India

Citation:

Author: Kalli F. Doubleday

Keywords: conservation, feminist political ecology, gender-based violence, well-being

Annotation:

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2020

Citation:

Samanta, Debabrata. 2016. "Tenure Security and Women Right Over Land: A Study in the Context of Bihar." Journal of Land and Rural Studies 4 (2): 242-53.

Author: Debabrata Samanta

Abstract:

Land tenure system is the relationship between land and people, as individuals or groups, legally or customarily. Tenural security of land has far reaching implication; in one hand it reduce disputes, conflicts and uncertainty and vulnerability of poor and promote sustainable development, on the other it makes easy for transfer of land for more efficient use. Even after creation of numbers of acts, the tenural right is a matter of concern in Bihar. The situation is worse for sharecropper and women. This article analyses the status of land tenure security and available legal framework to ensure women’s rights over land. It is found that there is hardly any record and recorded right to ensure right of sharecroppers. Although the law confers the equal right to women in their paternal property, but in practice this is not very common in India including Bihar. There hardly exists legal provision to ensure right of women over land and even if it is there, it is not implemented properly. Except some recent initiative, through which transfer of land to weaker section recorded in name of female member of family, there is no such legal provision to ensure women right over land.

Keywords: Bihar, land right recognition, tenure security, women right

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2016

Citation:

Shiva, Vandana. 1988. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books.

Author: Vandana Shiva

Annotation:

Summary:
Examining the position of women in relation to nature - the forests, the food chain and water supplies - the author links the violation of nature with the violation and marginalization of women in the Third World. One result is that the impact of science, technology and politics, along with the workings of the economy itself, are inherently exploitative. Every area of human activity marginalizes and burdens both women and nature. There is only one path, Vandana Shiva suggests, to survival and liberation for nature, women and men, and that is the ecological path of harmony, sustainability and diversity. She explores the unique place of women in the environment of India in particular, both as its saviours and as victims of maldevelopment. Her analysis is an innovative statement of the challenge that women in ecology movements are creating and she shows how their efforts constitute a non-violent and humanly inclusive alternative to the dominant paradigm of contemporary scientific and development thought. (Summary from Google Books)

Topics: Development, Environment, Gender, Women, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1988

Citation:

Rao, Manisha. 2012. “Ecofeminism at the Crossroads in India: A Review.” DEP - Deportate, Esuli, Profughe 20 (12): 124–42.

Author: Manisha Rao

Abstract:

A large and growing body of literature on ecofeminism in the West relates gender and environment mainly in ideological terms. In India however, growing protests against environmental destruction and struggles for survival and subsistence point to the fact that caste, class and gender issues are deeply interlinked. In this paper, I will look at the main tenets of ecofeminism and the critiques that have been leveled against them. Then I will try to contextualize this debate within the Indian environmental movement and highlight the interconnections of caste, class and gender issues in it. Further I would attempt to see whether the issue of environment has been taken up by the Indian women’s movement. If not, whether the women’s movement would benefit and become more broad-based by taking up the issues that concern women of different caste and class. At the same time, whether the Indian environment movement would benefit by taking up a feminist perspective.

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2012

Citation:

Plant, Judith. 1989. Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.

Author: Judith Plant

Annotation:

Summary:

Twenty-five activist authors--including Ursula LeGuin, Vandana Shiva, Margot Adler and Joanna Macy—strive to unite the visions and energies of the feminist and ecological perspectives. Healing the Wounds draws together the personal, political and spiritual into one enlivening whole. This is the book, and these are the practitioners, that started the movement (Summary from Google Books).

Table of Contents:

