Against Extraction, Against Erosion: Women’s Digital Resistance to State Violence in Indonesia

This study explores how democratic erosion in Indonesia manifests through gendered violence embedded in state-led development projects. Focusing on conflicts related to the National Strategic Projects (Proyek Strategis Nasional/PSN) and other state-endorsed extractive initiatives such as the Kendeng and Wadas conflicts in Central Java and Flores Island conflict in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), I argue that these projects demonstrate how the state’s pursuit of growth often relies on the displacement and dispossession of rural and Indigenous peoples, including and especially women. The violence they experience—physical, psychological, and structural—reveals how democratic institutions are being hollowed out, as constitutional rights to protection and participation are replaced by securitisation and corporate–state alliances. Women in these communities face a continuum of violence: harassment, criminalisation, and assault during protests, but also slower forms of harm such as reproductive and maternal health issues, loss of water access, and economic precarity. These everyday violences, known as eco-gender-based violence, show how environmental degradation intersects with patriarchal governance. Drawing on interviews, digital ethnography, and field documentation, the chapter highlights how digital-based activists collectives such as @WadasMelawan_, @KendengMelawan_, and Floresa.co use digital platforms to challenge these injustices. Through storytelling, visual testimonies, and performative protest, they amplify women’s voices as both witnesses and defenders of land and water—transforming local struggles into national debates about accountability and justice. By linking ecofeminist resistance with digital activism, this research places gender-based violence not as an isolated social problem, but as a symptom of democratic erosion, where state mechanisms of protection turn into instruments of control. At the same time, these digital interventions illustrate how feminist and community-led media reclaim civic space and reassert democratic ethics from below—through care, solidarity, and the insistence that justice must include both people and the environment.