Though the work of social ecologists has had a significant impact, it has been criticized for

Introduction

Ecofeminism, like the social movements it has emerged from, is both political activism and intellectual critique. Bringing together feminism and environmentalism, ecofeminism argues that the domination of women and the degradation of the environment are consequences of patriarchy and capitalism. Any strategy to address one must take into account its impact on the other so that women's equality should not be achieved at the expense of worsening the environment, and neither should environmental improvements be gained at the expense of women. Indeed, ecofeminism proposes that only by reversing current values, thereby privileging care and cooperation over more aggressive and dominating behaviors, can both society and environment benefit.

The notion that women's and environmental domination are linked has been developed in a number of ways. A perspective in which women are accredited with closer links with nature was celebrated in early ecofeminist writings, by, for example, Carolyn Merchant in the United States and Val Plumwood in Australia. These advocated ‘the feminine principle’ as an antidote to environmental destruction, through attributes, which nurture nature. This ‘essentialist’ perspective, often adopting an ideal of woman as earth mother/goddess, has, however, also discredited ecofeminism and led to disaffection among some early protagonists (see, for example, Janet Biehl). In addition to being critiqued for its essentialism, this view of ecofeminism has also been charged with elitism through its provenance in a white, middle-class, Western, milieu. However, Vandana Shiva's consistent and persuasive ‘majority world’ voice has been a counterpoint to this, and arguably, gender and environment have been articulated together more powerfully, and been more influential, in majority world settings (see, for example, Wangari Maathai in Kenya), although how this has been done has been questioned by writers such as Cecile Jackson and Melisssa Leach.

The late 1980s and early 1990s was a fertile time for ecofeminist writing, both from this essentialist perspective, but also through more social economic critiques, which explained the link between women's inequality and environmental degradation in terms of women's role in social reproduction (see, for example, Mary Mellor in the UK and Marilyn Waring in New Zealand).

The first major practical impact of ecofeminist thinking was felt in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which women's environmental organizations had lobbied for women's and environmental rights to be considered in tandem. This, and the 1995 4th Women's Conference in Beijing, agreed for the first time that women's rights and environmental rights could not be disentangled.

By the late 1990s, however, the output on ecofeminism had dropped significantly and there was a sense of it having run out of steam, despite its arguable influence revealed through UN initiatives. However, in the new millennium, a new generation of writers, researchers, and activists has reinvigorated ecofeminist debates, through considerations of ecofeminist citizenship (Sherilyn MacGregor), challenges to some earlier critiques (Niamh Moore), and insertion of feminist concerns into environmental justice (Susan Buckingham and Rakibe Kulcur, and Giovanna di Chiro) and political ecology (Wendy Harcourt, Dianne Rocheleau).

This article considers the heritage of ecofeminism as a multiply braided political praxis and an intellectual position. It examines key critiques of earlier perspectives, before exploring its more recent developments. It considers its relationship with, and potential to enhance other feminist and environmental approaches, particularly those concerned with feminist political ecology and environmental justice. The article concludes with a consideration of how ecofeminism is enjoying a resurgence through a new generation of academics seeking to develop and nuance ecofeminism from a sympathetic position, the emergence of climate change as a major global issue, and the development of social movements in areas not previously associated with feminist environmental action, notably in the Middle East.

Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism is one of the most sophisticated and creative philosophical ecologies. Ecofeminist theory (or at least the Anglo-American varieties that have received the most attention) has sometimes been thought of as emphasizing issues of personal life, values, and spirituality. However, important contributions to social and political theory have been made by ecofeminist thinkers, particularly with the emergence of a materialist ecofeminism that is concerned with the global social order and the place of women in the world economy.

Ecofeminist Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most prominent theoretical critics of the dominant forms of development and globalization. She sees these as a continuation of the project of domination of the ‘other’ (nature, women, indigenous peoples, and subordinate classes) that spans the history of patriarchal, hierarchical civilization. Specifically, she sees development as a transformation of colonialism. Whereas classical colonialism was carried out by the dominant powers through military conquest and occupation, bureaucratic administration, and ruthless industrial exploitation, neocolonial development achieves many of the same goals by means of national elites and more powerful and advanced technologies. Despite its use of nationalist ideology, it continues the colonialist project of annihilation of traditional culture and methods of production.

