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Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her 1974 book Le Féminisme ou la Mort. Ecofeminist theory introduces a feminist perspective to Green politics and calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group.
Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism (or materialist ecofeminism). Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, economics, contemporary feminism, and literature.
Ecofeminist analyses address the political effects of culturally constructed parallels between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women. These parallels include, but are not limited to, seeing women and nature as property, seeing men as the curators of culture and women as the curators of nature, and how men dominate women and humans dominate nature. Ecofeminism emphasizes that both women and nature must be respected.
Women have long worked to protect wildlife, food, air and water. These efforts coincided with new developments in environmental theory from writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Rachel Carson. Parallel examples from women environmental ethicists were the books Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams.
Ecofeminist Karen Warren lists Aldo Leopold's essay "Land ethic" (1949) as fundamental to her own ecofeminist philosophy, as Leopold was the first to pen an ethic for the land which understands all non-human parts of that community (animals, plants, land, air, water) as equal to and in a relationship with humans. That inclusive understanding of the environment helped launch the modern preservation movement showing how environmental issues can be viewed through a framework of caring.
In India, in the state of Uttarakhand in 1973, women took part in the Chipko movement to protect forests from deforestation. Many men during this time were moving to cities in search of work, and women that stayed in the rural parts of India were reliant on the forests for subsistence. As documented by Vandana Shiva, Non-violent protest tactics were used to occupy trees so that loggers could not cut them down. In Kenya in 1977, the Green Belt Movement was initiated by environmental and political activist Professor Wangari Maathai. It is a rural tree planting program led by women, which Maathai designed to help prevent desertification in the area. The program created a 'green belt' of at least 1,000 trees around villages, and gave participants the ability to take charge in their communities. In later years, the Green Belt Movement was an advocate for informing and empowering citizens through seminars for civic and environmental education, as well as holding national leaders accountable for their actions and instilling agency in citizens. The work of the Green Belt Movement continues today.
In 1978 in New York, mother and environmentalist Lois Gibbs led her community in protest after discovering that their entire neighborhood, Love Canal, was built on top of a toxic dump site. The toxins in the ground were causing illness among children and reproductive issues among women, as well as in babies born to pregnant women exposed to the toxins. The Love Canal movement eventually led to the evacuation and relocation of nearly 800 families by the federal government.
In 1980 and 1981, women like ecofeminist Ynestra King organized a peaceful protest at the Pentagon. Women stood, hand in hand, demanding equal rights (including social, economic, and reproductive rights) as well as an end to militaristic actions taken by the government and exploitation of the community (people and the environment). This movement is known as the Women's Pentagon Actions.
In 1985, the Akwesasne Mother's Milk Project was launched by Katsi Cook. This study was funded by the government, and investigated how the higher level of contaminants in water near the Mohawk people reservation impacted babies. It revealed that through breast milk, Mohawk children were being exposed to 200% more toxins than children not on the reservation. Toxins contaminate water all over the world, but due to environmental racism, certain marginalized groups are exposed to a much higher amount.
The Greening of Harlem Coalition is another example of an ecofeminist movement. In 1989, Bernadette Cozart founded the coalition, which is responsible for many urban gardens around Harlem. Cozart's goal is to turn vacant lots into community gardens. This is economically beneficial, and also provides a way for very urban communities to be in touch with nature and each other. The majority of people interested in this project (as noted in 1990) were women. Through these gardens, they were able to participate in and become leaders of their communities. Green urbanism exists in other places as well. Beginning in 1994, a group of African-American women in Detroit have developed city gardens, and call themselves the Gardening Angels. Similar garden movements have occurred globally.
The development of vegetarian ecofeminism can be traced to the mid-80s and 90s, where it first appeared in writing. However, the roots of a Vegetarianism ecofeminist view can be traced back further by looking at sympathy for non-humans and counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s. At the culmination of the decade, ecofeminism had spread to both USA coasts and articulated an intersectional analysis of women and the environment. Eventually, challenging ideas of environmental classism and racism, resisting toxic dumping and other threats to the impoverished.
