Today, we have two key issues on the agenda: the status of women and the state of the environment. How closely are they connected?
The ecofeminist movement advocates an approach that intertwines the issues of women’s empowerment and efforts to preserve our planet's resources. But what does the movement involve? What is its history? What are its “trends” and leading figures? How does it apply to real life? And what criticism has it drawn? The EVE webmagazine editorial team takes a closer look.
1973-74: Garhwal-Paris – ecofeminism has twin roots
A militant pamphlet in Paris
The word “ecofeminism” was coined by the philosopher Françoise d’Eaubonne in her essay Feminism or Death . Behind its radical title, the work is a chilling prediction of the world as we now know it, five[RS2] decades later: natural resources are being depleted faster than they are being replenished, demographic issues are generating mass tension, conflicts on access to land, water and forests are raging, and health challenges sparked by new diseases from animals are wreaking havoc.
Eaubonne condemns the “phallocracy”, a term she coins in the process. In her view, two developments are at the root of a broken economy and society that now threaten the entire planet: the recent history of institutions that have shut women out of decision-making, and the rise of industrialization, which organized the exploitation of natural and human resources, women above all.
An eco-peaceful disobedience movement in India
At the same time, five 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 arrival of industrial factories in their forests when just a short time before, the women’s request for aid to cultivate local land had been denied. These women decided to join hands and form a human chain around the forest to prevent the felling of trees in preparation for the factories.
Their peaceful action paid off: the authorities abandoned the industrial project and, after several years of discussions, declared a moratorium on the felling of trees in several regions of India. On the strength of this victory, the women of Garhwal brought the movement new momentum. They made themselves known to major NGOs who supported other actions to protect the environment and they decided to work on taking a more organized approach to empowering each other.
Actions with meaning
The Women's March on Arlington
At the same time, the ecofeminist movement was emerging in English-speaking countries as well. In 1980, a group of women fighting for gender equality and against the nuclear arms race organized a major conference: “Women and Life on Earth”.
A few months later, the event’s participants met for the Women’s Pentagon Action: more than 2,000 women marched on Arlington, to the headquarters of the US Department of Defense. The demonstration started from the city cemetery where, symbolically, they gave burials to women who have since disappeared from memory due to the Matilda effect, victims of domestic violence, and medieval “witches”.
Then they reach the Pentagon, which they surrounded by stretching out scarves between each woman and chanting anti-war slogans, demanding measures against guns, and denouncing the violent toys that are given to young boys. They decorated the building with flowers, feathers and leaves and wove colorful threads at the entrances, symbolizing that all life is connected.
The Greenham Common “Peace Camp”
In 1981 on the other side of the Atlantic, about thirty Welsh women opposed to NATO's plan to install nuclear missiles at the Greenham Common military base set up a “peace camp”. Hundreds of other women soon joined them. In December 1982, 30,000 of them surrounded the base. The following year, another campaign brought together 10,000 women who formed a human chain more than 20 km long, connecting Greenham to an armaments factory. A few months later, 50,000 women protested against a delivery of nuclear weapons to the base. And several times a year, until 2000, they carried out actions for peace, environmental protection and women’s rights.
They were mocked in the early days, especially by the press. Journalists expressed surprise that women claiming to want to fight for their children's future were out protesting rather than taking care of them at home! Then, they were criticized for the illegal nature of their actions. Eventually, they were seen 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 merging of feminism and ecology.
Tensions between ecofeminism and “generalist” ecology
The tensions between ecofeminists and more “generalist” ecologists were exacerbated at the end of the 20th and early 21 st centuries. The main reasons are as follows:
- Environmentalists are annoyed by the insufficiently universalist approach to a problem as global as the future of the planet, especially when the spotlight turns to single-sex activist groups. More pragmatically, they consider that such a crucial challenge must be met by more than one half of humanity, especially when that half is paid the least attention.
Ecofeminists feel somewhat dispossessed as the environmental question becomes more integrated into politics: the cause is now part of the institutional political game. “Green” parties are flourishing, sometimes showing very honorable scores in elections and securing a place for themselves in political debates... Ironically, they reproduce the mechanisms of the glass ceiling even within their parties! Unfortunately, some early activists saw mostly men taking the microphone in front of the media and occupying elected “environmental party” seats. What's worse is that many studies show that women actually take more everyday action to protect the environment.
- 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 are sources of pollution, and disposable diapers are stereotypically associated with making mothers’ lives easier. There is also a long list of environmentally friendly behavior that weighs on women’s mental loads: who cooks homemade food for the kids, having taken care to buy organic local produce? Who remembers to take a recyclable bag to go grocery shopping? Who recycles the waste? Who cares about washing clothes at 30° if higher temperatures aren’t necessary? Who organizes the children's birthday party, providing bamboo straws, recycled paper plates (after wondering if “eco-friendly” disposables are better or worse than cleaning pots with water heated by nuclear energy, the list goes on.
The illustrator Emma, who popularized the notion of the “mental load”, believes that as long as we aren’t sharing 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 gathered at the debate table to warn listeners about a range of inequalities that make women vulnerable to climate change. In certain parts of the world that are highly exposed to tsunamis and massive flooding, girls are taught less than boys how to swim and climb trees. Women also have less access to information, which delays their search for shelter. And because they make up the majority of single parents, they are more limited 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. ONU 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 MacBain [RS5] Mkandawire, executive director of Youth Net and Counselling in an interview with Novethic. Then there are parents who struggle to feed everyone, and inheritance strategies that aim, where arable land is scarce, to “rationalize” (!) how it is divided among families.
Women are the first victims of climate change, yet they are the last to get a seat at the table when the environment is being discussed. Noting how few women were among the state representatives at COP21, the UN issued a statement calling for more inclusion, in the spirit of Resolution 1325. Adopted by the Security Council in 2000, that resolution aimed to increase women's participation in conflict resolution talks, as well as their involvement in reconstruction and peacebuilding programs.
Women Who Change the World: Environment & Empowerment
Many initiatives led by women to help “save the planet” receive supportive recognition in the form of financial and material aid, skills-based sponsorship and varying degrees of 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, and many others, all support entrepreneurial projects with a double benefit: empowering women and driving social and environmental innovation.
For Hélène Conway-Mouret, head of the international division at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the challenge is now to scale up these projects. This would allow the women who lead them to benefit beyond simply meeting their own basic needs and those of their communities. It would also allow their ideas to spread and expand within the global economy.
This view echoes the work of Nobel laureate 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 Elinor Ostrom, the only other woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, the environment, the “Common Good” par excellence, and the inclusive sharing of the power to act, which is no less a common good itself, are both in great need
