Tigers and “Good Indian Wives”: Feminist Political Ecology Exposing the Gender-Based Violence of Human–Wildlife Conflict in Rajasthan, India

Abstract

This qualitative study, based on fifty-two focus groups, interviews, and participant observation within a 10-km buffer around Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, India, builds on Monica Ogra’s foundational work bringing together feminist political ecology and human–wildlife conflict studies. Specifically, it exposes gender-based violence as a hidden cost of the socioenvironmental network of the tiger reserve landscape. This study asks these questions: How do gendered geographies in and around a protected area influence tiger reintroduction, and how do tiger reintroductions influence gendered geographies? What is the nature of the relationships between women’s economic and gender roles and attitudes toward tigers (original and reintroduced), and what are the main factors influencing this relationship? This research finds that (1) gender-based violence is a hidden cost of women working in and around Sariska and the reintroduced tigers, a hidden cost of human–wildlife conflict otherwise unnoted in the literature, (2) this hidden cost is not solely the product of human–wildlife encounters but in large part a consequence of the highly patriarchal society that dictates gendered human–environmental relations. The results and presented framework seek to inform developing debates and theory around just conservation, gender-based violence in relation to environmental change, human dimensions of apex predator conservation, and sustainable rural livelihoods in and adjacent to protected areas.