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What is women's relationship with the environment? Is it distinct from that of men's? The growing literature on ecofeminism in the West, and especially in the United States, conceptualizes the link between gender and the environment primarily in ideological terms. An intensifying struggle for survival in the developing world, however, highlights the material basis for this link and sets the background for an alternative formulation to ecofeminism, which I term "feminist environmentalism." In this paper I will argue that women, especially those in poor rural households in India, on the one hand, are victims of environmental degradation in quite gender-specific ways. On the other hand, they have been active agents in movements of environmental protection and regeneration, often bringing to them a gender-specific perspective and one which needs to inform our view of alternatives. To contextualize the discussion, and to examine the opposing dimensions of women as victims and women as actors in concrete terms, this essay will focus on India, although the issues are clearly relevant to other parts of the Third World as well. The discussion is divided into five sections. The first section outlines the ecofeminist debate in the United States and one prominent Ino dian variant of it, and suggests an alternative conceptualization. The next three sections respectively trace the nature and causes of environmental degradation in rural India, its class and gender implications, and the responses to it by the state and grass-roots groups. The concluding section argues for an alternative trans-formative approach to development.