Two major issues are on the agenda today: the status of women and the environment. What if these two themes were closely linked ?

 

 

The ecofeminism movement defends this approach, which intertwines the issues of women's empowerment and those of preserving the planet's resources. But what does this movement cover? What is its history ? What are its " currents " and figureheads ? What are its concrete applications? What criticism does he receive, too ? The editorial staff of the EVE web magazine takes a closer look at the concept.

 

 

 

1973-74 : Garhwal-Paris – double birth certificate of ecofeminism

 

A militant pamphlet in Paris

The word " ecofeminism " appears for the first time in the pen of the philosopher Françoise d'Eaubonne in her essay Feminism or Death. Behind this radical title, a visionary reading of the world as it will confront a whole series of emergencies four decades later: natural resources that are being depleted faster than they are being replenished, demographic issues generating massive tensions, conflicts related to access to land, water and forests, health challenges more or less closely linked to the relationship between humans and animals...

 

Eaubonne accuses : the " phallocracy " (whose term it also coins). The recent history of institutions that have excluded women from decision-making and that of industrialization that has organized the exploitation of natural and human resources (especially women) would be at the origin of a dysfunctional economy and society, threatening the entire planet.

 

 

An eco-peaceful disobedience movement in India

At the same time, 5 time zones east of Paris, illiterate villagers in the Indian region of Garhwal launched the Chipko movement to contest the government's decision to support the establishment of an industrial company's factories in their forests when they had not been denied aid to cultivate local land. These women, holding hands, decide to form a human around the forest, to prevent the felling of trees in the area where the company wants to set up.

 

Their peaceful action paid off : the authorities abandoned the industrial project and, after several years of discussion, declared a moratorium on the felling of trees in several regions of India. On the strength of this victory, the women of Garhwal gave a new dimension to the movement : they made themselves known to major NGOs who supported them in carrying out other actions to protect the environment and they organized themselves to work for the empowerment of each other.

 

 

 

Actions with a high symbolic significance

 

The Women's March on Arlington

At the same time, the ecofeminist movement was emerging in the Anglo-Saxon world. In 1980, a group of women committed to both gender equality and the nuclear arms race organized the major conference " Women On Life And Earth ".

 

A few months later, the participants in this event met for the Women's Pentagon Action : more than 2000 women marched on Arlington, where the headquarters of the US Department of Defense were located. The demonstration starts from the city's cemetery where, symbolically, they give burials to women, from invisibilized by the Matilda effect to victims of domestic violence and medieval witches.

 

Then they reach the Pentagon which they surround by holding each other with scarves while chanting anti-war slogans, demanding measures against guns, denouncing the violent toys that are given to little boys from childhood. They decorate the building with flowers, feathers and leaves and weave canvases on the entrances with colorful threads that symbolize that all life is connected.

 

 

 

The Greeham Common " Peace Encampment "

On the other side of the Atlantic, in 1981, about thirty Welsh women opposed to NATO's plan to install nuclear missiles at the Greenham Common military base set up a " peace camp" there. Soon there are hundreds of them to join him. During an action in December 1982, 30,000 of them surrounded the base. The following year, a new action brought together 10,000 women who formed a human chain of more than 20 km to rally Greenham to an armaments factory. A few months later, 50,000 of them met to protest against a delivery of nuclear weapons to the base. And several times a year, until the year 2000, they carried out actions for peace, environmental protection and women's rights.

 

In the early days, they were mocked, especially by the press, which was surprised that women who said they were fighting for their children's future would rather be activists than take care of them at home ! Then, they are more and more often questioned for the illegal nature of their actions. Before finally being considered as a community of marginalized women, also challenged in the 1990s by the more " mainstream " pacifist and environmentalist movements who considered their action counterproductive and were annoyed by the rapprochement between feminism and ecology.

 

 

 

Tensions between ecofeminism and " generalist " ecology

The tensions between ecofeminists and ecologists, who can be described as more " generalist ", are exacerbated at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Various causes for this :

 

• On the side of the movement for the preservation of the environment, we are embarrassed by the insufficiently universalist approach to a problem as global as the future of the planet, especially when we shine the spotlight on activists organized in single-sex groups. More pragmatically, we consider that we cannot leave such a crucial challenge to be met by only one half of humanity, especially when it is the one that is least listened to.

