By Gina de Boer, Master’s graduate in Human Ecology: Culture, Power and Sustainability, Lund University
My great uncle Rudi was a Dutch-Indonesian communist activist in the 1950s-60s, who devoted his life to the anti-colonial struggle in Indonesia. His wife, Suwarti, was a member of Indonesia’s Constituent Assembly and a leader of Gerwani, one of the largest feminist movements in the Global South at the time. After the 1965-66 anti-communist massacres, in which an estimated one million people lost their lives, Suwarti went into hiding, and my family never heard from her again (1, 2).
It was this family history, and the unjust, deliberate erasure of Indonesia’s feminist and leftist legacy, that drew me to this topic for my thesis research. Namely, decades after Gerwani was silenced, women across Indonesia are once again at the frontlines. They are defending their communities, ecosystems, and ways of life against a new wave of extractive destruction. And once again, they are being repressed for it.
Through nine online, semi-structured interviews with Indonesian women environmental defenders (WEDs), investigative journalists, and legal experts, this research aimed to uncover how WEDs experience and understand their role in resisting extractive industries, and how they experience the violent repression that follows. In so doing, it seeks to transcend the dominant trope of women solely as victims of extractive destruction, and to highlight the emancipatory alternatives and resistance they actively foster.
Extraction, Coloniality, and Democratic Decline
Indonesia is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, and one of its most heavily extracted. Coal, nickel, palm oil, and timber industries have expanded dramatically across the archipelago, displacing rural and Indigenous communities, polluting waterways, and destroying ecosystems that entire ways of life depend on (3, 4).
What makes Indonesia’s current moment particularly alarming is the convergence of extractivist expansion with a stark democratic decline. Under the governments of the past decade, Indonesia has seen growing oligarchic power. Specifically, with business elites holding strong ties to palm oil, coal, and other extractive industries, alongside increasing criminalization of dissent and a shrinking civic space (8, 9). Environmental defenders are framed as obstructors of development and subjected to intimidation, imprisonment, and in some cases lethal violence. Women environmental defenders specifically face gendered violence that remains widely underreported within the region (12).
The Women at the Frontlines
In this context, I spoke with nine women environmental defenders, investigative journalists, and legal experts based across Indonesia: from Sumatra and Java to West Papua and Sulawesi. Their work ranged from grassroots community empowerment and women’s ranger programs to agrarian reform, legal advocacy, investigative journalism, and documentary filmmaking. Together, their lived experiences and expertise paint a picture of both the violence WEDs face and the extraordinary forms of resistance they foster.
What struck me most was the deep connection many of these women hold to their land and natural environments. For women in Indigenous communities, this was often rooted in spiritual and ancestral ties: a belief that the Earth is our Mother, and that women are the custodians of ecological knowledge passed down across generations. As one journalist who had worked extensively within Indigenous communities explained: “In many Indigenous communities, women know the planting cycle, or which local seeds work best for their land, which traditional medicine to use, how to read the signs of the weather.” For others, the connection was more material, rooted in the recognition that all human life is inseparably tied to land and agrarian resources. This diversity of motivations reflects the importance of intersectionality: location, class, education, and cultural context all shape how women relate to and defend their environments (15).
Across both spiritual and material realms, however, participants consistently pointed to gendered domestic responsibilities as a crucial factor in women’s closeness to nature: many Indonesian women are the ones who collect water before dawn, tend crops, gather medicinal plants, care for the sick, and feed their families (21, 22). This closeness is not incidental: it is the product of patriarchal divisions of labor, intensified under colonial capitalism. And it is precisely this closeness that makes women both disproportionately vulnerable to environmental destruction, and vital to resisting it.
Across both spiritual and material realms, however, participants consistently pointed to gendered domestic responsibilities as a crucial factor in women’s closeness to nature: many Indonesian women are the ones who collect water before dawn, tend crops, gather medicinal plants, care for the sick, and feed their families (21, 22). This closeness is not incidental: it is the product of patriarchal divisions of labor, intensified under colonial capitalism. And it is precisely this closeness that makes women both disproportionately vulnerable to environmental destruction, and vital to resisting it.
