Ecofeminism: What do we have to learn from this short-lived movement?

Written by Beatrice O'Keefe

Over the past ten years, due to a growing emergence of environmental activism forefronted by women including Greta Thunberg and Jane Fonda, there has been a reemergence of the ideologies of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism first originated as an off branch movement of Second Wave feminism during the 1960s and 1970s; the term was coined by Françoise d’Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). The ideas of ecofeminism stem from the similarities of the oppression of both women and marginalised people, as well as the oppression of nature. Ecofeminists, including Greta Gaard, believe that the association of women to nature, seen in terms like ‘Mother Nature’ and ‘Mother Earth’, has led to their neglect in our patriarchal society. They believe in order to overcome their oppression feminists need to unite with ecologists and climate activists. Earlier ecofeminist writings like Susan Griffin’s Women and Nature and Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature focused on how the patriarchy and capitalism are intrinsically linked and are both the main causes of the oppression of women and nature, hence overcoming these oppressions would require the dismantling of the current patriarchal and capitalist society. As Gaard describes it, “ecofeminism is the understanding that women’s liberation is entangled with the liberation of all racial, gendered, sexual and ecological ‘others’ because, in heteropatriarchal cultures, the oppressed are feminized — which means being seen as less rational and less fully human.”

Ecofeminism is also important not only for the planet, but for bringing attention to non-white and non-western feminists and their beliefs. Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva wrote of ecofeminism through a postcolonial framework, focusing on the West’s patriarchal and capitalist society as the downfall of the global environment, especially through Imperialism. It is also important in shedding light on environmental movements led by indigenous women: including the Chipko movement in India and the Green Belt movement in Kenya, both of which were led by women to conserve their local environments. However, this feminist ideology brought with it unfathomable challenges in its attempts to revert society alongside endless criticism from not only anti-feminists, but other feminists of the 1970s and 80s due to the binaries ecofeminism created. It was argued to have perpetuated and promoted the patriarchy by damagingly presenting women as the compassionate gender associated more to nature and responsible for its protection, as compared to men who are brutal and oppressive and hence have no role or chance to be able to protect the planet and prevent climate change. As Anne Archambault writes, “the claim that women are biologically closer to nature reinforces the patriarchal ideology of domination and limits ecofeminism’s effectiveness”, symbolising how this movement was of its time. It’s aims were pivotal but the implication and promotion of the patriarchy within this feminism reduced its power.

Despite the criticisms this off branch of feminism has faced, and its eventual fall from prominence in the political landscape, it does offer an interesting perspective on the diversifying of governments in order to tackle climate change in the modern world. Feminism has advanced and we now need ecofeminism and its important beliefs, to overcome the oppression of both the environment and women, more than ever. The United Nations estimates that 80% of climate refugees are women, 60% of people chronically hungry worldwide are women and girls and women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters caused by climate change than men. Now is the time to reflect on the works of women like Gaard, Shiva and others to change these statistics by implementing ecofeminism and preventing climate change. We must all ask ourselves the question of whether our feminism is intersectional enough to include these women marginally affected by climate change; moving away from Eurocentric, white and middle class feminism into global ecofeminism!

Beatrice O'Keefe

Further Reading:

Alldred, P, and Dennison, S., ‘Eco-Activism and Feminism: Do Eco-Warriors and Goddesses Need It?’, Feminist Review 64 (Feminism 2000: One Step beyond?) (2000), pp. 124-127.

Gaard, G., ‘Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism’, Feminist Formations, 23.2 (2011), pp. 26-53.

Gaard, G, and Gruen, L., ‘EcoFeminism: Toward Global Justice and Planetary Health’, Society and Nature 2 (1993), pp. 1-35.