Earthcare

Women and the Environment

Carolyn Merchant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415908887
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136653223
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Written by one of the leading thinkers in environmentalism, Earthcare brings together Merchant's existing work on the topic of women and the environment as well as updated and new essays. Earthcare looks at age-old historical associations of women with nature, beginning with Eve and continuing through to environmental activists of today, women's commitment to environmental conservation, and the problematic assumptions of women as caregivers and men as dominating nature.

PART ONE

THEORY

I

GAIA

ECOFEMINISM AND THE EARTH

“Gaia (also called Ge) is the ancient earth-mother who brought forth the world and the human race from ‘the gaping void, Chaos.’…Long before she herself was regarded as the mother of the powerful deities, she herself was the powerful deity.” So Charlene Spretnak began her 1978 Lost Goddesses of Early Greece).¹ Spretnak, whose research was initiated in 1975 after a summer seminar on “Women and Mythology,” wished to reclaim the pre-Hellenic goddess myths that existed prior to the transformation of Greece by barbarian invaders (the Ionians, Achaeans, and Dorians) and their patriarchal codification in the seventh century B.C. by Hesiod and Homer.² Her endeavor to reclaim Gaia as an earth-mother was part of an effort among feminists of the 1970s to create a new earth-based form of spirituality rooted in ancient traditions that revered both the earth and female deities. She drew on the work of women writing in the early twentieth century, such as Jane Ellen Harrison (1903), Helen Diner (1929), and Esther Harding (1955), as well as male pioneers such as Johann Jacob Bachofen (1854) and Robert Briffault (1927).³ She composed a myth about Gaia that began:

From the eternal Void, Gaia danced forth and rolled Herself into a spinning ball. She molded mountains along Her spine, valleys in the hollows of Her flesh. A rhythm of hills and stretching plains followed Her contours. From Her warm moisture She bore a flow of gentle rain that fed Her surface and brought life.⁴

Spretnak later incorporated the Gaia creation story into ecofeminism. Nature and women could be liberated through the recognition of Gaia as both the earth and the female aspect of the godhead coupled with the removal of patriarchal constructions of “women as Other and men as godlike and inherently superior.”⁵

Spretnak's identification of Gaia as a powerful feminist and ecological symbol was followed in 1979 by James Lovelock's scientific popularization in his book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Lovelock, whose work began with papers on “Gaia as Seen Through the Atmosphere” in 1972 and on the “Gaia Hypothesis” and homeostasis in 1973 (with Lynn Margulis) drew scientific attention to the concept of the earth as a living organism. The “Gaia hypothesis” proposed that “the entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.” Like Spretnak, Lovelock saw Gaia as part of a religious reverence for the earth: “The concept of Mother Earth, or, as the Greeks called her long ago, Gaia, has been widely held throughout history and has been the basis of a belief which still coexists with the great religions.”⁶

Together, the two approaches of feminist spirituality and scientific theory recast Gaia as a compelling metaphor for a new understanding of and reverence for life on earth. The concept of “Mother Earth,” revived by feminists and central to the cultures of indigenous peoples, was now reinforced by science. The idea took hold in the public imagination when it became the theme for Paul Winter's “Missa Gaia: The Earth Mass” in 1981, and concerts were held in the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and in the Grand Canyon. A National Audubon Society Expeditions symposium, “Is the Earth a Living Organism?”, that included scientists, historians, poets, and American Indians, was held in 1985, and the concept received scientific scrutiny through an American Geophysical Union Conference in 1988. Concerts, poetry, statues of Gaia, Gaia bookstores, whole earth images and catalogues, as well as numerous books and scientific conferences followed during the 1980s and ′90s. A forceful metaphor for a new postmodern age seemed to be in the making.⁷

