This project aims at theorizing the relationship that subaltern women establish with “nature”; and the role that this relationship plays in their involvement in practice and mobilisation against discrimination. This issue is part of the controversy over women’s relationship to nature that divides feminists, especially Western ones, for whom the renaturalisation of women is the main lever for gender inequality, and those, especially in the Global South, for whom this relationship is instead a springboard for action. The enhancement of a singular relationship with nature is also part of the debate on the formation of identities in mobilisations for the protection of territories and on the possibility of emancipatory or oppressive forms of such protection. The originality of this project is to start from the observation that these contradictory trends are inextricably linked: they constitute the very experience of subaltern women, intertwined in their daily practices. To account for this interweaving, this project builds theory based on an in-depth, multi-level qualitative survey. The survey focuses on women farmers involved in agroecology and the feminist movement in two forest areas of Brazil, a country where the question of the relationship between equality, democracy and ecology arises in a sharp and revealing manner. The data collection includes: agroecological practices, based on an original method of joint observation with agronomists and forest engineers, aimed at informing social theory; the socioeconomic conditions of valorisation of women farmers’ work; and broader spaces of mobilisation and the political fabric of the relationship with nature. In addition, the theory building is based on a close dialogue with the Brazilian and French partners of the project, in order to refine the results and to increase the level of generality. This project connects three fields of literature that are generally separate: critical theory, which draws attention to the role of lifeworld, counter-publics and the plural economy in democratization, and reflexively questions the role of theorists; the sociology of rural women’s organisations, ecofeminism and care theory, which show the potential of reclaiming the relationship with nature to fuel mobilisation for gender equality; and different approaches (anthropology of nature, pragmatic sociology, agroecology) of the subjective and material interactions between humans and non-humans. The project aims at testing and qualifying three main hypotheses: (H1) The subjective and material relationship with different elements of “nature” (plants, insects, animals, soils, waters, etc.) reflects gender and other power relations present in the division of agricultural and care work and knowledge. (H2) The relationship with nature constitutes an essential part of lifeworld and the source of a subjectivity shared by these women farmers which can, under certain conditions, develop into common identity, committed practice and mobilisation against discrimination. These conditions include collective organisation, the valorisation of their work, adequate technical and political knowledge and contact with the political agenda of sustainability. (H3) However, the lives of these women are permeated by tensions originating from gender hierarchies in peasant institutions, external threats to their livelihoods, and the pervasive effects of financialisation and commodification. These tensions contradictorily shape their relationship to nature, generating practices and mobilisations against discriminations, as much as individual strategies of integration into the market and the search for protections that may be oppressive.