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.
This text shares reflections that emerged from our discussions with women impacted by Green Economy projects in Brazil.
Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.
With the Covid-19 crisis, the initiatives of movements and collectives based on feminist economics have gained strength. Feminist economics leads us to reflect on the updated mechanisms of control, while continuing to affirm the capacity for resistance and reconstruction of bodies in movement.
The construction of the Suzano Pulp and Paper mill—along with nearby highways, the constant transport of wood, and the massive influx of workers—has brought a lot of devastation to communities. This is the testimony of an activist who is fighting for the territory.
From rapes, forced body searches and searches of private spaces, to the risk of losing their lives: this article calls on us not to be accomplices to the violence women living around tree plantations in Cameroon suffer.
A woman from the village of Mbonjo 1, Cameroon, which has witnessed the impact of industrial palm oil plantations and the constant presence of the military, calls for international solidarity and protection of right to life and freedom.
The organization and sexual division of labor and job insecurity in single crop activities affect the health of female workers and territorial changes derived from this model of production directly affect women.
Covered under the shade of oil palm companies in Cameroon: A recount of the abuses that women suffer
Plantations are increasingly surrounding and engulfing communities. Women must walk through company-occupied lands in order to seek their livelihoods. This, among other things, can cost them their lives.