Tigers and “Good Indian Wives”: Feminist Political Ecology Exposing the Gender-Based Violence of Human–Wildlife Conflict in Rajasthan, India

Abstract

This qualitative study, based on fifty-two focus groups, interviews, and participant observation within a 10-km buffer around Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan, India, builds on Monica Ogra’s foundational work bringing together feminist political ecology and human–wildlife conflict studies. Specifically, it exposes gender-based violence as a hidden cost of the socioenvironmental network of the tiger reserve landscape. This study asks these questions: How do gendered geographies in and around a protected area influence tiger reintroduction, and how do tiger reintroductions influence gendered geographies? What is the nature of the relationships between women’s economic and gender roles and attitudes toward tigers (original and reintroduced), and what are the main factors influencing this relationship? This research finds that (1) gender-based violence is a hidden cost of women working in and around Sariska and the reintroduced tigers, a hidden cost of human–wildlife conflict otherwise unnoted in the literature, (2) this hidden cost is not solely the product of human–wildlife encounters but in large part a consequence of the highly patriarchal society that dictates gendered human–environmental relations. The results and presented framework seek to inform developing debates and theory around just conservation, gender-based violence in relation to environmental change, human dimensions of apex predator conservation, and sustainable rural livelihoods in and adjacent to protected areas.

这项定性研究以莫妮卡·奥格拉(Monica Ogra)所进行的一项基础性研究为研究核心, 将女权主义政治生态学以及人类与野生动物之间的冲突结合在一起。该研究在印度拉贾斯坦邦进行, 对萨里斯卡(Sariska)老虎保护区周边 10 公里缓冲区内的 52 个重点小组进行采访和参与者观察。具体而言, 该研究揭示了老虎保护区景观社会环境网络中存在一个隐性成本：性别暴力。本研究提出了以下几个问题：保护区内和周边带有性别偏见的地理环境如何影响老虎重新引入？以及老虎的重新引入如何影响带有性别特点的地理环境？女性的经济和性别角色与对待老虎的态度（原生和重新引入）之间存在怎样的关系本质？影响这种关系的主要因素是什么？这项研究发现：(1) 对于在萨里斯卡保护区内和周边工作的女性而言, 重新引入老虎所带来的隐形成本就是性别暴力, 性别暴力也是人类与野生动物冲突的隐性成本, 这一点很少有文献予以关注；(2) 这种隐性成本的原因不仅来自人类与野生动物之间的关系, 在很大程度上, 也是高度父权制社会导致人与环境之间的关系存在性别偏见, 进而产生了这样的结果。根据这些结果以及文中所提出的框架, 作者希望在以下几个领域开展辩论和构建理论：与环境变化相关的公平保护和性别暴力, 保护食物链顶端猎食者过程中的人类因素以及保护区内和周边地区的可持续农村生活。

Este estudio cualitativo, basado en cincuenta y dos grupos focales, entrevistas y observación participativa dentro de una franja búfer de 10 km que circunda de la Reserva Sariska del Tigre en Rajastán, India, construye a partir del trabajo fundacional de Mónica Ogra, juntando la ecología política feminista y los estudios sobre conflictos hombre–vida silvestre. Específicamente, se expone la violencia basada en género como costo oculto de la red socioambiental del paisaje de la reserva del tigre. Este estudio formula los siguientes interrogantes: ¿De qué modo influyen las geografías de género situadas dentro y en los alrededores de un área protegida la reintroducción del tigre, y cómo influye la reintroducción del tigre en las geografías de género? ¿Cuál es la naturaleza de las relaciones entre los roles económicos y de género y las actitudes de las mujeres hacia los tigres (los originales y los reintroducidos), y cuáles son los principales factores que influyen esta relación? Esta investigación encuentra que (1) la violencia basada en género es un costo oculto para las mujeres que trabajan en Sariska y sus alrededores, y los tigres reintroducidos, un costo oculto del conflicto hombre–vida silvestre que de otro modo queda desapercibido en la literatura, (2) este costo oculto no es solamente el producto de encuentros hombre–vida silvestre sino en gran medida la consecuencia de una sociedad muy patriarcal que prescribe relaciones humano–ambientales basadas en género. Los resultados y el marco presentado buscan informar los debates en desarrollo y la teoría justo sobre la conservación, la violencia basada en género en relación con el cambio ambiental, las dimensiones humanas de conservación del predador máximo, y del sustento rural sustentable dentro de áreas protegidas y zonas adyacentes.

Key Words:

• conservation
• feminist political ecology
• gender-based violence
• well-being

关键词:

• 保护
• 女权政治生态
• 性别暴力
• 福祉

Palabras clave:

• bienestar
• conservación
• ecología política feminista
• violencia basada en género

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the women and men who shared their wisdom, experiences, homes, and meals with me. This research would not have been possible without the local knowledge and translation skills of the research team: Chinmay Massey, Rodrick Roben, Aman Bhatia, Archna Merh, and Apporva Rana. Thank you to the editor, James McCarthy, and the reviewers for constructive comments.

Notes

1 The tigers were reintroduced from Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve, the only other arid zone metapopulation of tigers in the world, located 183 km due south of Sariska.

