Visions of resistance: women fighting to save their homeland – in pictures

The theme of this year’s Women By Women exhibition, Rooted in Resistance, is to showcase images of women defending their land and communities from destruction – by powerful people and corporations or the climate crisis. The pictures, taken by female photographers from Nepal, Cambodia, Brazil and Nigeria, will be on show at the Oxo Gallery in London from 9 to 12 October

Main image: Cambodia
Yung Chin, a leader in the community of Trapeang Pris, floats in a pond that she is working to protect. Photograph: Sophal Neak/ActionAid

  • Nigeria

    Obaro is the oldest person in her community in the delta. ‘Our town is supposed to be well developed because we have oil. We are supposed to be the heartbeat of Nigeria,’ she says. ‘They have taken so much from us and given us nothing in return.’

  • Cambodia

    The land defender Chan Kimcheng lives in Trapeang Pris, in Koh Kong province, which she says was once home to nearly 50 freshwater ponds. The community relied on these for water and fish, but she says only one remains after the others were filled and sold for private development.

  • Cambodia

    Chan Kimcheng, right, and fellow community leader Yung Chin float in the pond that they are working to protect.

  • Cambodia

    Chan Kimcheng stands in the middle of burnt-out trees. The women of Trapaeng Pris are also battling the adverse effects of the climate crisis, as extreme heat has made the area much more prone to devastating forest fires.

  • Nepal

    (From left) Krishni, Parbati and Rismani work to defend the freedom and rights of former bonded labourers in Bardiya province. Under the Kamaiya and Kamlari system, banned 25 years ago, farmers from the Indigenous Tharu community in western Nepal were trapped in informal labour contracts that continued for generations to pay off debts to landowners. Some communities have been resettled along the Karnali River, which is vulnerable to serious flooding, exacerbated by the climate crisis.

  • Nepal

    (From left) Biruni, Sita, Krishni, Saraswati, Sujiya in Rajapur, Bardiya, all campaign for the rights of resettled former bonded labourers.

  • Nepal

    (From left) Sujiya, Krishni, Sita and Biruni are still fighting to receive legal title to land in their own names.

  • Nepal

    Krishni and Biruni bathe in the Kauriala River, a branch of the Karnali.

  • Nepal

    Biruni at her home in Rajapur, Bardiya. ‘Initially, the land was handed over in the name of the male head of the family. Later, after the movement, it is now issued jointly in the name of the male and female,’ she says.

  • Brazil

    Antônia and her daughter, Lila, are babassu coconut breakers in a quilombola community, descendants of Africans who escaped slavery in north-east Brazil. The pair, in São Luís Gonzaga, collect and break coconuts, according to centuries-old traditions passed down the female line.

  • Brazil

    The coconut breakers make use of every part of the babassu. They sell the kernels or use them to make oil, make charcoal from the shell and fertiliser from the husk, and use the fibre around the nuts to cover houses and the stalks to make fences. Women were instrumental in creating the Free Babassu law, giving breakers free access to coconut groves on private land, although they have to fight to ensure the law is upheld.

  • Brazil

    As general secretary of the Association of Women Coconut Breakers, Kleidianny leads a group of 80 women in the São Luís Gonzaga community. They defend their land and prevent the felling of the coconut palms they rely on for their livelihoods. She says: ‘For me, the important thing is the palm tree standing tall, because for me that’s culture, that’s wealth.’