Vegetarian ecofeminists assert that "omitting the Speciesism from feminist and ecofeminist analyses … is inconsistent with the activist and philosophical foundations of both feminism (as a "movement to end all forms of oppression") and ecofeminism." Here, "the personal is political", as many ecofeminists believe that "meat-eating is a form of patriarchal violence." During a 1995 interview with On the Issues, Carol Adams stated, "Manhood is constructed in our culture in part by access to meat-eating and control of other bodies, whether it's women or animals". According to Adams, "We cannot work for justice and challenge the oppression of nature without understanding that the most frequent way we interact with nature is by eating animals". Vegetarian ecofeminism is a clearly committed system of ethics and action. Laura Wright would propose Vegan Studies as an academic discipline.
In terms of the international movement, Ariel Salleh's book Ecofeminism as Politics (last reprinted in 2017) contains a detailed account of women's ecofeminist actions from Japan and the Pacific to Scandinavia.
Building on the work of Rosemary Ruether and Carolyn Merchant, Gaard and Gruen argued that there are four forces behind this political framework:
These four factors have brought Western cultures to what ecofeminists see as a "separation between nature and culture" that is the root source of our planetary ills.
Some ecofeminist approaches developed out of anarcha-feminist concerns to abolish all forms of domination, including the oppressive character of humanity's relationship to the natural world. According to d'Eaubonne's book Le Féminisme ou la Mort, ecofeminism relates the oppression of all marginalized groups (women, people of color, children, the poor) to the oppression and domination of nature (animals, land, water, air, etc.). She argued that domination, exploitation, and colonization under Western Patriarchy society has directly caused irreversible environmental damage. An activist and organizer, d'Eaubonne worked for the eradication of all social injustice, not just injustice against women and the environment.
Influential early texts included: Women and Nature (Susan Griffin 1978), The Death of Nature (Carolyn Merchant 1980) and Gyn/Ecology (Mary Daly 1978), which helped propel the association between domination by men of women and the domination of culture over nature. Meanwhile feminist activism of the 1980s included grass-roots movements such as the National Toxics Campaign, Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA), and Native Americans for a Clean Environment (NACE) led by women devoted to issues of human health and environmental justice. Writing from this circle discussed ecofeminism drawing from Green party politics, , and direct action movements. A key figure at this time was Petra Kelly, a founder of the German Green Party.
Ecofeminist scholars emphasized that it is not because women are female or "feminine" that they are sensitive to nature, but because they experience oppression by the same masculinist forces. This marginalization is evident in the standard gendered language used to describe nature, such as "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature", and the animalized language used to describe women in derogatory terms. By contrast, other ecofeminists prefer to emphasise the value of women's skills learned from the traditional social role as 'caregiver'.
The Indian ecofeminist and activist Vandana Shiva wrote that women farmers have a special connection to the environment through daily experience and that this has been underestimated. According to Shiva's book Staying Alive (1989), women in subsistence economies who produce "wealth in partnership with nature, have been experts in ecological knowledge of nature's processes". She makes the point that "these alternative modes of knowing, which are oriented to the social benefits and sustenance needs are not recognized by the Reductionism capitalist paradigm, because it fails to perceive the interconnectedness of nature, or the connection of women's lives, work and knowledge with the creation of wealth". Shiva attributes this failure to the global domination of Western perceptions of development and progress. According to Shiva, patriarchy has left women, nature, and many other groups outside of the economy, labelling them "unproductive".Shiva, Vandana. "Development as a New Project of Western Patriarchy." Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Feminism, edited by Irene Diamond and Gloria Ornstein, Sierra Club Books, 1990, pp. 189-200. Similarly, Ariel Salleh deepens this materialist ecofeminist approach in a critical dialogue with green politics and ecosocialism.
The key activist-scholars developing a materialist ecofeminism are Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen in Germany; Vandana Shiva in India; Ariel Salleh in Australia; Mary Mellor in the UK; and Ana Isla in Peru. Materialist ecofeminism is not widely known in North America aside from the journal collective at Capitalism Nature Socialism. A materialist analysis studies economic institutions such as labor, power, and property as a critical mechanism for control over women and nature. The contrast is between production, which is valued, versus reproduction of living relations, which is not. This ecofeminism is referred to variously as "social feminism", "socialist ecofeminism", or "Marxist ecofeminism". According to Carolyn Merchant, "Social ecofeminism advocates the liberation of women through overturning economic and social hierarchies that turn all aspects of life into a market society that today even invades the womb". Ecofeminism in this sense seeks to eliminate social Hierarchy which favor the production of Commodity for profit over biological and social reproduction traditionally seen as the sphere of women's work.
