FemResThe Living Review
12Current issueLand, labor and ecological justice

Who decides the future of the land?

Land is priced and forests logged, yet the work sustaining life is often treated as a free backdrop. Starting with Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, this issue connects food, caste, Indigenous sovereignty and climate risk. Women are not natural guardians: can they control resources, refuse added burdens and shape the conditions of shared life? Thirty resources bring ecological questions back to particular relations of power.

Cover story
Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

In this issue

30 items

Books10

01

Books · Dec 1993

Feminism and the Mastery of Nature

Val Plumwood

Val Plumwood dissects the masterful dualisms of Western philosophy, showing how human/nature, reason/body, and man/woman turn dependency into a warrant for control.

02

Books · Jan 2014

Ecofeminism

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva

Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva link patriarchal capitalism, colonial development, unpaid labor, and ecological harm, proposing subsistence beyond endless growth.

03

Books · Jan 2007

Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land

Kancha Ilaiah

Kancha Ilaiah’s illustrated book for young readers revalues knowledge devalued by caste; Durgabai Vyam’s art is integral to its argument.

04

Books · Nov 2018

A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None

Kathryn Yusoff

Kathryn Yusoff critiques Anthropocene narratives that erase slavery, extraction, and racialized geologic violence behind an abstract “humanity.”

05

Books · Jan 2022

Fresh Banana Leaves

Jessica Hernandez

Drawing on Maya Ch’orti’ and Binnizá family memory, environmental science, and community cases, Jessica Hernandez critiques ecocolonialism and reimagines stewardship through Indigenous science.

06

Books · Jan 2021

The Mushroom at the End of the World

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing follows matsutake ecology and trade to show how war, migration, and capital shape precarious livelihoods - and how life persists through damaged landscapes.

07

Books · Oct 2015

Soil Not Oil

Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva connects industrial agriculture, fossil fuel dependence, and climate crisis, centering small farms, seed diversity, and food sovereignty.

08

Books · Nov 2020

Undrowned

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Alexis Pauline Gumbs learns Black feminist survival from marine mammals, linking breath, sound, collective protection, and ecological crisis.

09

Books · Dec 2019

Climate Justice

Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson connects stories from Uganda, Mississippi, and the Pacific to climate justice, gendered labor, migration, human rights, and political voice.

10

Books · Apr 2020

A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

Sarah Jaquette Ray

Sarah Jaquette Ray writes for the climate generation about anxiety, burnout, action, and resilience, bringing emotional labor into climate education.

Films2

Videos2

Podcasts1

Articles10

01

Articles · Jan 2010

Community Feminism through Body and Land

Lorena Cabnal

Cabnal connects land defense with bodily autonomy while challenging internal patriarchy, compulsory heterosexuality and idealized ancestral traditions.

02

Articles · Aug 2011

Food Sovereignty: Exploring Debates on Development Alternatives and Women’s Rights

Pamela Caro

Pamela Caro reads food sovereignty through peasant organizing and feminism, asking who controls land and seeds - and how recognizing rural women’s work can avoid fixing gendered divisions of labor.

03

Articles · Dec 2015

It is work, not help: women in agroecology

Vanessa Schottz, Maitê Maronhas, Elisabeth Cardoso

Brazilian organizers show why making women's farm work visible must also change household responsibility, access to credit and time for collective action.

04

Articles · Jan 2020

Women’s Rights to Land and Productive Resources

UN Women; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

A UN guide maps the legal standards and practical barriers shaping women’s rights to own, use, control and inherit land and other productive resources.

05

Articles · Apr 2023

The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

FAO traces women’s work across food production, processing, distribution and consumption, connecting unequal resources, wages, care and shocks.

06

Articles · May 2025

Women in Agrifood Systems in Latin America and the Caribbean

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

FAO’s 2025 regional report shows why women’s growing presence in agrifood work must be read alongside unequal resources, care burdens and decision-making power.

07

Articles · Mar 2024

Women in Fisheries in the Mediterranean and Black Sea

Eugenia Merayo; Valeriia Vakhitova; Anna Carlson

A FAO - GFCM study traces women’s work across the fisheries value chain and shows how gaps in official data can reproduce their exclusion.

08

Articles · Jan 2010

Gender Dimensions of Agricultural and Rural Employment

FAO; IFAD; ILO

A joint FAO, IFAD and ILO report asks how gender shapes paid and unpaid work on and off farms - and what decent rural employment requires.

09

Articles · Nov 2015

Black Women's March Declaration (2015)

Marcha das Mulheres Negras

Brazil's Black Women's March turns Bem Viver into demands about life, safety, land, work and media power, asking who defines equality and controls its implementation.

10

Articles · Dec 1993

Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Law

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN)

The Zapatista law joins women’s public authority to bodily and household autonomy, making internal gender relations part of the revolutionary struggle itself.

Papers5