For over four decades, the Takalar Sugar Factory has controlled land in South Sulawesi, displacing families and eroding their livelihoods. It is a pattern mirrored across Indonesia, where people are forced from their lands by corporations and state-backed extractive projects. Fields that once fed communities are repurposed for commercial use, while cultural and spiritual ties to the land are severed. In Takalar, the weight of dispossession has stretched across generations: food insecurity, exclusion from decision-making, and the ever-present threat of further loss. Yet in 2024, women of the region began to transform this enduring pattern of marginalisation into collective power. By coming together, strengthening community connections, and developing new national level organising strategies, they shifted their struggle from survival into mobilised resistance.
For over six months, Icha, a local community activist, accompanied forty women from two villages in Takalar District through the Follow the Money (FtM) process, a derivative of the Count Me In! (CMI!) consortium’s Behind the Extractives toolkit. This was combined with the JASS’ Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) approach. Together they mapped the network of power behind the Takalar Sugar Factory, which had controlled their land since the 1980s. They discovered that responsibility extended far beyond the company itself: government agencies, local elites, and outside investors were all complicit in keeping the land from them. For the first time, the women held a clearer picture of the problem and the confidence to organise and act together.
FPAR, as used in the Takalar case, is both a research method and an organising tool. It enables women to investigate issues that affect their lives directly, while at the same time creating collective spaces to analyse findings, reflect on power relations, and decide on strategies for change. Unlike conventional research, which often extracts information from communities, FPAR is designed to strengthen women’s agency and organising strategies. In Takalar, this meant that the women were not only documenting the forces behind the land grabs but also building solidarity and confidence through the process itself.
This investigative process gave rise to new forms of organising. Inter-village meetings allowed the women to share insights and refine strategies. By Farmers’ Day 2024—a day when rural organisations and movements march in honour of the farming community—the women entered the march with clarity and determination. They joined hundreds of farmers, fishers, communities, civil society groups, and students in Makassar City, marching to the South Sulawesi provincial parliament. One woman reflected: “The identification that we do, the investigation that we do, the training that we do—these turn out to be very important for building women’s power.”
The women also recognised that their struggle was connected to wider national policies. The government’s push to expand sugarcane production for bioethanol was not only affecting Takalar but also driving deforestation and displacement in many parts of Indonesia. To confront forces of this scale, the women knew they had to look beyond their villages. They engaged the National Commission on Human Rights, built alliances with local and national organisations, and turned to the media to amplify their voices. Their organising became both cross-locality and cross-movement. As one woman explained, “There are a lot of women in the movements. I think there are also quite a lot of diverse movements, such as environmental movements, movements about minority rights, and many more. However, the homework is how we unite the movement. Because in terms of numbers, I think we have a lot.”
CMI!’s funding was crucial in helping the women take their fight further. Through the Follow the Money and FPAR process, they learned how to trace investment chains and identify the actors enabling the land grab, connecting dots into concrete evidence. Feminist participatory action research kept the focus in their hands, ensuring that every step of the inquiry built not just knowledge, but collective power.
