06 November 2026

Ni Made Fitri and Ari are two among many Balinese women who grew up with a simple dream: to own a house and a piece of land in their own hometown. Yet, in today's reality, that dream is becoming increasingly unattainable. Land prices have skyrocketed, villas are being built in place of rice fields, and newcomers—from other parts of Indonesia as well as from overseas—are increasingly dominating spaces that once belonged to local communities. Behind Bali's image as a world-renowned tourist paradise lies structural inequality that silences women's voices and marginalizes their access to land, economic opportunities, and a dignified livelihood.

Tourism gentrification in Bali has dramatically transformed its social, economic, and cultural landscape. The growing investment and development in the tourism sector have not only driven up property prices but have also pushed local communities to the margins, both physically and symbolically. Women, who generally work in the informal sector as villa staff, offerings vendors, or small shopkeepers, are losing their economic opportunities due to the influx of large-scale capital and formal employment systems that often fail to accommodate their needs. In many cases, they are forced to compete with foreign investors who have the financial capacity to purchase land at virtually any price, or even establish companies to manage properties through schemes such as Building Use Rights (Hak Guna Bangunan or HGB).

Beyond losing access to land, Balinese women also face another form of inequality: cultural objectification. Balinese traditions and women's aesthetics are frequently commodified as tourist attractions—through dance performances, traditional attire, and spiritual rituals—yet their voices as cultural practitioners are rarely heard in decision-making spaces. Amid the spiritualization of destinations such as Ubud, Balinese women are more often presented as visual backdrops than recognized as economic and cultural actors deserving of appreciation and authority. This situation is further exacerbated by a social culture that tends to discourage outspoken criticism. Many Balinese residents are reluctant to speak out against the negative impacts of tourism for fear of disrupting social harmony or even losing their jobs in the tourism sector. Within this context, women's voices become increasingly subdued. Nevertheless, small signs of agency are beginning to emerge. Fitri, one of the women featured in the BBC article, firmly states that she would object to newcomers staying for too long. This statement represents a micro-level expression of women's agency: the courage to voice one's objections is a first step toward structural change.

Within this collective silence, women's agency emerges in subtle yet meaningful ways. Fitri is one of the few local women who dares to openly express her opposition to newcomers staying for extended periods. Such voices may seem small, but they reflect a form of survival agency, through which women employ micro-level strategies—such as personal protests, community petitions, and social media narratives—to express their dissent. When formal spaces for articulating aspirations are constrained by social and economic structures, the courage to say "no" becomes an equally significant form of political agency. In a tourism landscape characterized by silence, every woman's voice that challenges the prevailing tide represents a symbolic act that deserves to be acknowledged and strengthened.

Within the framework of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS), particularly through UN Security Council Resolution 1325, there is an explicit call for women's meaningful participation in all aspects of peacebuilding—from prevention to recovery. This resolution is not merely a historical milestone for recognizing the disproportionate impact of conflict on women; it also affirms that women are agents of change rather than passive victims. In practice, however, particularly in tourism-dependent sectors such as Bali, women's positions are still frequently reduced to beautiful cultural symbols packaged for consumption, rather than recognized as cultural actors with voices, strategies, and decision-making power.

Tourism marketing slogans often sell "Balinese culture" through traditional dances, customary attire, and the smiles of local women as exotic imagery designed to provide tourists with a sense of tranquility. This represents a form of inward-looking exoticism, in which local communities unconsciously reproduce and market their own identities within a framework shaped by external perceptions. In this process, women are frequently reduced to narrative ornaments: admired, celebrated, and even idealized, yet denied the space to speak or determine the direction of tourism development. Reflecting on the principles of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 requires us to move beyond discussions of protection and toward meaningful participation and recognition of women's agency as owners and custodians of their culture, rather than merely its display.

The Women, Peace, and Security agenda should no longer be viewed as an issue confined to armed conflict and peacekeeping operations. In many places, including Bali, the "weapons" are no longer bullets, but tourists, investments, and foreign capital. When tourists arrive with stronger currencies, such as the US dollar and the euro, new forms of power asymmetry emerge: economic inequality, the commodification of culture, and the transfer of land ownership. Ironically, these inequalities are not introduced solely by external actors; they are also reproduced by local authorities and host communities themselves through policies that facilitate gentrification and exclude local communities from strategic decision-making spaces. In this context, the peace supposedly brought by the tourism industry is not necessarily an equitable form of peace. Rather, it is a silence produced by structural compromise—a silence in which women's voices are diminished, land is taken over, and culture is packaged solely for the temporary comfort and visual pleasure of those who come and go.

Normatively and historically, the Women in Tourism agenda, currently championed by UN Tourism, has strong roots in the principles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), particularly its commitment to ensuring women's rights to economic access, cultural participation, and involvement in development processes. Articles 13 and 14 of CEDAW emphasize the need for particular attention to women in the informal economy and rural areas. These provisions are especially relevant to the role of local women in tourism as cultural practitioners, custodians of tradition, and drivers of microeconomic activity. The Global Report on Women in Tourism (UN Women and UN Tourism, 2011 and 2019) further reinforces the evidence that gender inequality remains systematically embedded within the tourism industry.

It is therefore time to integrate the tourism sector more seriously into the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) framework—not only because of women's strategic role in fostering social harmony in tourism-dependent communities, but also because tourism spaces are sites of contestation over power, narratives, and access, all of which shape the future of local communities. If CEDAW provides the foundation, then WPS can serve as the strategic umbrella to ensure that women are no longer positioned merely as the faces of culture, but are recognized as the rightful architects and owners of tourism's future.

Anindwitya R. Monica