• On the side of ecofeminism, we feel somewhat dispossessed by the integration of the cause of the environment into the institutional political game: " green " parties are flourishing, which sometimes show very honourable scores in elections and make a place for themselves in the political debate... Whereas they are not without reproducing the mechanisms of the glass ceiling within them! It is a shame, for some early activists, to see a majority of men at the microphone of the media and in elected seats carrying the theme of ecology... What's more, when various studies show that women are more virtuous on a daily basis in acts of environmental protection.

• On the side of feminism, which does not claim to be ecofeminism as such, some are concerned that the message of defending the environment could threaten women's rights: the contraceptive pill is singled out for its indirect consequences on aquatic ecosystems, sanitary products accused of polluting, as well as disposable diapers whose use is attributed by stereotypical reflex to the practicality of the maternal function... And the list is long of what the ecological requirement translated into " everyday gestures" weighs on the mental load of women : who cooks " homemade " for the little ones while having taken care to buy good organic locally produced  ? Who has thought to take a recyclable bag to go shopping ? Who sorts the waste ? Who cares about washing clothes at 30° if it is not necessary to boil them? Who organizes the children's birthday party by providing bamboo straws, recycled paper plates (after wondering if the balance of the " clean " disposable is more or less heavy than that of a large dish with water heated by nuclear energy)?  etc.

 For the illustrator Emma, who popularized the notion of " mental load", as long as we have not made progress on the front of the sharing of domestic tasks, women will be confined to this ecology of invisible and undervalued " small gestures ".

 

 

 

The revival of ecofeminism from 2015

 

The " first victims, first actors " paradigm

After a period of marginalization, ecofeminism was powerfully revitalized with the COP21, at the heart of which the UN decreed that one day (December 8, 2015) would be entirely dedicated to the issue of gender equality in environmental issues.

 

Experts, NGO representatives, political and cultural personalities are parading to the debate table to warn of a whole series of inequalities in the face of climate change that make women precarious: they are taught less to swim and climb trees than boys in certain regions of the world that are precisely likely to be victims of tsunamis or gigantic floods ; they have less access to information, which delays their shelter ; They are a majority of single parents with children and are therefore more impeded in their mobility when they have to flee...

 

On arrival, they are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters, according to the UN. LONU Femmes France also highlights the increased risk of sexual assault and domestic violence during exceptional situations such as natural disasters or health crises.

 

Climate change also has indirect, more unexpected but frighteningly real effects, such as an increase in the number of forced marriages, according to Mac Bain Mkandawire, executive director of Youth Net and Counselling, interviewed by Novethic. This is due to the difficulty of parents to feed all mouths and patrimonial strategies aimed, in situations of scarcity of arable land, at " rationalizing " (!) their distribution between families.

 

Women are the first victims of climate change, but they are the last at the table when it comes to discussions on the environment. Noting their scarcity among state representatives at COP21, the UN is issuing a statement to demand that they be better integrated in the same spirit as Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000 by the Security Council to increase women's participation in discussions on conflicts and peace agreements as well as their integration into reconstruction and consolidation programs.

 

 

 

Women Changing the World : Environment & Empowerment

Many initiatives led by women to help " save the planet " benefit from a benevolent promotion , between financial and material aid, skills sponsorship and more or less media coverage. The Grameen Bank founded by Muhammad Yunus, the NGO Ashoka, the Les Audacieuses program developed by La Ruche, the Danone Fund for the Ecosystem, among others, support entrepreneurial projects with double benefits : women's empowerment and socio-environmental innovation.

 

For Hélène Conway-Mouret, director of the international sector of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the challenge today is to scale up these projects, so that the women who carry them can benefit from them beyond the satisfaction of their basic needs and those of their communities, and allow their ideas to spread and increase in the global economy.

 

This statement is in line with the work of the Nobel Prize in Economics Esther Duflo on the dynamics of women's empowerment and economic development: if social innovation is largely driven by women around the world, it is not possible to base its financing on solutions of moderate ambition. Echoing the work of the other woman who received the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom, the " Common Good" par excellence that is the environment and the one that is no less the inclusive sharing of power to act are in great need of means !