Soniamara Maranho of the Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens is resisting the gendered impacts of dams in Brazil by speaking out. The construction and maintenance of 2,000 dams across Brazil has wide-ranging gendered impacts across the country. Collectively displacing a million people from their lands, the mega-dam projects impact women disproportionately, as they often lose access to local natural resources crucial to their livelihoods, which degrade as waters are rerouted and forests decimated. Furthermore, dams are notorious sites of gender-based violence because the arrival of huge numbers of temporary male workers encourages prostitution and gender-based violence. Photo credit: Evaristo SA/AF Getty Images