Toward a New World: An Introduction
Judith Plant

1. Remembering Who We Are: The Meaning of Ecofeminism. Split Culture
Susan Griffin

2. The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology
Ynestra King

3. A New Movement, a New Hope: East Wind, West Wind, and the Wind from the South
Corinne Kumar D'Souza

4. Mama Coyote Talks to the Boys
Sharon Doubiago

5. Women/Wilderness
Ursula K. Le Guin

6. Healing All Our Relations: Ecofeminist Politics. Poem: Tampons
Ellen Bass

7. First Mother and the Rainbow Children
Anne Cameron

8. Women Act: Women and Environmental Protection in India
Pamela Philipose

9. Speaking for the Earth: The Haida Way
Gwaganad

10. Development, Ecology, and Women
Vandana Shiva

11. A Power of Numbers
Rachel Bagby

12. From Healing Herbs to Deadly Drugs: Western Medicine's War Against the Natural World
Marti Kheel

13. She Is Alive in You: Ecofeminist Spirituality. Poem: A Story of Beginnings
Starhawk

14. Invoking the Grove
Deena Metzger

15. Toward an Ecofeminist Spirituality
Charlene Spretnak

16. The Give and the Take
Dale Colleen Hamilton

17. Toward an Ecological-Feminist Theology of Nature
Rosemary Radford Ruether

18. The Juice of the Mystery
Margot Adler

19. Sacred Land, Sacred Sex
Dolores LaChapelle

20. Lakshmi Ashram: A Gandhian Perspective in the Himalayan Foothills
Radha Bhatt

21. Feminist Earth-Based Spirituality and Ecofeminism
Starhawk

22. The Circle Is Gathering: Ecofeminist Community. Poem: Lost Arrows and the Feather People
Ursula K. Le Guin

23. Survival on Earth: The Meaning of Feminism
Dorothy Dinnerstein

24. Awakening to the Ecological Self
Joanna Macy

25. Wings of the Eagle: A Conversation with Marie Wilson

26. The Subjective Side of Power
Margo Adair and Sharon Howell

27. Community: Meeting Our Deepest Needs
Helen Forsey

28. Consensus and Community: A Conversation with Caroline Estes

29. The Circle is Gathering
Judith Plant

Topics: Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Religion Regions: Americas, Asia, South Asia Countries: India, United States of America

Year: 1989

Citation:

Hamrell, Sven, and Olle Nordberg, eds. 1993. Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections. Uppsala, Sweden: The Dag Hammarskjöld Centre and Kali for Women.

Authors: Sven Hamrell, Olle Nordberg

Annotation:

Summary:
The seminar on 'Women, Ecology and Health: Rebuilding Connections', which has provided the basis for the material presented in this issue of Development Dialogue, was held in Bangalore in southern India from July 17 to 22, 1991. It was jointly organised by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, Dehra Dun, India, and moderated by the Director of the latter foundation, Vandana Shiva. It brought together 25 participants from seven South Asian and Southeast Asian countries and one participant from the United States. Both foundations are grateful to the participants for their valuable contributions to the seminar discussions and to the authors for the pains they have taken in thoroughly revising and updating their papers.The basic idea behind the organisation of the Bangalore seminar was the conviction that, twenty years after 'the Environment' was placed on the international agenda, the time was ripe to take stock, from a women's perspective, of two decades of development in the environmental field. Furthermore, an important factor was the growing recognition that across the world women are rebuilding connections with nature and renewing the insight that what people do to nature directly affects them, too; that there is, in fact, no insular divide between the environment and their own bodies and health (Summary from original source).

Table of Contents:

1. Women, Ecology and Health: An Introduction
   Vandana Shiva
2. After the Forest: AIDS as Ecological Collapse in Thailand
   Ann Danaiya Usher
3. Killing Legally with Toxic Waste: Women and the Environment in the United States
   Penny Newman
4. Environmental Degradation and Subversion of Health
   Mira Shiva
5. Using Technology, Choosing Sex the Campaign Against Sex Determination and the Question of Choice
   FASDSP Group
6. Legal Rights… and Wrongs: Internationalising Bhopal
   Indira Jaising, C. Sathyamala
7. ‘Green Earth, Women’s Power, Human Liberation’: Women in Peasant Movements in India
   Gail Omvedt
8. Filipino Peasant Women in Defence of Life
   Loreta B. Ayupan, Teresita G. Oliveros
9. Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Its Ecological and Political Consequences
   Rita Sebastian
10. The Seed and the Earth: Biotechnology and the Colonisation of Regeneration
    Vandana Shiva

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Health Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: India, Thailand, United States of America

Year: 1993

Citation:

Godfrey, Phoebe. 2005. "Diane Wilson vs. Union Carbide: Ecofeminism and the Elitist Charge of 'Essentialism.'" Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 (4): 37-56. 

Author: Phoebe Godfrey

Annotation:

Summary:
“I am especially interested in whether the academic charge that ecofeminism is essentialist and contaminated by capitalist patriarchal ideology can withstand political scrutiny. I argue that the ultimate test of a theory is its outcomes, because all theory is a form of practice, and all practice incorporates a form of theory. It is when the connection remains unarticulated and a process of privileging one side over the other emerges that constructive critique becomes counterproductive. So, with an over literal emphasis on discursive practices and a corresponding lack of conceptual tools for discussing material objects and relations, constructionist academics are made uneasy by feminist, environmentalist, or ecofeminist activists, who situate their politics in the material experiences and language of everyday life” (Godfrey 2005, 37-8).

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Women Regions: Americas, Asia, South Asia Countries: India, United States of America

Year: 2005

Citation:

Dātār, Chāyā. 2011. Ecofeminism Revisited: Introduction to the Discourse. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.