In her book Radical Ecology, Carolyn Merchant refers to spiritual ecofeminism as "cultural ecofeminism". According to Merchant, cultural ecofeminism "celebrates the relationship between women and nature through the revival of ancient rituals centered on goddess worship, the moon, animals, and the female reproductive system." Cultural ecofeminist practice intuition and an ethic of care in human-nature interrelationships.
Latin America also had an early ecofeminist trajectory, although with less dissemination and influence in the global feminist theory. However, some scholars would agree that there is still a long way to go in the construction of a Latin American ecofeminism, which considers the leading role in the social and political struggles of rural women in the Global South committed to the sustainability of their practices of food production, the livelihood of their families, solidarity community relations, an inclusive economy and the support of human and non-human life.
From a Feminist Political Ecology perspective, there are new emphases through the cross-cutting influence of posthumanist thought, as well as postcolonial and decolonial ideas. These new emphases allow for a renewed engagement with Latin American and Global South ecofeminisms, while also opening up space for the inclusion of conceptual frameworks, lived experiences, and research contributions from both Latin American academia and activism.
It is also worth highlighting the role of the rural space as a place for deep structural violence against women, which constantly erases the stories, knowledge and experiences of many people, who are not allowed to speak and transmit valid knowledge about themselves and about the relationships of care, existence and life support that they build with nature, contemplating environmental preservation and sustainability.
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Historically, colonialism involved the conquest and exploitation of territories, which also entailed the domination of bodies, particularly female bodies. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, women were subjected to exploitation, including commodification, mass rape, and mutilation. Thus, the conquest of land became intertwined with the exploitation of women's bodies, making their bodies territories to be defended.
The emergence of the cuerpo-territorio concept within indigenous communities is no coincidence. These territories are systematically targeted by extractivism and colonization. Women in these communities are affected in their bodies but also use their bodies to resist and fight. The concept is constructed and utilized in opposition to the hierarchical dichotomy between body and nature, interior and exterior, which supposedly legitimizes the exploitation of nature by bodies.
The concept of cuerpo territorio asserts the body as a continuum of the land, seeing “the body as territory, and the territory as a body”. It frames the body as “ones most intimate and immediate geography,” and affirms a worldview in which bodies are part of the wider network of all life.
As Lorena Cabnal of the Indigenous Women’s Association of Santa María Xalapán explains, " territorio cuerpo-tierra is a motto to be recuperated and defended and implemented as a political banner in the defense of the land. It is a framework of struggle against sexual violence and mining. It is a political category of indigenous community feminism, a way to suggest and feel the body as territory alive and historical. It alludes to a cosmological interpretation and a politic that acknowledges how bodies have a relation and being in the network of all life. Concurrently, it pushes us to rethink how bodies have been constructed by multiple oppressions, the historical structure of patriarchy, colonialism, racism, and neoliberal capitalism, which have led to exploitation via different agreements and policies".
Body mapping creates a physical representation through drawing of the body and the violences it has suffered. This mapping overlays territorial conflicts onto the body to understand them from a corporeal and subjective perspective. Researcher Delmy Tania Cruz Hernández provides a concrete example in her book, recounting the story of a survivor of the Acteal massacre who, after the tragedy, drew a red cross over the heart in her mapping, leaving the rest of the body blank due to trauma. Thus, mapping becomes a form of resistance, concretizing the repercussions of territorial exploitation on bodies.
Body mapping methods often include some variation of the following steps:
It is a concept that is used in decolonial ecofeminisim, political ecology and critical geographies. Latin American decolonial thinking in critical geography and political ecology serves to think of the embodiment of collective death and further debates on collective bodily autonomy.
