What Is Ecofeminism and Why Does It Matter?

Ecofeminism is defined by academics as a mix of political activism and intellectual critique that takes on traditionally harmful systems within both gender dynamics and the environment. It sounds complex, and it is. But its core principles are clear.

“Bringing together feminism and environmentalism, ecofeminism argues that the domination of women and the degradation of the environment are consequences of patriarchy and capitalism,” write the authors of a 2019 piece in the American Journal of Educational Research. “And, to fix both these wrongs means acknowledging that the two are intricately linked.”

As Gloria Steinem, one of the Women’s Media Center’s co-founders likes to say, we are linked not ranked.

“Any strategy to address one must take into account its impact on the other so that women’s equality should not be achieved at the expense of worsening the environment,” the report continues, “and neither should environmental improvements be gained at the expense of women.

Ecofeminists argue that the oppression of women parallels that of the environment, which “has led to environmental destruction by the controlling patriarchal society,” write the authors of the journal report.

IUCN, the world’s largest environmental network, says that “ecofeminism proposes that only by reversing current values, thereby privileging care and cooperation over more aggressive and dominating behaviors, can both society and environment benefit.”

We are clearly at an urgent moment in regard to the environment, and, hopefully, we are also at a moment when women will have the opportunity to help save us all from ourselves.

More than ever, the climate movement must include and acknowledge the roles of women in the fight to save the planet. Long kept out of the rooms where policy decisions are made, women throughout the world are, ironically, often in charge of feeding and providing health care to their families, yet are somehow allocated the fewest resources to do so.

But framing the problem like this — with women as victims — “leads to solutions that address the problem (women’s troubles), not its causes (men’s greater responsibilities and failures relating to climate change),” write sociologists at the University of Kansas.

Aka men need to step up.

“Our current dialogue on climate change remains framed around achieving climate goals without sufficient consideration of who is involved and how those outcomes will impact different segments of society, including women,” according to He for She, an organization started by the United Nations as a means of promoting alliances between men and women.

The group points out that more than 90 percent of heads of governments and companies are men — many are managers of the corporations that are responsible for emissions. He for She argues that heads of government “are operating in an environment with a clear objective of protecting the economic and political interests of their countries with regards to climate change. In the process they formulate policies that deepen gender inequalities and harm the environment further.” Men at the heads of corporations operate in what the group calls a “power-oriented masculinity.”

It may help to envision Gaia — the ancient Greek goddess who embodies the Earth — as a means to understanding how intricately connected women are to the environment.

“Ecofeminists understand human beings as not being separate from or above nature,” write the authors of the American Journal of Educational Research report. “They are one small part of a whole, rather than the pinnacle of nature. In separating nature from persons, humanity creates a concept of nature which is made up of dead, unintelligent matter.”

Amid the struggle to be heard and included, these authors offer hope: “Given that the subjugation of women and nature is a social construct, not a biological determinant, these relationships have the potential to change.”