STRUCTURAL AND CULTURAL CHALLENGES OF WOMEN PARTICIPATION IN SEAWEED PRODUCTION PROCESS IN JENEPONTO REGENCY, SOUTH SULAWESI

Indonesia as a archipelagic country has an enourmously vast coastal areas which have a great potential for seaweed farming development. In fact, there are many people living around the South Sulawesi's coastal areas who get their main income from seaweed farming. Nevetheless, these farming efforts have not been done properly. One of a few challenges is inefficient labor participation in the farming procedures. In domestic scale, women participation still facing a significant constraint, in which women only be engaged in side jobs.

This background becomes the main reason for the author to conduct this reasearch which aimed to answer the question of:

1.      The development level of the seaweed farming that managed by smallholder farmers.

2.      The type of task in seaweed farming stages that engaging women from farmers' family.

3.      The challenges that is faced by women both culturally and structurally.

4.      Whether cultural and structural challenges significantly impacting the development of seaweed farming.

Operational variable definition includes 1). The business development level including: the area of land use, income, labor used. 2). Structural challenge encompassing the obstacles that prevent women from business, in which has realtion with family member, leisure, domestic office work. Meanwhile, cultural challenge is the obstacle vis-á-vis to social values that oppressing women.

This research will be conducted at Jeneponto Regency dated from Januari to March 2016. The sample population is all the farmers dwelling in that regency. The sampling technique using "stratified random sampling", with questionnaires as the data gathering instrument together with interviewing, in case detail information needed. The result will be analyzed using 1). Descriptive analysis with frequency table; 2). The influence magnitude analysis of cultural and structural challenges using Path Analysis utilizing SPSS.

The findings of this study will be presented as a paper on the Asian Pacific Aqua Culture in April in Surabaya.