The impoverishment of the environment : women and children last
Shiva, V.
Ecofeminism : 70-90
1993
Document Number: 326700
Although development has brought well-being to some of the developing world, it has also brought environmental degradation and poverty. This is because it focused on a model of progress derived from Western industrialized economies, assuming that such progress was possible for all. It focused exclusively on financial indicators such as GNP, which could not calculate the environmental destruction and creation of poverty associated with the development process. Indicators such as GNP can only measure those activities that occur through the market mechanism, regardless of whether the activities are productive, unproductive or destructive. The costs of resource destruction are borne largely by women who, lacking the purchasing power to register their demands on the modern production system's goods and services, provide for their basic material needs directly from nature. It was assumed that the improvement of women's economic position would automatically flow from an expansion and diffusion of the development process. However, women's underdevelopment was not due to insufficient and inadequate participation in development but due to their enforced asymmetric participation whereby they bore the costs but were excluded from the benefits. This paper examines the role of women in this process of development and their relationship with nature. The food and nutrition crisis, the water crisis, and the problem of toxic and nuclear hazards are outlined, with the implications for women and children in particular. Some survival strategies are suggested, including activities by some grassroots organizations.