Yet, however unifying, Gaia is also a problematical image for both environmentalists and feminists. Its message carries cultural baggage that undercuts its inspirational power. If Gaia is a self-regulating homeostatic system, then “she” can correct problems caused by humans or even find humans expendable. Or, as Lovelock queried, “[Which] regions of the earth are vital to Gaia's well being? Which ones could she do without?” These implications undercut environmental caretaking vital to maintaining life as we know it, as well as social justice issues relating to the diversity of peoples and regions. Gaia also raises problems for feminists. As Spretnak herself noted at the Audubon conference on Gaia, “Men in this society have this deeply imbedded idea that Mom always comes along and cleans up after them.” Or, as Australian ecofeminist Val Plumwood points out, Gaia is actually a “super servant” who will keep the planet clean for humans: “It does not matter if we do not wash our dishes and throw our dirty linen on the floor because Gaia, a super housekeeping goddess operating with whiter than white homeostatic detergent, will clean it all up after us.”⁸ These observations about Gaia, both positive and problematical, exemplify one aspect of a much larger debate about the relationships between the domination of nature and women and the liberation of both through ecological feminism.

Ecofeminism emerged in the 1970s with an increasing consciousness of the connections between women and nature. The term, “ecofeminisme,” was coined in 1974 by French writer Francoise d'Eaubonne in 1974 who called upon women to lead an ecological revolution to save the planet.⁹ Such an ecological revolution would entail new gender relations between women and men and between humans and nature.

Developed by Ynestra King at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont about 1976, the concept became a movement in 1980 with a major conference on “Women and Life on Earth” held in Amherst, Massachusetts and the ensuing Women's Pentagon Action to protest anti-life nuclear war and weapons development.¹⁰ During the 1980s cultural feminists in the United States injected new life into ecofeminism by arguing that both women and nature could be liberated together.

Liberal, cultural, social, and socialist feminism have all been concerned with improving the human/nature relationship and each has contributed to an ecofeminist perspective in different ways (Table 2).¹¹ Liberal feminism is consistent with the objectives of reform environmentalism to alter human relations with nature from within existing structures of governance through the passage of new laws and regulations. Cultural ecofeminism analyzes environmental problems from within its critique of patriarchy and offers alternatives that could liberate both women and nature.

Social and socialist ecofeminism, on the other hand, ground their analyses in capitalist patriarchy. They ask how patriarchal relations of reproduction reveal the domination of women by men, and how capitalist relations of production

TABLE 2 / FEMINISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT

	Nature	Human Nature	Feminist Critique of Environmentalism	Image of a Feminist Environmentalism
Liberal Feminism	Atoms Mind/Body dualism Domination of Nature	Rational Agents Individualism Maximization of self-interest	“Man and his environment” leaves out women	Women in natural resources and environmental sciences
Marxist Feminism	Transformation of Nature by science and technology for human use. Domination of nature as a means to human freedom Nature is material basis of life: food, clothing, shelter, energy	Creation of human nature through mode of production, praxis Historically specific—not fixed Species nature of humans	Critique of capitalist control of resources and accumulation of goods and profits	Socialist society will use resources for good of all men and women Resources will be controlled by workers Environmental pollution could be minimal since no surpluses would be produced Environmental research by men and women
Cultural Feminism	Nature is spiritual and personal Conventional science and technology problematic because of their emphasis on domination	Biology is basic Humans are sexual reproducing bodies Sexed by biology/gendered by society	Unaware of inter-connectedness of male domination of nature and women Male environmental-ism retains hierarchy Insufficient attention to environmental threats to woman's reproduction (chemicals, nuclear war)	Woman/Nature both valorized and celebrated Reproductive freedom Against pornographic depictions of both women and nature Cultural ecofeminism
Socialist Feminism	Nature is material basis of life: food, clothing, shelter, energy Nature is socially and historically constructed Transformations of nature by production and reproduction	Human nature created through biology and praxis (sex, race, class, age) Historically specific and socially constructed	Leaves out nature as active and responsive Leaves out women's role in reproduction and reproduction as a category Systems approach is mechanistic and not dialectical	Both nature and human production are active Centrality of biological and social reproduction Dialectic between production and reproduction Multileveled structural analysis Dialectical (not mechanical) systems Socialist ecofeminism

reveal the domination of nature by men. They seek the total restructuring of the market economy's use of both women and nature as resources. Although cultural ecofeminism has delved more deeply into the woman—nature connection, social and socialist ecofeminism have the potential for a more thorough critique of domination and for a liberating social justice.

