The Oppression Of Women With Nature, By Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva has nicely put a lot of strings together to form a web of ‘ecological destruction’ including oppression of women, exploitation of nature, colonization, patriarchal system, scientific methods and many more. Though a good book, I find there are some defaults, some generalizations and few romanticized situations, ignoring the repetitiveness observed at many points.

The writer has undermined and criticized science which is becoming a part and parcel of every human’s life. It is not science which has lead to the destruction of nature but the misuse and misunderstanding of science. I believe, the scientific steps taken to increase output, enhance productivity have been done in a good will but slowly turning out problematic. It is not

Throughout her book, she has written about women as nurtures and sharing special bond with ‘prakriti’ and doubtlessly supportive. She describes a deeper meaning of feminity with the nature but her equating every woman with nurturing, life-sustaining feminine principles is a bit exaggerated. She assumes that nature and women share a lot in common, therefore women understands nature best and always work in a way which is supportive to nature. Also, she believes that it has always been men indulged in science, development and exploitation. If women are given opportunity, they are also achieve success in the ‘male dominated’ world of machines and

The environmentalist thinking and politics go hand in hand. The relationship of women with nature is not different because woman is ‘woman’ but because of the historical relation shared by men, women and nature. The work of women and man should be complimentary to each other instead of being seen as hierarchical. A society cannot be developed by undermining ones work and criticizing others, but by developing a gendered relationship.

Also, talking about the patriarchal society talked repetitively in the text, it seems as it has been the framework of men. But don’t women participate (if not equally but considerable) in reproducing patriarchal society?

Shiva talks about the males being destructive but introduction of farming itself is a distortion in the functioning of nature. Agriculture is not the natural nature of nature, but harvested by humans, males-females equally. It is not that just the introduction of science is a