Women's roles in traditional practices in Sarawak

Abstract

This chapter reports on a project which examined and documented the role of women in traditional agricultural and other cultural practices among Kelabit and Kenyah communities in Sarawak, as remembered by people in these communities. The project identified the ways in which these traditional practices have remained unchanged, and at the same time studied how these practices have changed due to cultural shifts. Ethnographical data gathering methods were used to collect data for the project, as such methods allowed the researchers to describe and define the cultural experiences and ways of life from the perspectives of the participants in the study who came from the Kelabit and Kenyah communities in Sarawak. The project focussed on how traditions have been, and continue to be, handed down in Kelabit and Kenyah communities. In particular, the study explored the changes in agricultural practices and why they have occurred, and the extent to which urbanisation influenced these changes.