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This study investigates how middle-aged and elderly left-behind women in Yunnan’s coffee sector built self-organised networks to solve seasonal labour shortages. Using Xinzai Village as a case study, we identify three key mechanisms: (1) women form work groups through neighbourly ties and past collaborators rather than kinship; (2) community-based female organisers coordinate labour supply and demand while ensuring fair dealing; (3) cooperation is maintained through mutual trust, shared work norms, and reputation protection. These networks increase women’s income and decision-making power while providing reliable harvest labour for plantations. Crucially, findings demonstrate that left-behind women actively reshape local social resources to meet commercial labour needs. This reveals their agency in China’s agricultural feminisation, showing how informal labour functions as socially embedded governance and how rural labour transformation blends communal cooperation with market efficiency.
He et al. (Mon,) studied this question.