2 GBV against women has been defined as “any act that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women” (United Nations 1996, 1).

3 Domestic abuse, partner abuse, and its intersections with culture, patriarchy, religion, and gender have been widely investigated across India (e.g., Kapadia 2003; Nayak et al. 2003; Ahmed-Ghosh 2004; Kumar et al. 2005; Bradley 2010), although not in the manner presented here.

4 The 2011 census reported that the district of Alwar, containing Sariska, had a 22.75 percent decadal growth rate, a sex ratio of 894 females per 1,000 males, and a population density of 438 people per square kilometer and that 75 percent of Rajasthan’s population is rural (Census Organization of India 2011).

5 This has resulted in increased labor hours and distance needed to travel to find resources (De and Chauhan 2014).

6 This study was limited by the method of focus group discussions. FGs provided in-depth knowledge and, more important, allowed participants to drive the research describing truly hidden costs that I would not have inherently known to consider from a literature review. The topic of domestic abuse was unforeseen and the product of participant emphasis on the issue. This is the most significant benefit to FGs. I was not able to follow through with cross-tabulation of demographics, however, such as livelihoods, age, religions, residence time, family size, or caste, because of my inability to accurately track each participant within the FG transcript at all times. For further discussion of the development of FGs, positionality, and volunteering in the communities, see Doubleday (2018) and Doubleday and Adams (2019).

7 Much domestic violence is partly credited to the pressures from joint family structure (e.g., Vindhya 1997).

8 Overall, the interfamily hierarchy is governed by age and then by men over women (Malhotra, Vanneman, and Kishor 1995).

9 Studies in India concerning gendered labor roles in livestock rearing indicate that women are primarily responsible for feeding, milking, cleaning, and caring for animals, as well as providing medical care (World Resources Institute 2003). Of note, the many articles that discuss livestock-based livelihoods in Sariska do not identify buffalo rearing as a primarily women-facilitated livelihood.

10 I cannot speak to the percentage of income from men who work in cities or government jobs. These rough estimates are not meant to be representative for all families in the Sariska landscape. Instead, they are intended to show the general consistency of income that women earn from buffalo milk.

11 Population increase across South Asia has contracted forest cover, depleted water tables, and fragmented naturally vegetated areas. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides have resulted in widespread soil degradation. Further, monsoon irregularity and failure, undercut by droughts and frequent flooding, have further jeopardized food security for much of South Asia. Because of these factors, rural South Asian men have increasingly sought urban employment and consequently further feminized agriculture; natural resource collection (management) has thus increased rural women’s daily workload outside the home (Upadhaya 2005).

12 Private GBV is socially normalized. Rajasthan had the highest number of filed domestic cases across India regarding the enforcement of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act between October 2006 and November 2007. Rajasthan women’s high rate of filing domestic cases is a significant reflection of progress in women’s agency in resistance to GBV. India currently ranks 125 on the Gender Inequality Index. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-3 (Government of India 2006), the most common form of violence that Indian women between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine experience is spousal violence. The NFHS-3 reported that 40 percent of ever-married women had endured spousal physical, sexual, or emotional violence. It also reported that 37 percent face domestic violence and that 46 percent of women in Rajasthan have experienced physical or sexual violence. Only 2 percent of the abused women have requested institutional assistance. In a study outside New Delhi, Kaur and Garg (2010, 246) found that nearly 20 percent of the women reported wife beating as a common occurrence even if husbands are not drunk. The women stressed that wife beating was a socially learned behavior and a means of demonstrating power and control; it was a greater issue in joint families, where in many instances the in-laws encouraged their sons to harass their wives (Kaur and Garg 2010). Further, the mothers-in-law were involved in 60 percent of the domestic violence cases (Kaur and Garg 2010). The widely reported involvement of mothers-in-law and even elder sisters-in-law in abuse is sometimes physical but even more so emotional, through support of the violence. NFHS data found that 50 percent of married women aged fifteen to eighteen in Rajasthan felt that husbands are correct in perpetuating violence (“Domestic Violence Victim Get HC Relief” 2009). Likewise, husbands who were daily wage workers constituted 86 percent of violent cases (Prakash 2011). Thus, daily wage labor and alcohol, prevalent in the study area, are already major players in GBV in Rajasthan. Further, because men’s work is typically less consistent, possible times of unemployment and deeper poverty could lead to stress and frustration (Babu and Babu 2011). This frustration might lead to GBV and a possible increase in alcohol consumption, which is also positively associated with GBV (Babu and Babu 2011). Women not meeting financial expectations, regardless of cause, can easily be imagined as a basis for further GBV.

13 Milk production is conducive to rural Rajasthani women’s lives as the skills are well developed and passed from generation to generation; marketing is easy, because milkmen collect milk from all over; part of the work can be done from home; and milk enhances children’s nutrition (Bisht et al. 2013). Thus, the Forest Department wants to promote stall feeding to maintain milk production without dependence on Sariska.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kalli F. Doubleday

KALLI F. DOUBLEDAY is a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography & the Environment at The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests center on the human dimensions of large carnivore conservation.