Development 11

Development was thus reduced to a continuation of the process of colonisation; it became an extension of the project of wealth creation in modern Western patriarchy’s economic vision, which was based on the exploitation or exclusion of women (of the West and non-West), on the exploitation and degradation of nature, and on the exploitation and erosion of other cultures.

Vandana Shiva (1988): 1f.

Vandana Shiva (born in 1952) is an Indian physicist, intellectual and women's and environmental rights activist. This anti-globalisation activist is the recipient of the Alternative Nobel Prize.

Shiva is one of the most important representatives of ecofeminism. This current combines ecological issues with feminist analysis. It emerged during the course of the international environmental, peace and women's movements in the 1970s. Ecofeminism assumes that there are connections between the patriarchal oppression of women and the exploitation of nature. Thus it is argued that women are hit particularly hard by environmental degradation. This is because they produce 60 to 80% of the food in what is predominantly a smallholder agriculture in the Global South (dw.com, 14.10.2019).

*Shiva, Vandana (1988): Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. *Shiva, Vandana (2018): Stupidity of modern day civillization. Interview.

1988