Common Goods or Competing Goods? Gendered Land Rights and the Limits of Inclusion in Timor-Leste

Abstract (English)

This paper critically examines how discourses of gender equality and inclusion in land governance in Timor-Leste are mobilized through state legal reforms and development interventions, often in ways that cast customary systems as inherently discriminatory. Drawing on feminist political ecology and legal anthropology, the paper challenges this assumption by interrogating the gendered dynamics not only of customary land tenure but also of formal legal and bureaucratic structures themselves. While statutory reforms and donor-driven inclusion agendas are often framed as progressive pathways toward the common good, they frequently reproduce hierarchical power relations, privileging technocratic authority and legal formalism over the lived experiences and relational knowledge of rural communities. Based on ethnographic research and policy analysis, the paper explores how women navigate multiple systems—customary, familial, and state-based—to assert claims to land and participate in decision-making. Rather than assuming a binary between oppressive tradition and liberatory law, the paper foregrounds the ambiguities, contradictions, and unintended exclusions generated by legal pluralism. It argues that efforts to promote women’s land rights must move beyond simplistic inclusion frameworks to reckon with the broader political economy of land governance and the structural inequities embedded in bureaucratic institutions themselves. In doing so, the paper contributes to rethinking what constitutes the “common good” in Southeast Asia, and how it is differentially shaped through struggles over land, gender, and authority.