Ecofeminist actions address the contradiction between production and reproduction. Women attempt to reverse the assaults of production on both biological and social reproduction by making problems visible and proposing solutions (see Table 1). When radioactivity from nuclear power-plant accidents, toxic chemicals, and hazardous wastes threaten the biological reproduction of the human species, women experience this contradiction as assaults on their own bodies and on those of their children and act to halt them. Household products, industrial pollutants, plastics, and packaging wastes invade the homes of First World women threatening the reproduction of daily life, while direct access to food, fuel, and clean water for many Third World women is imperiled by cash cropping on traditional homelands and by pesticides used in agribusiness. First World women combat these assaults by altering consumption habits, recycling wastes, and protesting production and disposal methods, while Third World women act to protect traditional ways of life and reverse ecological damage from multinational corporations and the extractive industries. Women challenge the ways in which mainstream society reproduces itself through socialization and politics by envisioning and enacting alternative gender roles, employment options, and political practices.

Many ecofeminists advocate some form of an environmental ethic that deals with the twin oppressions of the domination of women and nature through an ethic of care and nurture that arises out of women's culturally constructed experiences. As philosopher Karen Warren conceptualizes it:

An ecofeminist ethic is both a critique of male domination of both women and nature and an attempt to frame an ethic free of male-gender bias about women and nature. It not only recognizes the multiple voices of women, located differently by race, class, age, [and] ethnic considerations, it centralizes those voices. Ecofeminism builds on the multiple perspectives of those whose perspectives are typically omitted or undervalued in dominant discourses, for example Chipko women, in developing a global perspective on the role of male domination in the exploitation of women and nature. An ecofeminist perspective is thereby… structurally pluralistic, inclusivist, and contextualist, emphasizing through concrete example the crucial role context plays in understanding sexist and naturist practice.¹²

An ecofeminist ethic, she argues, would constrain traditional ethics based on rights, rules, and utilities, with considerations based on care, love, and trust. Yet an ethic of care, as elaborated by some feminists, falls prey to an essentialist critique that women's nature is to nurture.¹³

My own approach is a partnership ethic that treats humans (including male partners and female partners) as equals in personal, household, and political relations and humans as equal partners with (rather than controlled-by or dominant-over) nonhuman nature (see Conclusion). Just as human partners, regardless of sex, race, or class must give each other space, time, and care, allowing each other to grow and develop individually within supportive nondominating relationships, so humans must give nonhuman nature space, time, and care, allowing it to reproduce, evolve, and respond to human actions. In practice, this would mean not cutting forests and damming rivers that make people and wildlife in flood plains more vulnerable to “natural disasters”; curtailing development in areas subject to volcanos, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornados to allow room for unpredictable, chaotic, natural surprises; and exercising ethical restraint in introducing new technologies such as pesticides, genetically-engineered organisms, and biological weapons into ecosystems. Constructing nature as a partner allows for the possibility of a personal or intimate (but not necessarily spiritual) relationship with nature and for feelings of compassion for nonhumans as well as for people who are sexually, racially, or culturally different. It avoids gendering nature as a nurturing mother or a goddess and avoids the ecocentric dilemma that humans are only one of many equal parts of an ecological web and therefore morally equal to a bacterium or a mosquito.

LIBERAL ECOFEMINISM

Liberal feminism characterized the history of feminism from its beginnings in the seventeenth centur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Women and the Environment
• Part One Theory
• Part Two History
• Part Three Practice
• Index