'She will die for this land': The role of women environmental defenders in protecting Indonesia's socio-ecological communities, and the violent repression of their anti-extractivist resistance
(2025) HEKM51 20251Department of Human Geography
Human Ecology
- Abstract
- Extractivist projects are causing widespread socio-ecological destruction across Indonesia, impacting ecosystems, rural communities, and Indigenous ways of life. At the forefronts of socio-ecological collapse, women are increasingly taking up leadership roles in environmental activism. Simultaneously, women environmental defenders (WEDs) are experiencing a growing crisis of violent repression. This thesis contributes to the field of Feminist Political Ecology by uncovering how Indonesian WEDs experience and understand their role within environmental activism and the violent extractivist networks that repress them. Through nine online, semi-structured interviews with Indonesian WEDs, investigative journalists and legal experts, this thesis... (More)
- Extractivist projects are causing widespread socio-ecological destruction across Indonesia, impacting ecosystems, rural communities, and Indigenous ways of life. At the forefronts of socio-ecological collapse, women are increasingly taking up leadership roles in environmental activism. Simultaneously, women environmental defenders (WEDs) are experiencing a growing crisis of violent repression. This thesis contributes to the field of Feminist Political Ecology by uncovering how Indonesian WEDs experience and understand their role within environmental activism and the violent extractivist networks that repress them. Through nine online, semi-structured interviews with Indonesian WEDs, investigative journalists and legal experts, this thesis weaves together lived experiences and experts’ knowledge. While uncovering extractivist-induced gendered vulnerabilities and challenges, it aims to transcend the tropes of women as victims, and destruction as totalizing, by highlighting different ways in which resistance and alternatives are fostered within extractive zones. Theoretically, this thesis is grounded in Marxist-informed decolonial theory and critical ecofeminism. The findings reveal WEDs’ diverse avenues of anti-extractivist resistance, often rooted in a strong spiritual or material connection to their natural environment, marked by uneven, gendered care-taking responsibilities. Defying patriarchal barriers, women’s effective leadership is owed to anti-violent strategies and abilities to foster strong collective bonds. Furthermore, Indonesia’s extractive capitalist networks were found to be infused with the logic of coloniality. Political elites, corporations, and corrupt security forces employ tactics of intimidation, criminalization, and violence to suppress and silence defenders. Through women-led, anti-extractivist resistance, however, WEDs actively defy the intertwined, oppressive, and destructive structures of patriarchy, coloniality, and extractive capitalism: constituting submerged perspectives within extractive zones rooted in community, education, and strong human-nature bonds. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9209991
- author
- de Boer, Gina Ryan Anetta LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- HEKM51 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- women environmental defenders, extractive capitalism, resistance, environmental activism, violent repression, Indonesia, decolonial ecofeminism
- language
- English
- id
- 9209991
- date added to LUP
- 2025-09-26 08:21:14
- date last changed
- 2025-09-26 08:21:14
@misc{9209991,
abstract = {{Extractivist projects are causing widespread socio-ecological destruction across Indonesia, impacting ecosystems, rural communities, and Indigenous ways of life. At the forefronts of socio-ecological collapse, women are increasingly taking up leadership roles in environmental activism. Simultaneously, women environmental defenders (WEDs) are experiencing a growing crisis of violent repression. This thesis contributes to the field of Feminist Political Ecology by uncovering how Indonesian WEDs experience and understand their role within environmental activism and the violent extractivist networks that repress them. Through nine online, semi-structured interviews with Indonesian WEDs, investigative journalists and legal experts, this thesis weaves together lived experiences and experts’ knowledge. While uncovering extractivist-induced gendered vulnerabilities and challenges, it aims to transcend the tropes of women as victims, and destruction as totalizing, by highlighting different ways in which resistance and alternatives are fostered within extractive zones. Theoretically, this thesis is grounded in Marxist-informed decolonial theory and critical ecofeminism. The findings reveal WEDs’ diverse avenues of anti-extractivist resistance, often rooted in a strong spiritual or material connection to their natural environment, marked by uneven, gendered care-taking responsibilities. Defying patriarchal barriers, women’s effective leadership is owed to anti-violent strategies and abilities to foster strong collective bonds. Furthermore, Indonesia’s extractive capitalist networks were found to be infused with the logic of coloniality. Political elites, corporations, and corrupt security forces employ tactics of intimidation, criminalization, and violence to suppress and silence defenders. Through women-led, anti-extractivist resistance, however, WEDs actively defy the intertwined, oppressive, and destructive structures of patriarchy, coloniality, and extractive capitalism: constituting submerged perspectives within extractive zones rooted in community, education, and strong human-nature bonds.}},
author = {{de Boer, Gina Ryan Anetta}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{'She will die for this land': The role of women environmental defenders in protecting Indonesia's socio-ecological communities, and the violent repression of their anti-extractivist resistance}},
year = {{2025}},
}