Environmental degradation and climate change as violence against the Earth: Associations with violence against women’s bodies

Abstract

Violence against women (VAW) and violence against the Earth (VAE) have always shared a unique and complex association yet to be explored. The fields of VAW and VAE have evolved in separate routes, with divergent theoretical foundations but with little integration. While the impact of VAW has received much attention over the years, relatively little thought has gone into the intersections. Drawing parallels between society’s treatment of the physical and natural environment and its treatment of women, this paper will pull in insights to broaden and clarify the way VAW has been conceptualized, its association with the physical and natural environment (Mother Earth), and the constructs and the commitments that flow from them. In this paper, we formulate, cast, and present an expanded understanding of the relationship between violence against the physical and the natural environment and VAW. The article, an offshoot of our conceptualization on the inter-linkages between VAW and VAE, is being submitted for interpretation and application.

Keywords

• violence against women
• violence against the Earth
• physical and the natural environment