Ecofeminists tend to suggest that the subjection of women and the subjection of nature are linked. What do they mean by this? Is the claim valid?

Clearly, from the guilt provoking (to men) statements above, ecofeminists suggest a positive link between the subjection of women and nature. It could be deduced from reading these deliberately aggressive statements, that Warwick Fox was right to see ecofeminist arguments as ‘simplistic’ in targeting men as ‘. . .responsible for ecological destruction . . . ’. This essay will contend that the ecofeminist position - or more accurately, positions, as there are many variations - is far more complex, and analytically useful than this however, by first examining what ecofeminists mean by this link, followed by some evidence of the validity of the claim. Before doing this, it is necessary to put contemporary ecofeminism into historical perspective.

Ecofeminism with its many strands is the latest of a number of variants of feminism. New forms of feminism have been developed as new forms of male domination of women are discovered. This tradition goes back to the opposition to legal subjection identified by Wollstonecraft in 1792 and Mill in 1869. As women in the industrial/capitalist North in the 1960s discovered their brave sisters of the feminist movement of a generation before had only just begun the march toward sexual equality which the removal of some of the more blatant barriers such as the right to vote and divorce had promised. Economic and social factors were brought into the calculations by socialist/Marxist/anarchist feminists while middle class Americans opted for the essential biological/psychological difference references which led to the call for separation by radical feminists.

In 1973 drawing upon all of these strands and increasing fears of planetary ecological meltdown ecofeminism was named by d’Eaubonne. As she writes:

This link between the male power to control and the doomsday predictions at the time of the world becoming a ‘barren desert’ by 1985 as a result of the policies which male dominated society had engendered are a logical extension of the feminist agenda. Clearly to target a group (men) who unjustly cling to power to the detriment of the other group (women), is not ‘scapegoating’ - which implies blaming the powerless for your own faults as racists do for example - as Fox claims. Targeting men as responsible for these policies is correctly identifying the group responsible in feminist terms. Not all feminists involved in the ecological movement or in developing ecological political theory would continue to take this line, d’Eaubonne’s suggestion of population control through planned enforced contraception for example, would much later be criticised as a masculinist policy by Salleh in another context. Taking the process full circle, Biehl, in 1991, claimed the position of environmental activist and feminist but against ecofeminism which she saw as a ‘disquieting tendency’ as she felt that, ‘[a]dmitting "woman equals nature" social constructions that enforce patricentricity into a movement that calls itself feminist is a Trojan horse’. In a similar vein Willis contends that:

Despite these attacks on ecofeminists’ core values by their ‘alleged sisters’ many ecofeminists continue with the core premise as outlined by d’Eaubonne and by de Beauvoir before her, that the subjection of women and the subjection of nature are linked.

That this link between the position of women and nature is the central tenet of ecofeminism is therefore, agreed by both critics and supporters of ecofeminism. What is meant by this is, however, widely differently interpreted. To the feminist critics above, it is a derogatory slur on women; to Fox it is a ‘simplistic . . . . denial of responsibility . . . for ecological destruction . . .’. Most importantly, perhaps, ecofeminists and the predecessors they claim as their inspiration differ to a significant degree on its meaning. For example Mellor cites de Beauvoir’s psychological theory of woman and nature as ‘Other’ as the originator of the link thesis. Merchant uses historical evidence to say that,

She goes on to say that this cultural association became one of oppression by men with the coming of the scientific revolution. As she says:

Merchant sees this,

In other words it has become a cultural assumption of modernity that man and culture are superior and dominant over woman and nature. According to King,

So, another but not entirely separate meaning for the link between women’s and nature’s subjection by men is that put forward mainly by social/ist (anarchist/Marxist/socialist) ecofeminists although it is worth pointing out that boundaries are blurred and it is ‘not easy to slot ecofeminists into particular camps’ because they are in the process of developing a new political theory as a result they tend not to have a dogmatic party position. This social/ist ecofeminist interpretation refers back to the lead quotes and to d’Eaubonne’s assertions that the exploitation of women, nature and in some interpretations all other exploitations, such as racial and economic can be traced back to the original prehistoric oppression of women by men. They tend to ground these assertions of present day oppression in convincing statistical evidence of actually existing exploitation, to back their claim that to liberate women and nature both must be set free from the masculinist shackles. As Salleh says:

Similarly Mellor argues that:

These experiences are what is central to the link in Mellor’s view. The relations between men and women, and men and nature are abusive power relations, a social construct growing out of a man-made capitalist patriarchy with no biological or spiritual justification. This currently existing reality links the dominance of men in powerful positions, despite women’s legal equality of opportunity in the rich North, to the global dominance of the North over the South and the resulting ecological crisis. Mellor argues that:

This assertion that global ecological sustainability and gender justice are interlinked extends the agenda of feminism, from contentment ‘with nothing more than equality alongside men in the existing system’ to the more ambitious aim, in Salleh’s opinion, of carrying ‘forward four revolutions in one.’ These revolutions are:

This may seem a wide ranging and ambitious checklist of wrongs to be righted, but other social/ist ecofeminists would see any list as too limiting and see oppression of all kinds as their natural enemy. Plumwood calls this a ‘General Theory of Oppression’, a model which encompasses both a unified and a multiple structure of oppression and she justifies it with the label of ecofeminist ‘since most women are oppressed in multiple ways, as particular kinds of women, women’s struggle is inevitably linked with other struggles’. Mellor would comply with this view as she says:

This link of women’s and nature’s oppression by men, which stands at the head of all these competing models, is more than a useful form of analysis, it is a basis for revolution! The position of women and of nature is to underpin patriarchal capitalism. Salleh convincingly postulates that:

This being the case, and with patriarchal capitalism spinning out of control towards ecological disaster, it would seem fair to suggest that we face not the old options of ‘socialism or barbarism’, but the new ones of ‘ecofeminism or global ecological meltdown’.

With this straightforward, challenging and convincing, anti - capitalist/patriarchy and pro- feminine/womanist social/ist, class based, ecofeminist analysis, so well covered by a wide selection of authoritative ecofeminist theorists, it seems strange that it is the spiritual and biological models which are most often attacked as proving the simplistic and irrationalist nature of ecofeminism by its critics. Perhaps this is because they are easy, tried and tested targets. As Mellor says:

She goes on to cite a number of supposedly traditional matriarchal or egalitarian traditional societies which on closer inspection turn out to exploitative of women and usually nature as well.

All this said despite their apparently disparate positions, ecofeminists tend to think of their and of women’s similarities and points of agreement as most important.

Finally, the claim that women and nature are both exploited by men and capitalism is certainly valid. What is traditionally regarded as women’s work such as caring and nurturing the sick, children and frail elderly and the complex, boring and repetitive drudgery of home managing is undervalued and underpaid or unpaid. Men as a result in the main remain in the traditionally male work roles of full time, wage paid, hierarchical employment. This capitalist patriarchal structure which owes its wealth to the unsung and unpaid labours of women, also continues - despite increasingly dire warnings of global catastrophe - to churn out its damaging fossil fuel/nuclear electric/chemical consumer produce to provide the short-lived synthetic dream of the good-life to those few North dwelling men, in the shortening space of ‘leisure time’ they have to crawl about the smog filled, car clogged Northern streets.

That both women and nature are exploited by the same ‘global web of oppression’ seems the most valid and important claim of ecofeminism, clearly valid from a mountain of evidence. What is not so clear is whether the two modes of oppression are linked in any tangible way beyond coincidence, and whether the emancipation of one, would lead necessarily to the freedom of the other. In a way this does not matter so much, as surely the goal of a non-hierarchical sustainable future which ecofeminism promises is the only one worth pursuing. After all, firstly, who would want to live in an infinitely sustainable hierarchically exploitative society even if such a thing is proven to be possible? The ‘picture of the future’, as ‘a boot stamping on a human face - for ever’, from Orwell’s, Nineteen Eighty-four, is an unappealing one to anyone. It would without doubt be unacceptable to the exploited majority who would have to comply with the painful transition which moving to the post patriarchal/capitalist sustainable future society would engender. Secondly, there would be no point in achieving a sexually egalitarian society - favouring either feminine or masculine values - unless that society was ecologically sustainable because it as any other, would have a limited life expectancy. In the long or short run - depending on which theory of impending ecological disaster proves to be true - as Mellor says, ‘it will run up against ecological limits’. The only acceptable future for all is a social ecofeminist revolution!