Author: Chāyā Dātār

Annotation:

Summary:

"Most strands of feminism uphold, in varying degrees, the modernist dichotomy between nature and culture. Simone de Beauvoir, in her book Second Sex, points out that this distinction equates women with nature (characterized by their biological composition) and men with culture (characterized by their ‘risk-taking’ behaviour). Liberal and Marxist feminists argue that the traditional notion of a connection between women and nature is a relic of patriarchy—an instrument of oppression—which should be allowed to wither away. For them, ecofeminism smacks of essentialism (biological determinism). Despite such criticism, one needs to acknowledge the fact that exploring ecofeminist arguments rising from a material base (social, historical, dialectical) creates support in favour of alternative development models as opposed to market-oriented capitalist ones. Poor women often find a potential for liberation within such models. It also provides a better understanding of movements like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, opposition to SEZ etc. which strongly emphasise on women in the third world, their concern for food security and as such their vested interest in the preservation of ecological bases for the survival of their communities. Concepts like ‘decentralised communities’, ‘subsistence production’ etc. need to be understood against a theoretical background which justifies the need to start thinking about alternative development models. The book aims at an introduction to the discourse of ecofeminism as a perspective from which to understand the world around us, where women’s concerns of reproduction and subsistence are placed at the centre stage of the human activities" (Summary from Rawat Publications). 

Topics: Development, Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2011

Citation:

Agarwal, Bina. 1998. “Environmental Management, Equity and Ecofeminism: Debating India’s Experience.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 25 (4): 55–95.

Author: Bina Agarwal

Abstract:

There is today a widespread recognition that for effectively managing local forests and commons, we need the active involvement of village communities. But what shape should community institutions for environmental management take? Many favour the revival or replication of traditional ones. But what would this imply for social equity? Indeed are even the newly emergent institutions challenging traditionally unequal social relations? While the issue of appropriate institutions for environmental management is still being debated, there is a striking absence of a gender perspective within the debate. This neglect of gender continues in the face of a substantial parallel literature (and movement) that has grown under the banner of ‘ecofeminism’. Why has ecofeminism failed to provide a corrective? To what extent can it so serve? It is argued here that rather than challenging traditional inequities and revivalist tendencies, the historical representations, premises and prescriptions of ecofeminism (especially its Indian variant) could, in specific contexts, strengthen institutions that entrench gender inequalities. The experience of environmental management institutions in India bear this out. To transform gender relations, and relations between people and nature, will need enhancing the bargaining power of women vis‐a‐vis men and of those seeking to conserve the environment vis‐a‐vis those causing its degradation. Although illustrated from India's experience, conceptually these arguments would have wider relevance. 

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 1998

Citation:

Tyagi, Niharika, and Smriti Das. 2020. “Standing up for Forest: A Case Study on Baiga Women’s Mobilization in Community Governed Forests in Central India.” Ecological Economics 178 (November). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106812.

Authors: Niharika Tyagi, Smriti Das

Abstract:

The forest history in India is fraught with struggles between the forest dwelling communities and the state. While the state usurped power over forests, excluding the communities and privileging commercial interests; the alienation of communities from their own land and homes resulted in mobilization across different sites. The movement for protection of forest commons assumed significance through the decade of 1970s that saw the famous Chipko movement in Uttarakhand and other forms of resistance across the country. The demand upon the forests that had intensified with subsistence, commercial and urbanization pressures, further enhanced with pressures of globalization. The consequent environmental degradation and dispossession of the communities of their resources resulted in varieties of environmentalism. In the arena of environmental conflict, Central India has been a hotbed of contest with forcible evictions, increasing base of extractive industries and steady militarization. The tribal communities in Central India faced serious threat from a monolithic state as it prioritized ‘national development’ goals over social equity and environmental justice. Rooted in this inequity was widespread discontent and social mobilization across the forested landscape. The local mobilization in Baiga Chak area of Central India clearly marked recognition of their socio-cultural embeddedness in their natural setting, particularly forest. What was unique in this movement was the uprising of Baiga women to assert their rights over the forest contrary to their traditionally defined role. It gradually led to collectivization of demand for recognition of Baiga communities’ historical relationship and claims over forest resource. Using the framework of Feminist Political Ecology, this paper examines Baiga women’s movement against Forest Department’s unlawful practices in Baiga Chak region of Central India. Using a case-based approach, the paper addresses the following questions: What factors led to the feminized grassroots environmental movement? How have women’s bargaining power and gender relations evolved at the local level consequently? What effect does women’s resistance have on community governed forest systems? In response to state usurpation that threatened the livelihood and household well-being, Baiga women collectively struggled to regain control over local forest resources. The analysis of this gendered environmental movement establishes an intersection between local structural, economic and ecological concerns and signals possibility of several gendered social movements in contested resource geographies.

Keywords: women's movements, feminist political ecology, gender roles and relations, forest commons

Topics: Environment, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Indigenous, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Land Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2020