It is argued that the ecofeminism position, i.e., a subsistence perspective, is rooted in the material base of everyday subsistence production of women the world over. This struggle of women and men to conserve their subsistence base can become the common ground for women's liberation and preservation of life on earth.
However, some of the problems with Vandana Shiva's argument are as follows: Shiva's analysis (in Staying Alive 1988) relates to the study of rural women in Northwest India, but she tends to generalize her analysis to cover all Third World women. Gabriel Dietrich (1990, 1992) points out that Shiva seems to presuppose a society that is democratically organized, where people own sufficient land to survive on its produce. She seems to treat caste factors and political options as nonexistent and neglects the realities of hierarchies, subordination, patriarchy and violence within traditional tribal and peasant communities. .
Besides, the notions of "Shakti " and "Prakriti " are posed as representative of Indian philosophy as a whole. However, the "feminine principle "is largely expressed in Hindu terms which are close to Sankhya philosophy, which is mainly popular in the North. Dietrich wonders what the "feminine principle " would imply for Dalit's, tribal, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and other minority communities. Furthermore, Shiva does not analyses religious controls over women, when she discusses the "Shakti " aspects of religion. Meera Nanda (1991) in a scathing attack on Vandana Shiva, brands her atypical neo-populist scholar, who has tried to portray the "West " as inherently vicious and the "Third World " as fundamentally virtuous. She rebukes Shiva for branding modern science as western, inherently masculine (therefore destructive)and just another social construct. Shiva attributes the degradation of nature and the subordination of women mainly to the country's colonial history and the imposition of a western model of development.