Women’s leadership in environmental activism also emerged as particularly effective, for reasons that directly challenge dominant patriarchal narratives about gender. Several participants described women as more future-oriented in their strategies, investing in the long-term health of communities and ecosystems. This was once again linked to women’s care-taking responsibilities. As one participant stated: “Women simply have longer horizons. They are more invested in the future as they take care of their own family units, as they take care of their communities.” This represents an interesting contribution to the existing literature on WEDs – pointing to an alternative temporality rooted in women’s socially constructed roles (23).
Furthermore, women’s firm commitment to anti-violence as a political strategy, and their ability to mobilize a broad range of actors across communities, was described as making women-led movements both more inclusive and more effective (12). One male participant made a particularly striking observation: while men tend to become more confrontational in protests due to strong emotions, women are known to lead with patience and strategic calculation. This directly counters the patriarchal logic that associates men with reason and women with emotion (18, 19).
Violent Extractive Networks and Logics of Repression
The network of violence that surrounds extractive industries in Indonesia is intricate and intentional. Corporations, government officials, the judiciary, and security forces (police and military) operate in tandem to protect extractive investments and suppress those who challenge them. As one participant shrewdly observed: “The favoritism of the state security apparatus towards the owners of capital is just like the favoritism of the Dutch empire towards the VOC that invested in Indonesia during the colonial era.”
Extractive projects are justified through the promise of development and modernization, a framing rooted in the Eurocentric logic of modernity/coloniality which positions extractivism as necessary progress and those who resist it as backward (19, 20). This is especially visible in West Papua, where environmental activism is routinely labelled as separatism, military presence is pervasive, and the combination of settler colonialism and resource extraction creates conditions of particular brutality for Indigenous defenders (21).
Women defenders face specific and compounded forms of repression within this network. When criminalized, the consequences ripple outward to their families in ways that are then weaponized against them. As one participant explained: “Since a woman carries the double burden of domestic and economic survival, when she is criminalized, the pressure doesn’t just affect her but her entire family … Sometimes companies or authorities exploit this to apply psychological pressure on women.” Violence against WEDs is not only physical: it manifests in structural, cultural, and ecological forms that reinforce one another to suppress women’s resistance (12, 22).
Submerged Perspectives: Resistance and Emancipatory Alternatives
And yet, resistance persists. This was perhaps the most important thing this research set out to show: that extractive capitalism, for all its violence, destruction, and oppression, does not have the last word. Drawing on Gómez-Barris’ (2017) concept of submerged perspectives – ways of knowing and resisting that emerge from anti-capitalist, feminist, and Indigenous struggles within and alongside extractive zones – this thesis highlights the emancipatory alternatives that WEDs actively foster (20).
Community emerged as the most important source of strength across the interviews: both as a support network against fear and isolation, and as a political practice in itself. Participants described how sharing experiences of gender discrimination helped women feel heard, understand their gendered position, and inspire others to raise their voices. One participant captured this beautifully: “At the end of the day, for a lot of us that are in these movements, we believe in the reliability of the friendships that we have with one another. And even if the public doesn’t know our name, they have no idea that we exist, at least we trust that other activists will look after us.” Strengthening bonds between communities across different regions was also highlighted as transformative – allowing communities facing new extractive projects to learn from those already affected, and to help navigate negotiations with investors.
Education emerged as another crucial pillar of resistance. One NGO described in the interviews provides paralegal training to communities in extractive zones, equipping women with knowledge of their legal rights and tools to navigate the complex documents corporations present during negotiations. Alongside this, ecofeminist philosophy lessons help women name the discrimination they experience, understand its structural roots, and feel empowered to take up leadership roles. Education for men on women’s rights forms an integral part of this process as well. Whether through women-led protests, agrarian reform, conservation efforts, community organizing, or legal advocacy: Indonesian WEDs are actively resisting and fostering alternatives to patriarchal, colonial extractive capitalism (12, 23).
She Will Die for This Land
When Diah, one of my interviewees, spoke about a woman defender she had encountered during her work, she said: “She will be very excited to explain that she will die for this land … she’s not really afraid.” It is that sentence, the one that became the title of this thesis, that stays with me. Not because it speaks of sacrifice, but because it speaks of something deeper: a refusal to be rendered invisible, a commitment to life and land that extractive capitalism, with all its power, cannot fully extinguish.