Such development, or ‘maldevelopment’ as Shiva calls it, presupposes the reduction of both women and nature to passive objects acted upon by economic and technological forces. This reduction not only takes place in the realm of ideas and values but also encompasses a historical project of pacification and disempowerment of women. Whereas conventional wisdom holds that women are more oppressed in traditional societies, and that Westernization and technological and economic development improve their position in many ways, Shiva argues that the reverse is usually the case. Traditional subsistence production depends on greater interdependence and complementarity between men and women, whereas development typically marginalizes women, reduces their status and that of their labor, and increases male dominance. In addition, supposed technological advances impose ecological costs, such as destruction of water and forest resources, that disproportionately affect women and that are not recognized in official indicators.

The work of Australian ecofeminist Ariel Salleh has also made a major contribution to ecofeminist political ecology. Salleh seeks a material basis for ecofeminist politics in the real-world, historically situated condition of women. Her dialectical analysis takes into account the complex interplay between biological, psychological, historical, and cultural factors while avoiding one-sided essentialist and reductionist explanations. She focuses on the magnitude of women’s work, the nature of that work, and the level of exploitation of women’s labor globally. She contends that Marxist analyses have usually had a rather generalized, economic, class-based conception of exploitation, and other leftist positions have substituted for exploitation rather vague conceptions of ‘domination’ that are also inadequate. In neither case has the sexual politics of exploitation been given adequate attention.

Ecofeminist theorists such as Salleh relate political ecology to the ethics of care. For Salleh, care involves an openness to its objects and to the web of relationships in which those objects exist and that constitute them. She cites Sara Ruddick’s concept of ‘holding,’ which is associated with efforts to reconcile differences, create harmony, access resources, and create a sphere of safety for the child, but extends it to protection and restoration at the level of the community and the larger world.

Salleh has developed this concept further in terms of what she calls ‘meta-industrial labor.’ This encompasses the caring, regenerative, productive, and reproductive work of women, peasants, tribal people, and others whose activities are not subsumed within the dominant global economy. According to this perspective, capitalist industrialism upsets the balanced interchange between humanity and the rest of the natural world, producing ecological stress and ultimately severe crisis. The concept of global debt is radically reconceptualized, and it is seen as taking on three forms. These are, according to Salleh, (1) a social debt, resulting from the exploitation of human labor and owed globally by the exploiters to all who are exploited; (2) an ecological debt, resulting from the exploitation of natural resources or natural conditions of production and owed by the global North to the global South; and (3) an embodied debt, resulting from the reproductive labor of those who produce and care for those who constitute the labor force and owed by those who benefit globally from this unpaid labor to those who perform it. Materialist ecofeminism eschews any form of essentialism and bases its analysis on historical forms of labor shared by women and other groups who live on the margins of global capitalism but whose appropriated activity makes that system possible.

Materialist ecofeminists are critical of political ecologies that use technocratic, reductionist, and objectifying categories in analyzing ecological problems and that promote reliance on state, corporate, and nongovernmental organization elites to solve these problems. Their analyses uncover the ways in which development programs often nominally succeed at the expense of intensified exploitation and marginalization of women and traditional communities. They argue for the strengths of traditional subsistence economies that produce for use and fulfillment of communal need. In addition, they point out the broad global scope of struggles in defense of traditional commons, and they attempt to dispel the myth of environmentalism as the preserve of affluent ‘post-materialist’ elites.

11.1 Introduction

The basic principles of ecofeminism require the addressing of the key national and global economics' concerns including the ones created by the simplistic economics formula of inputs required for production being capital, land, and labor to produce outputs. This limited consideration of inputs, according to Henderson (1984) needs to be replaced by the new conceptualization of minimal entropy society with revised key inputs that are required and that cannot be excluded from the equation including capital, resources and knowledge.

