#7 DECEMBER 2018 Feminist alternatives to predatory extractivism: Contributions and experiences from Latin America Marianna Fernandes Feminist alternatives to current development models dependent on the predatory relationship between societies and the environment are already in the making. They assume that it is important to build another economy and another way of doing politics in order to subvert the system in which we currently live. Change the world and change women’s lives in the same movement: the struggle for women’s autonomy and emancipation is attached to the struggle against patriarchal capitalism and racism, as well as against old and new forms of colonization, all of which organize predatory extractivism 1 . Capitalism depends on the control over women’s bodies, sexualities and territories to establish and perpetuate itself. There is a deep connection between the various oppressive forces that affect women’s lives: patriarchy, (neo) colonialism and racism work together with capitalism to guarantee the accumulation of capital. In this process, the exploitation and commodification of women’s paid and unpaid work, women’s bodies and women’s territories are necessary conditions. Since the goal of capitalist economy is to accumulate capital and to concentrate it in the hands of a few privileged subjects, the whole socio-economic structure will be organized to guarantee that process. This happens at the expense of nature and of most people’s lives. In the context of capital accumulation, the work of social reproduction, of sustaining life and of care are delegated to the invisible economic spheres. These spheres are, in their turn, feminized and placed in the private, in the domestic. Capitalism depends on maintaining women’s 1 In this work, the term predatory extractivism refers to the large­scale processes of appropriation of nature, mainly by transnational companies, through the extraction of raw materials- such as oil, minerals, water, fish, industrial agriculture, amongst others – as well as the infra-structure mobilized to make this extraction possible. 1