A comparative study of women environmental defenders’ antiviolent success strategies

Dalena Tran

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.07.024

Abstract

This research advances knowledge on the understudied topics of violence against women and their contributions to ecological movements through a multiple case study analysis of 25 women defenders listed in the EJAtlas, an environmental conflict database. Women’s mobilization is often constrained within cultural contexts limiting them to gendered spaces and roles and punishing them with multiple violences. Women defenders’ distinctly gendered violent experiences thus inform their perspectives, narratives, and advocacy. Women defenders assert authority and achieve movement success by emphasizing aspects of identity within and despite unevenly faced barriers, brutality, and burdens. These multi-faceted tactics contribute to emancipation beyond just women and their communities by dismantling violent hegemonies while promoting alternative, inclusive, and antiviolent visions of environmental justice.

Highlights

Feminist research has acknowledged women’s growing stakes and prominence in environmental justice movements worldwide. Shiva (1988), for example, argued that industrial development causes violence especially against women and nature
Agarwal (1992) explained that rural women in India became environ mental defenders because they depended on natural resources and commons more than on wages, and because they knew more than men about medicinal and agricultural uses of nature
Each category of violence comes from Navas et al.’s (2018) multidimensional framework for violence

Summary

Introduction

Feminist research has acknowledged women’s growing stakes and prominence in environmental justice movements worldwide. Shiva (1988), for example, argued that industrial development causes violence especially against women and nature. Arora-Jonsson (2009) writes that these small acts of care for the environment remain invisible to mainstream forestry (both policy and research), which instead tends to be focused on public acts and equates forests with timber and woody biomass. As these authors show, even in well-known cases, women’s experiences of injustice in environmental movements are still poorly understood or relatively invisible

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Conclusion