Ecofeminism principles are based around nature being the central consideration for preservation and protection, requiring efficient use of natural resources, asking for the consideration of nurturing and community growth and development as important priorities and indicators of success (Henderson, 1984) rather than the conventional economic GDP measures which have been criticized for their lack of consideration of comprehensive performance, output, and impacts at the national level (Stockhammer et al., 1997). The conventional GDP measures are considered as inadequate and unreliable measures of social welfare (Van Den Bergh, 2009). This is a brief consideration of ecofeminism which has been provided here to establish that there is a strong link between environmental economics and ecofeminism and that these principles define the basic premise of environmental economics which entails broader environmental and societal oriented considerations and which encompasses a significant departure from conventional economics' considerations.

The Influence of Ecofeminism

Before the development of gender-focused research coming out of cultural–political ecology, early work in geography that focused on women/gender and the environment had been strongly influenced by US and international ecofeminist scholarship. Women’s relationship to the environment and to natural resources was held up as different from that of men’s and was celebrated. Ecofeminist thought in the US developed during the 1970s along many different lines and in a variety of forms. It is possible, however, to identify two main strands of ecofeminist thought, both of which argue for women’s gender-based interest in environmental conservation or sustainability: cultural ecofeminism (sometimes labeled spiritual ecofeminism) and social ecofeminism.

The cultural ecofeminist strand, which dominated initially, based women’s interest in environmental conservation or well-being on women’s inherent caring or nurturing nature and on a shared subjugation under patriarchal systems. This position is frequently labeled as essentialist, as it bases its understanding of the relationship between women and environment in large part on an essential (or presocial) characterization of women as closer to nature through, for example, the biological realities of human reproduction. The dualisms of nature/culture and woman/man are frequently viewed as parallel in Western society, with culture and man in positions of dominance following the scientific revolution. Under cultural ecofeminism, these dualisms are not rejected but instead are taken as a source of power, aiming to reverse the positions of dominance. The association of women and nature as equivalent sides of dualistic pairs is one sense in which we can consider nature as gendered, and one common image that embodies this association is Earth as Mother.

The predominantly essentialist strand of cultural ecofeminism was partially replaced during the 1990s by a social ecofeminist strand that was primarily constructivist in nature. This ecofeminist position firmly centered women’s interests in conservation and the environment in their socially constructed gender roles of childcare and the gendered division of labor. Women were not considered inherently closer to nature; rather, the sociocultural assignment of specific reproductive and productive tasks to women placed them closer to nature through their labor. In the developed world, the focus has been primarily on child rearing or other caring roles, and these roles have been proffered as an explanation for women’s grassroots activism in environmental health issues. In the Third World, women are generalized as having primary responsibility for subsistence production and natural resource tasks related directly to meeting immediate human needs, such as the provision of drinking water and the collection of firewood for meal preparations. These gender-based labor responsibilities are thought to position women as the first to become aware of environmental degradation and to place their gender-based interests in line with those of environmental conservation. A gender roles approach, as articulated in the 1990s, claims that women’s roles and responsibilities make them resource users and managers, giving them both interests in natural resources and special knowledge of those natural resources.

Keeping this general outline of ecofeminism in mind, it is possible to identify at least three primary influences the different variants of ecofeminist thought have had on geography’s treatment of the connection between gender and the human–environment relationship. These influences are summarized below:

An examination of nature as feminine. The dualistic association of man with culture and woman with nature was initially embraced as a source of power and women’s relationship to the environment identified as superior to men’s. This initial embracing of nature as female later developed into more critical assessments of the ideas of nature or of landscapes as female, with examinations of the sociocultural mechanisms by which nature becomes feminized and explorations of what impact this feminization has on human–environment relations more broadly.

A focus on shared oppressions. Ideas of positionality or the situatedness of knowledge coming out of feminist critiques of science contributed to a treatment of the relationship between women and nature as different from the relationship between men and nature. Since women are oppressed through gender structures, much as nature is oppressed by male-dominated society, women have a different perspective on and knowledge of the environment. This perspective and knowledge was (and continues to be) viewed by some as superior to men’s; however, more recently, this perspective and knowledge is viewed simply as different and as an outcome of all the various aspects of a person’s identity, including, but not restricted to, gender.

