More than just headlines: A global statistical analysis of murdered women environmental defenders

Abstract

This study contributes empirical data tracking gender in extractive violence cases from the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas). The study also fills a gap in coverage on environmental assassinations not considering other factors of violence leading up to murders. Through log-linear and binominal regressions, this study analyzes gendered distributions of displacement, repression, criminalization, violent targeting, and murders worldwide. We found that 1) violence against women defenders is concentrated among mining, agribusiness, and industrial conflicts in the geographical South; 2) repression, criminalization, and violent targeting typically appeared together, whereas displacement and murder appeared as extreme outcomes when conflict violence worsened; 3) women defenders experience high rates of violence regardless of their countries’ levels of rule of law and gender equality. Reflecting global patterns of impunity, nearly all of the women defenders’ murders are still unresolved in courts, and their conflicts are still under negotiation.

Disentangling gender and social difference for just and transformative biocultural approaches

“…In this sense, the heterogeneity of human experiences with non-human entities of nature is often shaped by dynamic social norms and power relationships, such as gender and social difference, in a relational and co-emergent mode (Ahlborg & Nightingale, 2018;Nightingale, 2017). This can have profound gendered implications for people's livelihoods and contributions to sustainability (Cruz-Torres & McElwee, 2012;Meinzen-Dick et al, 2014;Rocheleau et al, 2013), unequal distribution of impacts from environmental change or degradation (Kosanic et al, 2022;Malin & Ryder, 2018;Ravera et al, 2016) and in some cases, can even lead to gender-based violence (Le Tran et al, 2020;Menton et al, 2021;Tran & Hanacek, 2022).…”