A Preamble to Feminist Ecologies in HCI

Abstract

a year about what we felt and struggled with as feminists. Many times, the mutual recognition of our struggles was in itself helpful because it made us feel heard and less lonely. Even though we talked about work sometimes, the conversations happened as two friends checking in on each other. After a while, we started wondering about how other feminists were navigating their work and personal lives amid the Covid chaos. This eventually led us to co-organize a virtual workshop titled “Feminist Voices About Ecological Issues in HCI” at ACM CHI 2022 [2]. The workshop was co-organized by HCI researchers from nine different countries doing intersectional feminist work across cultural contexts on various several pro-environmental efforts across India. Jayanta Bandyopadhyay emphasizes that the Chipko movement was “a joint struggle based on gender collaboration...and not based on gender conflicts” [1]. Almost half a century later, the Chipko movement is often cited as a quintessential ecofeminist success story. We begin our preamble with this story as a reminder that feminist ecological interventions can be built based on collaboration between people of different genders. (See photo on page 22.) During the initial Covid quarantine measures of working from home, we had online conversations about what was going on around us and within us. Two friends chatted regularly for more than On March 25, 1974, Gaura Devi, elected leader of the Mahila Mangal Dal (women’s welfare association) in Reni village, Uttarakhand, India, along with 27 other women, led the Chipko movement to protect the local community forest from government-sanctioned lumbermen. Devi explains: “It was not a question of planned organisation of the women for the movement, rather it happened spontaneously. Our men were out of the village so we had to come forward and protect the trees.” The Reni Squad succeeded in chasing away the loggers after four days of vigilant nonviolent protest. The Chipko movement became a watershed moment that gained national momentum and heralded O