An assumption of women’s privileged access to nature through gender roles and responsibilities. Women’s material connections to local environments through their labor can be considered the central core to understanding women’s relationships to environments. The approach taken can vary from an essentialist position which highlights women’s child rearing and subsistence production to a constructivist position which examines gendered divisions of labor specific to a time and place. A more essentialist position views women as natural environmental caretakers or stewards, whose own interests coincide with those of nature. The constructivist position, on the other hand, does not assume women’s privileged access to nature.

Ecofeminism, especially as formulated in the 1970s and 1980s, received much criticism from feminist scholars for its essentialist leanings placing women as closer to nature. Scholars and activists critical of ecofeminism found the continued association of women with nature (as opposed to culture) as problematically reinforcing existing patriarchal structures that oppress women. Third World feminist scholars criticized the essentialist leanings of ecofeminism for creating a single unified image of woman, ignoring the differences among women and the intersections of gender with other social structures such as class, age, and ethnicity.

Feminist geographers and geographers interested in the political ecology of resource access and control likewise have found ecofeminism to be a problematic basis for understanding the gendered aspects of nature and environments. Vandana Shiva has been the foremost shaper of ecofeminist thought with respect to Third World women and environments, and for political ecologists working in the rural Third World her theoretical position has been particularly problematic. For example, Shiva’s 1988 publication, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India, explored the negative effects of the Green Revolution in India on both rural women and the environment and identified a feminine principle which she argued is necessary for maintaining humanity’s balance with nature. This feminine principle represents rural Third World women’s distinct spirituality and relationship to the environment that is crucial for the realization of a just and sustainable development. Many geographers view Shiva’s argument as a romanticization of both the feminine and the indigenous as antidotes to a destructive modernist and capitalist development.

More recently, there have been several scholarly attempts to reclaim the promise of ecofeminism for addressing gender-based oppression and environmental destruction. In 1999, two ecofeminist theorists (Catriona Sandilands and Noel Sturgeon) issued important calls for salvaging ecofeminism, specifically as political action, distinguishable from a theoretical and analytical tool. One body of work (Sandilands) attempts to move ecofeminism forward as a project in radical democracy, with the potential to destabilize hegemonic categories, identities, and discourses. In this effort, it draws upon the constructivist strand of ecofeminism, recognizing ecofeminism’s potential to destabilize, but also identifying significant risks in the strategic application of essentialism for political activist purposes. As argued by many feminist scholars, essentialism reifies existing identities and discourses, in effect legitimizing and bolstering them.

A second body of work (Sturgeon) takes a critical look back at the role played by ecofeminism in international debates during the 1990s around women and environments. It highlights the positive contributions of ecofeminism as an international political discourse, arguing that the intervention of scholars like Shiva into the discourse on women, environment, and development came at a crucial moment in time. Prior to Shiva’s intervention, international discourse had positioned poor women primarily as destroyers of the environment, through their role in population growth and in the necessary provision of basic household needs. This work argues that Shiva’s ecofeminist theory and feminine principle should be placed into a historical and political context that led to the transformation of women into agents for positive environmental change. In this perspective, ecofeminist intervention opened a political space for the participation of women in sustainable development and in environmental conservation as experts, instead of as villains or victims.

2 Three Types of Ecofeminist Positions

Historically, the first strand of ecofeminism was cultural feminism (sometimes referred to as ‘radical’ or ‘spiritual’ feminism). Developed in the early 1970s, cultural feminism reclaims women-nature connections as liberating and empowering expressions of women's capabilities to care for nature. Some cultural ecofeminists argue that women's reproductive capacities provide a biological tie with nature, making women ‘closer to nature’ than men. Other cultural ecofeminists claim that ‘women's closeness to nature’ is embedded in deep social and psychological structures, making women's ways of knowing and moral reasoning better suited to solving environmental problems. Some argue for a resurrection of pre-patriarchal religions and spiritual practices (e.g., Goddess worship or pagan rituals) which honored women's bodies and procreative powers. But all cultural ecofeminists agree that women have a special and useful relationship to the physical world (bodies, nature) which can help end the unjustified dominations of both women and nature.

