Resistance to Extractivism-Induced Water Insecurity. Does Gender Have a Role in It? A Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

Extractivist practices threaten water security and with it, people's health and livelihoods. Numerous communities around the world are engaged in the strenuous work of resistance against mining. Through our previous research, we matured a sense that women are a major force behind organizing for water security, particularly because they often refer to an embodied sense of urgency to act against ongoing extractivism to preserve their waters and territories. Yet, a systematic assessment of the state of knowledge at the intersection of extractivism, water, resistance and gender is still missing. Thus, the goal of this article is to provide an overview, through a systematic scoping review, of the existing anglophone scientific literature focusing on water insecurity due to extractivism and its consequent community resistance, with a particular focus on gender. We identify 30 articles with only six explicitly referring to gender. All studies have in common the understanding that water insecurity is a manmade problem, particularly due to extractivism. Resistance is a great revelator of politics, and this systematic scoping review shows that dynamics of depletion and sacrifice zones—both in environmental and human terms—cannot be understood without considering gender and intersectional relations. Yet, an explicit focus on gender as an analytical lens of water and extractivism is still lacking in the literature. Importantly, this systematic scoping review shows similarities across case studies emphasizing the need to interrogate the transnationality of these phenomena.