<![CDATA[Women’s participation in informal economic activities is often assessed through the language of empowerment, yet such participation may remain embedded in gendered domestic responsibilities and socio-religious expectations. This study examines how women traders at the Siring Floating Market in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, negotiate economic participation, household responsibilities, and socio-religious norms while contributing to local food security. Using a qualitative descriptive-analytical design, data were collected from 15 purposively selected women traders through non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed thematically, while Qirā’ah Mubādalah was employed as an analytical lens to interpret reciprocity, shared responsibility, and gender justice within the participants’ lived economic practices. The findings show that women play central roles in food production, distribution, product diversification, cultural continuity, and household economic support. However, their economic participation does not eliminate gendered constraints; rather, it reflects a form of negotiated and relational agency in which market activities are continuously balanced with domestic responsibilities and socially embedded expectations. The study further shows that women’s everyday economic practices contribute to local food availability, accessibility, diversity, and community resilience. Rather than suggesting that the traders themselves consciously reinterpret religious texts, the findings demonstrate how Qirā’ah Mubādalah can illuminate reciprocal and shared responsibilities within lived socio-economic relations. This study contributes to scholarship on gender, informal economies, and Islamic social thought by linking women’s negotiated economic agency with local food security in a Muslim community.]]>
