Ecofeminism/Ecological Feminism

Women carrying bundles in Malawi, where 53 percent of the population lived in poverty in 2004. Ecofeminism finds a link between the domination of women and the domination of nature and emphasizes the direct impact of environmental pollution on female bodies and reproductive processes.

Photo credit: World Bank

Ecofeminism is unique among ecological theories in its placement of patriarchy at the center of analysis of social and ecological oppression. Ecofeminism derives an epistemology, an ontology, and sociopolitical project out of the everyday lives of women that challenges the phallocentric framework that shapes Western thought (philosophically, economically, and politically). Beginning with a perspective “from below,” the point of view of the oppressed, ecofeminists contest the dominant logic of capitalist patriarchy as independence from, and domination over, nature via ...