Cultural ecofeminism has been criticized by social ecofeminists for making essentialist, universalist, and ahistorical claims about both women and nature. Social ecofeminists claim that there is no essential (biological, natural, innate) nature of ‘women’ (contra cultural ecofeminism's essentialism), no homogenous ‘women's experience’ or ‘women's way of knowing’ (contra cultural ecofeminism's universalism), and no ahistorical concept of ‘women’ (contra cultural ecofeminism's ahistoricism). Rather, women's identities are socially constructed, historically fashioned, and materially reinforced through the interplay of a diversity of race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age, ability, marital status, and geographic factors (‘social constructivism’).

A middle ground is suggested by materialist (or socialist) ecofeminism. Socialist/materialist ecofeminism claims that women–nature connections are both socially constructed and biologically predisposed: women's biology (bodies, reproductive capacities) has played a key role historically in the oppression of women and the identification of ‘women’ with ‘nature,’ but women's biology is not destiny. Rather, it is the social, material, and political relationships between women and nature which are important.

What all three strands of ecofeminism add to feminism is the insistence on the relevance of ecology and environmentalism to feminism. While contemporary feminism has made progress in making visible the interconnections among various forms of human oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, ethnocentrism), all ecofeminists insist that feminist analyses be extended to show how the unjustified domination of nonhuman nature (or ‘naturism’) is connected to sexism and other human ‘isms of domination.’

Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism emerged in different geographies through political activism and scholarship around two conjoined categories of “ecology” and “gender.” One of the central tenets of early ecofeminist thinking is that women's oppression under patriarchy is closely linked to the oppression and domination of nature under capitalist, colonial, and modernist forces—including those of Development and Science. The field has since evolved through an intersectional lens that considers the links between gender, race, class, nationhood, animality, and ecology.

As a critical subfield within feminist theory and environmental theory, ecofeminism rose to prominence in the 1980s through the publication of various key texts such as Carolyn Merchant's The Death of Nature and Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature in the United States, and Vandana Shiva's Staying Alive in India. Shiva and Merchant propelled the field forward in the global sphere through their critical contributions to highlighting the deleterious impacts of patriarchal, colonial, and modernist forces, such as development and science, on both women and nature. Within these formulations, both Development and Science are revealed to be dominant social orders with foundational ties to patriarchy and colonialism. Working together, they facilitate the ongoing extraction of knowledge and resources from the Global South to the North, while imposing “masculine” scientific knowledges that displace Indigenous, and women's ecological and scientific knowledges in the South. To Shiva (among others), it is necessary to return to the feminine—in terms of practices and knowledges, to overcome the conjoined domination of the masculine/man over nature and the feminine/woman.

As a body of knowledge and as a foundation for activism, ecofeminism is arguably the most geographically diverse subfield within “gender and nature” and has gained in popularity within environmental movements in the Global North and South. In fact, ecofeminism continues to be employed around the world—for instance, in tracing European colonization of indigenous land and women's bodies through acts of violence in Australia, and to design locally relevant environmental management practices in rural India, among others. Despite its continued relevance, ecofeminism has been critiqued for being essentialist, and for arguing for a power inversion rather than a structural critique of gender—and has since been followed by profound epistemological contestations over several foundational categories including gender. Val Plumwood critiques the dualistic thinking behind essentialist, Cartesian framings of nature–culture, mind–body, man–woman, and so on, widening the scope of ecofeminist theory and practice by identifying continuities and fluidities in place of rigidity and social constructions in place of “natural” characteristics instead.

Following these critiques, several other scholarly and activist strands emerged, such as feminist environmentalism, ecological feminism, social ecofeminism,1 critical feminist ecosocialism, and gender and environment. Yet it remains important to consider the continuing growth and relevance of ecofeminism in various corners of the world, including several calls to revitalize ecofeminism to overcome the nature–culture duality on which it is built, and to integrate an intersectional focus.

The intersections between science, gender, and nature have been critically examined by various social movements and scholarly efforts—especially, to demonstrate the complex ties between gender, sex, biology, scientific knowledge and practice, and environmental risks, hazards, and politics. In a radical move challenging science's established supremacy, postcolonial, Indigenous, and feminist activists have politicized science. Feminist scholarship has since raised important questions about the politics of science, such as: is science truly objective? Is scientific fact, the truth? In what ways and to what extent is scientific practice and theory influenced by social, political, economic and ecological conditions? Ecofeminists and socialist feminists in particular have made major strides in this regard. These moves have engaged both a material focus on the impacts of science on human and non-human bodies, as well as a conceptual focus on the “objectivity” and knowledge politics behind the making and sustaining of “Western science.”

