Ecofeminism: the connection between women and environment
It’s undeniable that the environment is increasingly in vogue. For years, many environmentalists have been denouncing the deforestation, the air and river pollution and other harmful effects of man’s action on our ecosystem. You can see the escalation of this situation by opening a media outlet. In parallel, news channels and social media have been disclosing the raise of feminism in different places and cultures. It’s notable the number of women that are engaging in the struggle for the eradication of the patriarchy. But what these movements have in common? The answer for this question throwback to the 70’s, when feminist women realized that, behind sexism and speciesism, the discrimination by gender and species, there is the same logic of domination.
Increasingly present in feminist discussion tables, ecofeminism understands that the patriarchal domination that still controls women is the same present in the exploration of nature and, for vegetarian ecofeminists, of animals. Therefore struggles that for many seem fragmented are actually connected. As explained by Vandana Shiva, doctor in physics, writer and ecofeminist activist, the forces that marginalize, dominate and oppress women are the same that dominate and explore the nature. It’s not by chance that both come from the system known as capitalist patriarchy. As she mentions in the video below, it’s this system that make us believe that the creative power come from the capital, while the nature stands in a second plan, as a dead matter.
Dualistic and hierarchical society
What motivates the inclusion of the environmental struggle by feminism is the close treatment that women and nature receive. Both are treated according to a logic of patriarchal domination that works from dualisms of hierarchical values. Mind and body, men and women, culture and nature, white and black. Those are a few examples of dualisms that demonstrate the relationship of superiority and inferiority attributed by the hegemonic thinking, with the former representing what is most valued.
For ecofeminists, the discrimination suffered by women stems from the fact that we are seen as close or even a parte of nature, a perception fueled by the female reproductive function and by the knowledge that the gender acquired from the manipulation of herbs and plant and that resulted in the witch-hunt. Returning to the examples of the hierarchy present in the dualisms, both “women” and “nature” are opposite to the male universe, or simply inferior.
By doing a connection between these two forms of domination and the impacts that one has over another, the ecofeminism also highlight how the climate and environment change affect the society in a disproportional way, reaching marginalized groups, especially women, more heavily, since they tend to be poorer, dependent on subsistence agriculture and responsible for the care of family members. As a result, there is a high probability that people who are sick because of pollution, for example, will be in the care of a woman, raising the precarious living conditions that many already have. The realization that women are the most affected by the capitalist patriarchy system and the consequence exploitation of the environment appears as another justification for incorporating the struggle for nature in the feminist struggle.
It’s equally important to consider the domination that also occurs with animals. For the vegetarian ecofeminists the same system imposes mechanisms of cruel exploitation on animals, so that they no longer are identified as living beings, but pieces of meat, a process that the activist Carol J. Adams names “the absent referent”. And as it is women who most often take over the kitchen at home, they are also the ones who end up manipulating the product of an agricultural industry that is equally exploitative and responsible for the contamination of meats, by using hormones and other substances harmful to healthy. And this is how a vicious cycle is formed, with continuous and circular domination and precariousness between women, nature and animals.
To change this scenario we must first look beyond the bubble that surrounds us. Mainly for those who live in big cities and are more distant from nature, the effects of domination and oppression are usually mitigated. But they exist and punish us all, even if to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore, it’s equally important that women, non-white and lower class people become protagonists in the debate, mainly through the occupation of more seats in politics, so that urgent issues of the social-environmental agenda can be addressed in a conscious and integrated way.
