Where Violence Against Women and the Earth Intersect
The conditions that endanger ecosystems and the conditions that endanger women are not separate problems. They share roots — and they share solutions.
This International Women’s Day, it is hard not to notice the accumulation. The Epstein files have laid bare how the exploitation of girls and women can operate for decades, shielded by wealth and institutional silence. In Mexico, where Women’s Earth Alliance has worked alongside women leaders for years, the recent surge in violence following the killing of a powerful cartel leader has shaken communities already grappling with one of the world’s highest rates of violence against women, where on average ten women are killed every day, and where persistent gender barriers shape nearly every aspect of public and community life. Around the world, armed conflicts are reaching their highest levels since records began, with women and girls bearing a disproportionate share of the harm: in 2023 alone, the proportion of women killed in armed conflict doubled compared to the year before. And globally, women who defend land, water, and community are targeted and killed for that work, making it one of the most dangerous forms of advocacy in the world.
There is a thread running through all of it: the places and conditions where women are most endangered are often the same places where ecosystems are under the greatest threat. And the inverse holds too — where women lead and are supported in protecting their land and communities, both tend to be safer and more resilient.
The Connection Is Real
Nearly a decade ago, WEA and the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) spent three years documenting something Indigenous communities had long understood but that rarely appeared in policy conversations: that the degradation of land and the endangerment of women are structurally connected.
Our joint research, Violence on the Land, Violence on our Bodies, examined what happens when extractive industries — oil drilling, mining, fracking — arrive in or near Indigenous territories. The pattern was consistent: an influx of transient male workers, the rise of worker encampments near communities, and a measurable increase in domestic violence, sexual violence, and the disappearances of Indigenous women and girls. In 2016, the National Crime Information Center reported 5,712 cases of missing Indigenous women in the U.S., many in areas affected by extractive industry. By 2023, that figure had risen to over 5,800.
As Iako’tsira:reh Amanda Lickers (Turtle Clan, Seneca Nation) explained during that research: the targeting of women is not incidental to land extraction. Women who carry cultural knowledge, who maintain clan relationships, who hold communities together — attacking their safety is a way of weakening a community’s ability to defend its territory.
In Mexico, we have seen the same logic at work. Women environmental defenders there face not only the risks that come with being a woman in a context of endemic violence. They face additional targeting for their advocacy. Of the 67 women killed globally between 2020 and 2022 for being environmental defenders, 11 were Mexican. Nearly half were Indigenous.
These are not coincidences. Where land is being taken or degraded, the safety of the women who protect it is also at risk.
The Inverse Is Also True
If degraded environments and endangered women tend to appear together, so do thriving ecosystems and communities where women are safe, heard, and leading.
Where women hold genuine decision-making power over land and natural resources, ecosystems fare better — forests are more sustainably managed, conservation outcomes are more durable, and communities are more resilient to outside pressures. And where women hold power more broadly, other women and entire communities are safer: the UN Development Programme finds that higher levels of women’s political participation are associated with reduced state violence, and a study of Brazilian municipalities found that having female leadership led to a 50% average reduction in violence against women. Women’s leadership protects land. It also protects women.
We have seen this across our network of more than 59,000 women leaders in 31 countries. In Mexico, where women environmental defenders face some of the world’s greatest risks, our Program Lead Sirenas de México is a national network of women breaking gender barriers in fisheries and marine conservation, sectors historically dominated by men. As community divers and ocean monitors, they are generating scientific data, strengthening local stewardship of coastal waters, and claiming authority in spaces that have long excluded them. In a country where women’s visibility and leadership in public life can come at great personal cost, that is not a small act.
In Kenya, where WEA has worked for years to uplevel the vital work of women-led groups, WEA Leader Fatuma Erima built a tree nursery and cookstove enterprise that trained more than 520 people in practical environmental solutions, restored forest, and generated sustainable livelihoods in her community. As women gained economic security and moved into leadership roles, Fatuma observed something beyond the environmental outcomes: gender-based violence in her community declined. Ecosystem restoration and women’s safety moved together.
On This International Women’s Day
The headlines we named at the start of this article are not aberrations: the exploitation shielded by power, the femicide, the targeting of women who dare to lead. They are symptoms of the same conditions that produce environmental destruction: the concentration of power, the erasure of women’s authority, the treatment of land and bodies as resources to be extracted. Understanding that connection doesn’t just reframe the problem. It clarifies the solution.
When women have the power, the resources, and the standing to protect their land and communities, something larger shifts. Forests are better defended. Water is protected. And the conditions that allow exploitation to flourish begin to erode: economic desperation, concentrated male authority, the marginalization of women’s voices. That is what WEA’s work for two decades has demonstrated again and again.
Our model at WEA is to create systems of care. We identify women already leading in their communities and invest in their capacity to grow through training, seed funding, and connection to a global network of leaders who share strategies and sustain one another. Each woman who participates multiplies her impact by training others and building new enterprises. Since 2006, that effect has reached over 24 million people with improved environmental, health and economic conditions.
This work has never been more urgent, nor more under threat. According to UN Women, 90% of women-led organizations have faced major funding cuts in the past year and many have been forced to close. The women doing this work — defending coastal waters in Mexico, restoring forests in Kenya, protecting Indigenous territories across North America — are doing it at exactly the moment when the ground is shifting beneath them.
They are not waiting for the conditions to improve. They are creating the conditions. And they need our support to keep going.
This International Women’s Day, let’s invest in the women already doing this work. Donate, share, and learn more at womensearthalliance.org.
