Women in Resistance
When forests are destroyed, women in forest-dependent communities are hit hard: Their living conditions are particularly precarious; and providing food, medicine, materials and clean water becomes even harder. The traditional knowledge and wisdom that women pass down from generation to generation are also at risk. That is why women are often on the frontlines of the resistance to forest destruction.
In Latin America, women have always been part of the historical struggles in the defence of territory and the environment. Through protests and daily practices, they have resisted the many ways of extractivism and all forms of violence against women. (Available in Swahili).
The extractivist paradigm in Southern Africa threatens the lives and livelihoods of peasant communities, in particular women and girls: From the Tete Province in Mozambique, where women confront water scarcity and pollution to Zimbabwe’s Marange community, where militarised and often sexualised violence haunts women’s daily lives.
