In feminist political ecological discourses, women are seen as potential initiators and actors in collective action. Gendered differential practices in sustaining certain forms of collective action within the community have remained under-researched. Women play a key role as providers of food, water, fuel and fodder. They have also gained access to alternative means of livelihood and formed groups to conserve forest resources. Women’s roles hold the potential to ensure their claim to inclusion in the development process.

This article formulates a set of interrelated questions to interrogate the role of community of practice (CoP) as an analytical framework to understand informal community action led by rural women. These questions concern the significance of collective action in relation to social structures, institutions and processes. Communities practise different kinds of sustainable and shared methods of collective action; for example, women’s collectives or self-help groups continuously work to create sustainable forms of collective action. We argue that the CoP framework provides an opportunity to explore the integral social basis of collective action, which cannot be understood without acknowledging women as important agents in shaping community initiatives.