The Nation and Plantation Labor in the 1960s: Women and Economic Development on the Market Periphery

Plantations represented the exploitation of land resources, often by an outside owner, yet also subsequent exploitation of human labor in an endeavor to extract value in the form of commodities destined for international markets. With decolonialization, such commodities provided needed capital reserves, and newly formed nations therefore depended upon plantation production. Studies considering plantations coming from the International Labor Organization (ILO) focused to a large measure on female as well as male labor and evaluated key factors of importance for development experts interested in situating gender into the emerging development discourse. This paper looks at the ways in which female plantation labor entered into discussions about world economic growth but also the legacies of imperialism and the global distinctions in productive labor.

Following the adoption of the ILO’s Plantation Convention, #110 in 1958, the agency launched a world-wide survey of plantation workers to review productivity, yet in concert with an evaluation of standards of living and working conditions, which very often remained dire. The survey focused on 12 countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and serves as an important historical case study. During the 1960s and beyond, the ILO aimed to support technical progress through economic and social development and fact-finding missions highlighted the widespread contribution of plantation sectors, yet alongside instabilities in the international market system. Price dips led to diminishing returns for women and their families as working units. In one example, an ILO study noted the relationship between decreasing world tea prices and death by starvation, primarily for women on the tea plantations of Ceylon. The biological and social reproduction of women sustained resident plantations, making the women’s body and her maternal health of great concern to plantation owners, nations, and in turn, the ILO.