A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2000

This study analyzes how social movements based on ethnic identities rely on the politics of collective boundaries in order to assert their own identity vis-a-vis outsiders. It shows that the question of women and gender relations is essential to these politics as images of women, as well as the range of the social roles and 'appropriate behavior' they adopt, act as signifiers of the cultural distinctiveness of ethnic communities. The study takes up the Moro movement for self-determination in Mindanao (Philippines), looking into the different active and symbolic forms that women's participation can take in the struggles of their collectivity. In particular, the study debates how ethnic and gender ideologies intersect in two different locations of the Moro movement, shaping women's political identity, their different patterns of social activism and their perception of their own contributions, as women, to the overall struggle of their community. The study concludes that the nature and circumstances of women's political commitment to the goals pursued in the name of the collectivity is highly dependent on the particular social context. Understandings of the emancipatory potential of their involvement have to emerge from women's perceptions of their own priorities --rather than from abstract notions of 'women's gender interests'-- since these perceptions are formed as well through other social identities apart from gender, in particular ethnicity and class, as well as women's lived experiences.