Determinants of Women’s Participation in Seaweed Farming in the Regency of Jeneponto, South Sulawesi, Indonesia1

Abstract

Background- Indonesia is now the world leading seaweed producer. In year 2008, Indonesia was producing 214,505.9 metric tons of dried seaweed but by 2012 it is tripled to 651,485.4 metric tons. There is an abundance of literature explaining the correlation (and causality) between exponential growths of seaweed industry in south Sulawesi and the government protection policies or the heavy subsidizations. Relationship between the availability of abundance cheap laborers consist of women, child labor (mobilization of factors endowment) and the impressive growth in seaweed farming is largely unexplored? The Objective of this paper is to identify the determinants of women’s participation in seaweed farming in south Sulawesi. Data and Methodology-We spent seven days in Makassar city and travelled daily to five Kecamatan located at the coastal areas in the Regency of Jeneponto- where seaweed cultivation success were primarily driven by participation of women (by OXFAM, 2013). Various explanatory variables (introduced simultaneously) in a multivariate framework estimated their independent effect on women participation in seaweed farming. Results- the Logistic Regression Model shows that variables significance in explaining women participation in both paid (when she worked at her relative farms) and unpaid (working at her husband or brother’s farm) at 10% significance level are AGE, WRKPER (number of family members in labor market) and HSYINC (Monthly Household Income including remittance). DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s5p43