Gender Relations

More permanent than changes in class structure was the postwar transformation of gender relations. Before the war, most agricultural tasks were strictly segregated by sex. Although husbands and wives occasionally worked together, women usually toiled in the dry fields while men tended livestock and conducted trade. Moreover, each gender previously possessed its own distinctive tool kit, although there was little stigma attached to, and sometimes even genuine admiration for, individuals competent in using the implements of the other sex. But the tasks of vegetable gardening were never divided by sex. True, most men continue to avoid tedious tasks, such as weeding, in preference for more strenuous chores, but such choices have devolved into family matters, no longer arbitrated by cultural expectations.

Vegetable trading allowed for a different restructuring of gender roles by opening a new window on the larger world. One of the central jobs of vegetable trading, namely vehicle driving and maintenance, remained firmly in the male domain. But this is a special assignment that few men ever hold. Of much greater consequence was the opening of trade itself to women. Before the war, women had conducted local barter, but none engaged in professional longdistance commerce. Yet by the 1960s, women came to dominate the much-enlarged retail sector in Buguias, while several female traders reached the highest level of prominence in the profitable vegetable business. Although these merchants have generally worked with their husbands, in several notable cases it is no secret that the genius lies on the distaff side.

Before the war, women had worked extremely long hours, while

men had enjoyed relative leisure. This too changed in the reconstruction; vegetable culture demanded continual applications of labor, much of which could only be drawn from men. In the vegetable economy, most Buguias residents agree, men toil in the fields just as hard as women do. But women still work longer hours, since they are also responsible for more domestic tasks. Moreover, fathers no longer supply the childcare they once did; children now are likely to be taken into the fields, or entrusted to an older sibling, cousin, or grandparent.

One could argue that the rise of female-run businesses reflects not so much a change in gender relations as a reconfiguration of economic spheres that elevated the traditional female activities to a higher level. Women had always bartered vegetables; now the vegetable trade was the community's economic pivot. Yet other indicators suggest a more fundamental transformation. For the first time, for instance, a few women entered the animal trade—just before the entire endeavor vanished. More significantly, women could now aspire to political office. Although this has yet to occur in Buguias, in 1986 the barangay, or village, leader of Suyoc, as of several other Benguet villages, was a woman.

Beyond a doubt, the men of Buguias still control the community, continuing to dominate the tong tongan and other political forums. Women are also still socially constrained; Bridget Hamada-Pawid (personal communication) argues that in all of the Cordillera, only among the Ifugao do women drink, gamble, and socialize freely with their male peers. Nor can women in Buguias hold the high offices of religious authority, those of manbunung and mankotom. But overall, the position of women is undoubtedly higher than it had been in the prewar period.