Our Shared Shelf discussion

Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism that sees environmentalism and the relationship between women and the earth, as foundational to its analysis and practice. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world.

Several ecofeminist scholars have made the distinction that it is not because women are female or "feminine" that they relate to nature, but because of their similar states of oppression by the same male-dominant forces. The marginalization is evident in the gendered language used to describe nature, such as "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature", and the animalized language used to describe women. Some discourses link women specifically to the environment because of their traditional social role as a nurturer and caregiver. Ecofeminists following in this line of thought believe that these connections are illustrated through the coherence of socially-labeled values associated with 'femininity' such as nurturing, which are present both among women and in nature."

But the world was much different than when this term was first introduced in the 1970's.

How has our language evolved in the 50 years since then?
How has our perceptions of gender and gender roles evolved over the years?
How has Eco-feminism evolved since it began? Or, how has it not?

I'm not sure about all that... But Emma recently talked a bit about the subject in her Teen Vogue interview with the author of Sex + World Peace

EW: "How can you focus on gender equality when there won’t even be a planet to have gender equality on if we don’t fight climate change?" And it’s about, well, how are you going to fight climate change?

VH: How did we learn to treat Mother Nature the way that we have? That's the way we’ve been treating women, right? How we’ve treated women is actually the template for how we’ve treated Earth, and I think that one of the reasons that many of the central figures in the climate change movement are women is that you can’t care about Mother Earth unless you actually care about women.

EW: Yes. My friend said something devastating the other day — she said, "Do you think if we started describing Earth as male, if we gave Earth a male pronoun, do you think that people would treat Earth better?"

VH: Yes! Yes, they would!

EW: That is so depressing! And such a good point.

VH: Start calling it Father Earth and see what changes.

EW: If we give Earth a male pronoun, maybe we’ll stop pillaging and destroying and killing it.