Feminist Environmentalism

Feminist environmentalisms operate theoretically and politically at the nexus of the feminist and environmental social movements. What unites the multiple branches of feminist environmentalism today is a belief in the fundamental connection between the oppression/domination of women/minorities and the oppression/domination of nonhuman nature. In essence, feminist environmentalists argue that one cannot eliminate human domination of other humans (e.g., [Page 1091]sexism) without working to dismantle all forms of domination, including human domination of the natural world. This entry outlines the major avenues for connecting feminist and environmental analyses.

In a Western context, the connections between the treatment of women and nonhuman nature have been around since the earliest days of the suffrage and abolitionist movements in England and the United States. Many of the women who took part in these movements were avid vegetarians and argued for better treatment of animals alongside better treatment of women and children, as well as an end to slavery. Women, often acting as “moral mothers,” were also central to turn-of-the-century campaigns to establish natural parks, to protest the decimation of bird populations for women's hats, and to demand services such as clean water and clean food for their families. Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, galvanized the modern environmental movement and laid the groundwork for many of the issues that feminist environmentalists focus on today.

In 1974, a French philosopher, Françoise d'Eaubonne, coined the term ecofeminism to give a label to what many feminists had been starting to feel about both the feminist and the environmental movements. Ecofeminists charged that feminists were not addressing environmental concerns and that women were experiencing a high level of sexism within the environmental movement. Furthermore, for many women, there was a sense that women were, in essence, more closely aligned with nature than were men. As women acted as women and as mothers in campaigns as diverse as exposing the toxic waste at Love Canal, protesting the costs of war with the Women's Pentagon Action, and reshaping their spiritual connections by recovering ancient, goddess-worshipping cultures and practices, the first academic conferences were held addressing the connections between feminism and ecology, and a flurry of publications appeared challenging the feminisms and environmentalisms of the times.

By the late 1980s, ecofeminism was being challenged from a variety of directions. Many people who saw themselves at the nexus of feminism and environmentalism did not adhere to the essentialist notion that women were “closer” to nature than were men and preferred to focus on how politically, economically, and socially women were subjected to a closer relationship. This critique went so far as to change the terminology from ecofeminism to feminist environmentalism or environmental feminism in order to emphasize a break from the essentialist tendencies of early ecofeminism. The choice of terms remains an issue for many working at this nexus; while some people see these terms as interchangeable, others disagree and choose the term that most suits how they view the relationship between women and nonhuman nature. Other charges against early ecofeminism focused on how it was developing as a largely white, middle-class, heterosexual movement that focused too much on “luxury” issues such as goddess worship and animal rights. Women of color and women from developing countries raised awareness about the need to focus on immediate survival needs (e.g., access to clean water) and environmental toxins affecting poor, minority communities. They stressed that while there might be significant connections between women, as a category, and the nonhuman world, there were acute differences between women in terms of their capacity to interact with nature and/or affect change.

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