Women as the frustrated endurance of a collectively gendered community in the 2022 Vizhinjam protests: an eco-feminist analysis

In 2022, the fisherfolk of Vizhinjam (Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India) protested for 140 days, claiming that the newly constructed Vizhinjam International Seaport caused severe damage to local ecology and the social fabric of fisherfolk communities. Several women from the various coastal fishing communities of Thiruvananthapuram took part in this protest. Their engagement can be understood through an eco-feminist lens. We claim, however, that this situation contains at the community level, further complexities in social dynamics which could contribute to the understanding of intersectionality in the eco-feminist discourse. Drawing upon interviews with women of the fishing communities who participated in the protest, and also upon interviews with male protestors, third-party observers who participated in the protest, and the clergy of the Roman Catholic diocese of Trivandrum, this paper analyzes the involvement of these women from an intersectional feminist viewpoint, covering the dimensions of social reproduction, female leadership and transformational outcomes in this situation. We attempt to show through this analysis that the evolution of the neoliberal dynamic in India, the presence of the church, entrenched patriarchal attitudes, and the unique gender-nature relations within the Thiruvananthapuram fishing community generated a collective essentialist gendering of the fishing communities of Thiruvananthapuram.