Through their material focus on bodies, these diverse feminist critiques of science have had varied impacts on the theory and practice of western “hard” sciences in particular. In medical research, for instance, there now exists a growing consensus that race, class, sexuality, gender, culture, and other markers of difference have a significant bearing on the results of scientific studies. For instance, in 2014, a set of studies determined that lab mice responded differently to male and female scientists, with the smell of male testosterone triggering a fear response. In other words, they observed that the behavior of mice changed depending on the gender of the researcher who was interacting with them, raising significant questions about the “objectivity” or scientific experiments.

Similarly, other studies have questioned and expanded the notion of scientific objectivity by identifying differential impacts on the outcome of scientific and medical interventions based on race, gender, and cultural factors. In fact, a long legacy of feminist activism to illustrate and recognize the patriarchal foundations and practices of science led to the formation of “Our Bodies Ourselves” in 1969 in Boston, when a group of women participated in a workshop to explore their collective (problematic) experiences with medical doctors. In the following year, the collective published a health information booklet which has since produced varying degrees of gender awareness in scientific practice. At the same time, the selection of topics for scientific research is also mediated by various social structures including gender—a key indicator of this currently is research investment. A recent study of the funding patterns of the National Institute of Health found that women get far smaller grants than men, while there is also significant historical evidence to show not only the racial bias of medical research, but also the ways in which nonwhite and Indigenous peoples have been exploited for the sake of medical research.

As ecofeminists have noted, like “development,” “science” too functions as a tool of modernity. On the one hand, scientific research has been used as an imperial tool to further resource extraction since colonial times—the current practice of which takes many forms including large-scale mining, biocolonialism, and knowledge, and cultural appropriations of many kinds. On the other hand, scientific reasoning has served as a tool of racial, political, and cultural oppression—especially by claiming to be the “one” source of truth. In response to the racist and colonial practices of “Western” science, Indigenous, and subaltern scholars have critiqued the absolutism of science, pointing to the (long and legitimate) existence of “other” sciences. These important philosophical interventions (of Indigenous, feminist, and/or postcolonial STS scholars) aim to strengthen the scope and value of science by broadening its knowledge base to recognize that science is socially embedded, and that depending on historical and geographical contexts, there might be multiple “sciences,” each with its own legitimate claim to truth.

Ecofeminism and Peace

Analyses of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender oppression have been applied in the arena of environmental activism. Ecofeminism has developed as an international movement that includes academic feminists and activist environmentalists globally. Ecofeminism encompasses a variety of approaches to thinking about and acting on behalf of the environment, but all ecofeminists recognize the necessary linkage between a healthy ecology and healthy lives. Ecofeminists view patriarchy as responsible for both gender oppression, and the fate of the poor, and Indigenous people and for systems of production and consumption which view nature as a commodity to be used and discarded. Vandana Shiva has argued that in pursuit of an illusion of progress, development projects designed to promote industrialization on the Western model have enriched their Western sponsors while doing little if anything to alleviate the poverty locally. Worse, they have tended to replace small-scale indigenous ecological practices with large-scale degradation of the environment. Shiva distinguishes between material poverty and spiritual poverty. While in maldeveloped countries material poverty is real and highly visible, it is also relative to the supposed superior standard of living of the developed nations. The spiritual poverty in the midst of material plenty of the developed nations—demonstrated by high rates of mental illness, drug addiction, and personal violence—and the relation between spiritual poverty and estrangement from nature is less visible to Westerners themselves, but still very real (Shiva, 2016).