Lobos Castro argues that the historical and structural dispossession of water in Chile - accelerated by Chile’s Water Code of 1981 with water as a common good began to fade - has produced an ecological and personal harm. This includes contamination, reduced access to water for subsistence agriculture, and exposure to toxic agrochemicals. Despite these challenges women in Chile developed "re-existences": practices of resistance and resilience that include reclaiming ancestral knowledge, cultivating communal solidarity, and defending local ecosystems. These actions reassert their connection to the land and their agency over environmental and social conditions.
The concept of agua terrritorio emphasizes the gendered nature of environmental conflicts and the importance of integrating women's voices and experiences in struggles for ecological justice and territorial autonomy.
Meanwhile, ecofeminists were opposing liberal or 'equality' feminisms on the basis that mainstream political institutions are unconsciously masculinist - both sex/gender exclusionary and destructive of the environment. In an interview, ecofeminist Noel Sturgeon pointed out that what the anti-essentialists failed to recognise is a political strategy used to mobilize large and diverse groups of women, theorists and activists alike.Michiels, Nete. "Social Movements And Feminism." Women & Environments International Magazine, no. 92/93, 2013, pp. 15-17. Additionally, Charlene Spretnak characterized ecofeminism as concerned with a wide agenda, including reproductive technology, equal pay and equal rights, toxic pollution, Third World development, and more.
Norie Ross Singer emphasized that ecofeminism should be understood as advancing multiple axes of identity such as gender, race, and class as inter-meshed in human-nonhuman relationships.Norie Ross Singer, "Toward Ecofeminist Communication Studies," Communication Theory
While the theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether rejected mysticism, she argued that spirituality and activism can combine effectively in ecofeminism. On the other hand, social ecologist Janet Biehl criticized ecofeminism for what she saw as a mystical reading of women and nature with not enough attention to the actual conditions of women’s lives. Biehl judged ecofeminism an anti-progressive movement for women. In the 21st century, some ecofeminists aware of these criticisms began renaming their work under other labels - like 'queer ecologies', 'global feminist environmental justice', or 'gender and the environment'.
Today the majority of ecofeminist thinkers and activists recognize both culturally constructed and embodied sex/gender differences. Moreover, socialist ecofeminists have always situated gender roles in a political economic framework, arguing for a radical materialist politics. Socialist feminists show clearly that women’s supposed intrinsic connection with nature is a socially constructed ideology. As Ariel Salleh has pointed out, the anxiety over essentialism was mostly found among North American liberal and postmodern feminist academics. In Europe and the global South, the interplay of class, race, gender and species dominations and exploitations is grounded in a materialist analysis of socio-economic relations.
Catia Faria argues against the ecofeminist view that the main harm to non-human animals in the wild comes from patriarchal culture. It follows, she argues, that it is mistaken to argue that the conservation of nature is the best solution here. Instead, she contends, natural processes themselves are a source of immense suffering for wild animals and that we should work towards alleviating the harms they experience, as well as eliminating patriarchal sources of harm, such as hunting.
/ref> A. E. Kings identified this analysis as fundamentally 'intersectional'. Vegetarian ecofeminists have contributed to intersectional analysis as well, by joining a political focus on animal rights with activism for all oppressed life forms, including laboring men.
Miscellaneous criticisms
Environmental justice and feminist care ethics have pushed for participation of all marginalized groups, working against racism, ageism, ableism. Andrew Charles points out that Disability still face issues of access and representation in policy making. He suggests that the nurturing aspect of ecofeminism might be patronizing to marginalized groups. Likewise, a radical white savior complex could disrupt the self-advocacy of racially marginalized peoples around the world.
Theorists
See also
Further reading
Key works
Anthologies
Journal articles
(2025). 9780080970875 ISBN 9780080970875
Fiction
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External links
Categories: 1974 Neologisms, Articles Containing Video Clips, Environmental Humanities, Environmental Movements, Environmental Social Science Concepts, Environmentalism, Feminism And Health, Feminism And History, Feminist Movements And Ideologies, Feminist Theory, Green Politics, Left-wing Politics, Liberalism, Political Ecology, Progressivism, Relational Ethics, Social Justice
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