kinship system, meanwhile, descent and inheritance are carried out through the female line (Holden, Sear, & Mace, 2003; Mattison, 2011). This means there are certain kinship groups that follow the mother’s family line. In such an arrangement, a woman’s brother is responsible for her children, rather than her husband (Stark, 2013). Among the Minangkabau, power resides with the men (patriarchy), and men dominate socio-economic and political affairs, including the rights to natural resource ownership and management (Upadhyay, 2004), as has happened within the Melayu clan in Nagari Bonjol.

The Melayu clan in Nagari Bonjol follows a matrilineal system, but the women’s position is still considered less important within the society (Alim, 1994). Within the group’s members’ social lives, anything related to customs, communal management, Nagari government, and marriages is fully controlled by men. The problem is that frequently the decisions made by the male rulers in managing the ulayat land only benefit the men, and disadvantage the women. Such a weak position among the women has eventually led the men to act in their own personal interests, without considering the rest of the clan’s members. It is not yet clear why men sell land to outsiders, and whether they are concerned about selling land access to non-members, against their own customs. Nevertheless, their acts deviate from wider Minangkabau society’s common customs. It is also not clear why the women accept these actions. As a result, we will try to answer these questions by reviewing the social status of women within the Melayu clan in Nagari Bonjol, such as by looking at their level of education.

One of the key factors leading to inequality between men and women is education level (Otto, 2010; Goldblatt & Freedman, 2015). Klasen (2002) reported that a low level of education among women has a negative economic impact. The more educated women are, the more they are exposed to gender-equal ideas and environments, and the educational process itself implicitly influences women to become more exposed to gender equality concepts (Lee, 2003; Ahn, 2011). The Nagari Bonjol community considers education to be unimportant, though a few finish junior and senior school. Our snapshot survey revealed the level of education among women in Nagari Bonjol, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3 shows how low the level of women’s education in Nagari Bonjol is much lower than in rural areas in Indonesia in general. Most women do not finish elementary school and rarely attend junior or senior high school. This low level of education discourages Melayu women from fighting against the sale of ulayat forest, and facilitates the manipulation of the NESHP plot distribution process by the male ulayat rulers. Even though the women are disadvantaged by these activities, they keep any grievances to themselves, and have insufficient knowledge or courage to take on the rulers.

In addition to the low level of the women’s education, Nagari Bonjol society also follows a culture of early marriage. Knowles, Lorgelly, and Owen (2002) stated that women’s education level affects marriage ages and birth rates. The low level of education means that men in Nagari Bonjol get married between 18 and 20, while the women get married at an even earlier age, around 18 years old. Also, marriage in Nagari Bonjol is still dominated by marriage to partners from the same Nagari. Often, marriage is within hamlet as long as they do not belong to the same clan, as the Minangkabau ethnic group has adopted a clan exogamy system. The low level of education and marriage at a young age results in higher levels of poverty and a lack of development. This means the community can only rely on its land to sustain livelihoods. For the women, the low level of education and early marriages create a vicious circle in which they are moving further and further away from gender equality. This happens because the society still relies on natural resources that are fully controlled by the men.

Despite their special status within the matrilineal system, women do not occupy an influential position in society, including having a say in managing ulayat land. Also, the interactions between men and women within Melayu clan in Nagari Bonjol represent culturally ingrained habits that have created gender inequality (Jayachandran, 2015). These habits mean that it is taboo for women to disagree with the male customary leaders. This cultural and habitual gender inequality within the Melayu clan has limited women’s ability to fight against and prevent injustice in the management of the ulayat forest by men who hold a higher position in society. In many cases, women experience gender inequality in their social lives in terms of access to resources, job opportunities, and education, and also when women behave outside traditional stereotypical norms and enter male-dominated professions such as policing. Such women tend to demand better access to resources, plus have a higher level of education, and so receive a negative response from others within the clan, which further limits them (Prokos & Padavic, 2002; Guo & Liang, 2012). The social exclusion women experience as a result of all these factors deprives them of information and learning, and also leads to gender inequality (Lyness & Thompson, 2000; Prokos & Padavic, 2002).

The Melayu clan’s customary norms should be reintroduced and reinforced, to guarantee women’s position among Melayu clan community or Nagari Bonjol at large and restrict men’s rights over the ulayat forest. The second of these could be introduced by creating a set of local regulations that forbid the sale of ulayat land. This is important, since the local institutions that are responsible for managing the ulayat forest tend to be abused by those in power. Moreover, it is important for a gender awareness campaign to be run to help promote the rights of women and gender equality in matters related to the ulayat within Melayu clan society. Once women of Melayu clan understand their rights and obligations in relation to the ulayat, they are more likely to regain some form of control over the men currently in charge. Such an approach may also help limit the men’s authority and preserve the communal forest land for future generations.