The focus of Western scholarship on anti-extractivist struggles in the Global South carries a particular responsibility. Resource extraction in Indonesia’s periphery is not disconnected from commodity consumption in the Global North – it is structurally produced by it. Academics, social justice activists, and citizens in the West therefore bear a responsibility to care about and amplify the struggles of environmental defenders on the ground. This is especially true when those defenders are women, whose specific challenges, strategies, and forms of knowledge-production remain significantly understudied (12, 24).
I cannot help but think of Suwarti when I reflect on the incredibly brave and resilient women I spoke to. And while the current violent suppression of anti-extractivist resistance in Indonesia feels sadly reminiscent of the 1965 tragedies, so too does the willingness of WEDs to dedicate their lives to the struggle. Therefore, I cannot help but conclude that despite the state’s efforts to erase and villainize Indonesia’s impactful leftist and feminist movement, their spirit continues to live on.
Acknowledgements
I owe my deepest gratitude to the incredible women environmental defenders and experts from Indonesia I got to speak to. Despite the distance, their brave spirits beamed through the screen and have touched me deeply. Their generosity in sharing their time, experiences and expertise is something I don’t take for granted, and our conversations will stay with me for a long time to come.
References
(1) Robinson, G. (2018). The killing season: A history of the Indonesian massacres, 1965–66. Princeton University Press.
(2) Bevins, V. (2020). The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Programme That Shaped Our World. Public Affairs.
(3) Gellert, P. K. (2010). Extractive regimes: toward a better understanding of Indonesian development. Rural Sociology, 75(1), 28–57.
(4) Toumbourou, T. D., Dressler, W. H., & Werner, T. T. (2022). Plantations enabling mines: Incremental industrial extraction, social differentiation and livelihood change in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Land Use Policy, 119, 1–14.
(5) Wardaya, B. T. (2021). The Long Shadow of the Cold War. International Quarterly for Asian Studies, 52(3–4), 331–347.
(6) Drakeley, S. (2005). The history of Indonesia. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
(7) Tsing, A. L. (2005). Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press.
(8) Mietzner, M. (2025). The limits of autocratisation in Indonesia: power dispersal and elite competition in a compromised democracy. Third World Quarterly, 46(2), 153–169.
(9) Tomsa, D. (2025). Environmental and Climate Justice Activism in Indonesia. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 1–20.
(10) Bille Larsen, P., Le Billon, P., Menton, M., et al. (2021). Understanding and responding to the environmental human rights defenders crisis. Conservation Letters, 14(3), 1–7.
(11) Global Witness. (2024). Missing voices: The violent erasure of land and environmental defenders. London, UK: Global Witness.
(12) Tran, D. (2021). A comparative study of women environmental defenders’ antiviolent success strategies. Geoforum, 126, 126–138.
(13) Holz, R., & Pavez, P. J. (2022). The feminization of extractive violence: a comparative study from Colombia and Indonesia. East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies, 115–138.
(14) Husni, R. (2024). Comparative Analysis in Indigenous Women’s Ecological Practices Across Indonesia. Journal of Social Research, 3(4), 1039–1051.
(15) Gaard, G. (2011). Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism. Feminist Formations, 23(2), 26–53.
(16) Hendrastiti, T. K., Kusujiarti, S., & Sasongko, R. N. (2023). The Narratives of Local Women’s Resilience in Disaster and Climate Change. The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies, 3(1), 1–21.
(17) Morgan, M. (2017). Women, gender and protest: contesting oil palm plantation expansion in Indonesia. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44(6), 1177–1196.
(18) Warren, K. J. (1990). The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism. Environmental Ethics, 12(2), 125–146.
(19) Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and eurocentrism in Latin America. Nepantla: View from the South, 1(3), 533–580.
(20) Gómez-Barris, M. (2017). The extractive zone: Social ecologies and decolonial perspectives. Duke University Press.
(21) Anderson, K. (2015). Colonialism and ‘Cold Genocide’: The Case of West Papua. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 9(2), 9–25.
(22) Tran, D., & Hanaček, K. (2023). A global analysis of violence against women defenders in environmental conflicts. Nature Sustainability, 6(9), 1045–1053.
(23) Gain, K. (2025). Decolonial ecofeminism: a paradigmatic contribution to critical research of gender, ecology and coloniality. Journal of Gender Studies, 1–12.
(24) Sinclair, L. (2021). Beyond victimisation: Gendered legacies of mining, participation, and resistance. The Extractive Industries and Society, 8(3), 1–11.
Gina’s thesis has been published here by Lund University.