Sandra Harding and other feminist philosophers of science have argued that science and technology have played a leading role in worldwide patriarchal dominance. The supposed value neutrality and objectivity of scientific method has cloaked science and its resulting technological advances in an aura of certainty and inevitability. In reality, science has been firmly in the control of and has conferred its benefits upon the wealthy and powerful. Its pretense to being a progressive force for all humankind has served to conceal such damaging results as destabilizing and polluting military technologies, exploitation of natural resources, and unchecked consumption. Harding and others have argued that it is important to recognize the validity of indigenous methods of acquiring knowledge (Harding, 1998). It is also necessary to acknowledge that social contexts and value systems influence all forms of knowledge production, including Western science, so that these practices and their results can be properly examined and critiqued. In the absence of these critiques, science and technology will continue to be a force for widening the gap between the richer and poorer nations, resulting in increasing misery and political instability.

Ecofeminism and Peace

Analyses of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender oppression have been applied in the arena of environmental activism. Ecofeminism has developed as an international movement that includes academic feminists and first and third world environmentalists. Ecofeminism encompasses a variety of approaches to thinking about and acting on behalf of the environment, but all ecofeminists recognize the necessary linkage between a healthy ecology and healthy lives for women and children. Ecofeminists view patriarchy as responsible for both the oppression of women, the poor, and indigenous people and for systems of production and consumption which view nature as a commodity to be used and discarded. Vandana Shiva has argued that in pursuit of an illusion of progress, Third World development projects designed to promote industrialization on the Western model have enriched their Western sponsors while doing little if anything to alleviate the poverty of Third World people. Worse, they have tended to replace small-scale indigenous ecological practices with large-scale degradation of the environment. Shiva distinguishes between material poverty and spiritual poverty. While Third World material poverty is real and highly visible, it is also relative to the supposed superior standard of living of the developed nations. The spiritual poverty in the midst of material plenty of the developed nations – demonstrated by high rates of mental illness, drug addiction, and personal violence – and the relation between spiritual poverty and estrangement from nature, is less visible to Westerners themselves, but still very real.

Sandra Harding and other feminist philosophers of science have argued that science and technology have played a leading role in worldwide patriarchal dominance. The supposed value-neutrality and objectivity of scientific method has cloaked science and its resulting technological advances in an aura of certainty and inevitability. In reality, science has been firmly in the control of and has conferred its benefits upon the wealthy and powerful. Its pretense to being a progressive force for all humankind has served to conceal such damaging results as destabilizing and polluting military technologies, exploitation of natural resources, and unchecked consumption. Harding and others have argued that it is important to recognize the validity of non-Western and indigenous methods of acquiring knowledge. It is also necessary to acknowledge that social contexts and value systems influence all forms of knowledge production, including Western science, so that these practices and their results can be properly examined and critiqued. In the absence of these critiques, science and technology will continue to be a force for widening the gap between the richer and poorer nations, resulting in increasing misery and political instability.

Feminist Political Ecology

This approach draws on both feminist ecology and political ecology. It has been influential in human geography, perhaps more so than many other feminist ecological approaches. Ecofeminism is the lens through which many feminist geographies of Nature have been produced. While recognized as a broad church, this approach does not necessarily draw on ecology. Feminist political ecology questions the construction of identity, particularly as a basis for situating the researcher in relation to the research being undertaken. It recognizes multiple subjectivities and seeks to combine traditional geographical research techniques with feminist approaches of participatory mapping and oral histories. The approach also recognizes the gendering of environments. Recent work within this tradition has also noted the rural bias within political ecology, and attempted to address this issue.

The Human

The human is the starting point for most feminist legal theory. The field of posthuman feminist legal thought reaches beyond the human to nonhuman life, the environment, and the material. Ecofeminism challenges traditional environmental law (Rochette, 2002). Maneesha Deckha has argued that understanding animal oppression is essential to both understanding human forms of oppression and developing a coherent concept of justice (Deckha, 2006). Materialism was largely thrown out with the Marxist bathwater of the late twentieth century (Conaghan, 2013), but feminist scholars drawing from Science and Technology Studies are bringing the material back into view, exploring the enmeshment of mind and body, nature and culture, and human and nonhuman forms of agency (Conaghan, 2013). For example, ultrasound allows us to ‘see’ a fetus on a screen, an intermingling of machine, body, and senses that informs ideas of the fetus as an autonomous human life (Barad, 2007). The turn to materiality provides a new lens in the debates among feminist legal scholars on abortion and reproductive technologies.