We describe the case of a 78-year-old man with a large elastofibroma deep to his scapula that was inconspicuous on MRI examination with his arm at his side in neutral position. The mass was not detected sonographically until the patient abducted his arm, allowing the elastofibroma to emerge from under the scapula. The diagnosis of elastofibroma was suggested by the typical sonographic appearance of a hypoechoic mass with interspersed linear echogenicity, resembling muscle. The mass was excised, and the diagnosis was confirmed on histopathologic examination.

In the last two decades, pollution in the river Ganga has become a serious issue, affecting the socio-economic activities and the health of the communities living on the banks and adjacent areas of the river. The impact has been greater on women, because their day-to-day activities for survival are intimately connected with this water resource. The response of the government has been to drastically improve its environmental policies. Social activists on the other hand continued to mobilize civil society in regional protests, which finally led to the beginning of the ‘Save Ganga’ movement. Yet, both the strategies to clean the river pollution have been colossal failures. An analysis was undertaken of various government policies, reports and court judgements on the river’s pollution and a primary survey was done on three sites: Garhwal in Uttarakhand and in Varanasi and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh to gauge the nature of women’s participation in the movements. It was found that there was greater participation by women in the hilly Garhwal region than in the plains of Uttar Pradesh. The research proved that women’s knowledge and experiences in environmental conservation had led to greater sustainability, in contrast to the results of the modern-technocratic approach of state officials and so-called environmentalists. The article seeks to locate the failure of the project of cleaning the river to the lack of gender sensitive environmental policies and insufficient participation of women in ecological activism.

Much has been written about the relationship between women, nature and development, a relationship where women’s work, like nature, is often undervalued, in terms of acknowledging the interdependence of women and nature in preservation of environment to foster sustainable growth. Women are perceived as prominent actors in domestic chores as well as contributors to environmental rehabilitation and conservation. However, in comparison to men, their work and knowledge have often been undervalued in both environmental planning and domestic resource management. The existence of environmental patriarchy is, thereby, located at three dimensions; first, women’s exclusion from resource ownership and management; second, women’s exclusion from deliberation of indigenous knowledge; and third, gendered power relationship in society. This article explores the region-specific concerns of women built into theoretical feminist perspectives of the Western world in contrast to the Third World countries, dealt within a theoretical perspective of ecofeminism and feminist environmentalism. However, both the models leave some major theoretical questions unanswered, finally concluded in a perspective as proposed by feminist political ecology. The idea behind doing this is to take account of the various ways of conceptualizing feminist ecological theories so as to emphasize greater role of women in environmental planning and decision-making processes. By simultaneously analysing some environmental movements, it was found that women’s activism was not only sustainable but confronted other social issues and patriarchy in private domain.

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