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THEORY OF ECO FEMINISM

Eco feminism has the potential to bring feminist insights to environmental ethics. Most accounts of environmental ethics. Most accounts of environmental philosophy, including those of many deep ecologists have been inhabited by a heavily masculine presence.

Plumwood (1993)

Eco feminism emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as multitude forms of feminist and environmental theories and activisms intersected. Ecofeminism combines the theory and practice of feminism and environmentalism, and is believed to be coined by French scholar Franoise d Eaubonne in her book Le fminisme ou la mort which means Feminism or Death published in (1974). It is a synthesis of feminist and ecological movements that shares their common social and political concerns about capitalist industrialized societies treatment of women and nature. It goes beyond these two movements (feminism and environmentalism) to advocate using feminist and environmental principles to promote social and green justice and develop a new relationship that would give equality to all -humans and nature alike. Early ecofeminism mostly stressed the biological similarities of women and the Earths reproductive capacity and thus provided an essentialist explanation of capitalist industrialized societies mistreatment of both. By 1990, though, ecofeminism had developed into a sophisticated and diverse intellectual discourse and political movement that promoted womens and environmental rights, social justice, and green consciousness, and social activism in the West and in some developing countries.

Ecofeminism asserts that all forms of oppression are connected and that structures of oppression must be addressed in their totality. Oppression of the natural world and of women by patriarchal power structures must be examined together or neither can be confronted fully. These socially constructed oppressions formed out of the power dynamics of patriarchical systems. In one of the first ecofeminist books, New Woman/New Earth, Ruether, states:

Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the demands of the womens movement with those of the ecological movement to envision a radical reshaping of the basic socioeconomic relations and the underlying values of this [modern industrial] society (1975: 204).

Ruether makes clear a central tenet of ecofeminism: Earth and the other-than-human experience the tyranny of patriarchy along with women. Classism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, naturism and speciesism are all intertwined.

The most crucial issue that the world faces today is the degradation of land and environment and its consequences on human life and existence. The advancement in science, technology, agriculture and medicine, the excessive craze for modernization at the cost of ecological balance and the race for nuclear arms by the big nations have adversely affected the environment. Women, all over the world, have started to take an active role in protecting the environment, as evidence in various movements such as Chipko movement in India, Japanese womens movement against food pollution, Kenyan womens green belt movement and Native American womens research on toxicity in breast milk. It is this recent interaction between women and environment which has paved the way for the emergency of ecofeminism.

The representation of womens potential to bring about an ecological revolution, to ensure human survival on the planet. In this neologism, what is evident is not only the interest of women to protect the environment from exploitation, but also their isomorphic relationship with the environment, for both woman and environment share the same fate of being equally exploited by the male down the years. The twin issues of ecofeminism make it a revolutionary ideology for both male and female thinkers to embrace in their writings.

Ecofeminism is a theory which has developed from different fields of feminist enquiry and activism, like peace movements, labor movements, and womens health care and anti-nuclear, environmental and animal liberation movements. The purpose of ecofeminism is to end all oppressions, arguing that no attempt to liberate women, or any oppressed group, will be successful without an equal attempt to liberate nature. According to Greta Gaard:

Drawing on the insights of ecology, feminism and socialism, ecofeminisms basic premise is that the ideology which authorizes oppression such as those based on race, class, gender, sexuality, physical abilities is the same ideology which sanctions the oppression of nature. (Living Interconnections1)

Ecofeminism is a value system which explores the links between androcentricism and environmentalism destruction. Ecofeminism is both an activists, ecofeminist have been involved in environmental and feminist activities, in forming a political platform for US Green party and in involving in different ecofeminist cultural projects, such as ecofeminist art, literature and spirituality. They have taken up a variety of issues like toxic waste, deforestation, military and nuclear weapon policies, reproductive rights and technologies, animal liberation and agricultural development.

Ecological critique was an important part of womens movements worldwide from mid 1970s; the earliest event described as making a connection between women and environment was in 1974, at the Women and Environment Conference at UC Berley, organized by Sandra Maburg and Lisa Watson. An ecofeminist newsletter, W.E.B: Wimmin of the Earth Bonding, published four issues from 1981-83. The initiating event of US ecofeminism was Women and Life on Earth: Ecofeminism in the 1980s, a conference at the Amherst, organized by Ynestra King, Anna Gyorgy, Grace Paley and other women from anti-nuclear, environmental and lesbian feminist movements. In London, Women for Life on Earth (WFLOE) group was formed in 1981, inspired by Amherst Conference entitled, Reclaim the Earth: Women Speak Out for Life on Earth appeared. It was edited by Leonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland and published by the Womens Press in London. Woman Earth Peace Institute, an ecofeminist educational centre, under the leadership of Ynestra King and Starhawk was started in 1985, in order to derail the white domination within ecofeminism. Inspired by these activities, ecofeminism began to develop as a politics which attempted to combine feminism, environmentalism, anti- racism, animal liberation, anti- colonialism, anti- militarism and non-traditional spiritualities.

Ecofeminist have outlined a number of connections between oppression of women and environment which help to understand why environment is a feminist issue and why feminist issues can be addressed in terms of environmental concerns. One view is that, since patriarchy equates woman and nature, a feminist analysis is required to arrive at the root of environmental problems. In other words, where women are degraded, nature will be degraded and where women are thought to be eternally giving and nurturing, nature will be thought of as fertile and exploitable.

Another position argues that an effective understanding of womans subordination in western culture requires an environmental analysis. In a culture that is in many ways anti-nature, and maintains assumptions regarding cultures superiority over nature, understanding women as closer to nature relegate them to an inferior position.

In the third position is based on a historical, cross-cultural and materialist analysis of womens work. Taking into consideration womens predominant role in agricultural production and the managing of house-hold worldwide, this position maintains that environmental problems affect womens work more severely and are detected faster by women than by men. Another argument is that women are biologically closer to nature due to their reproductive characteristics like menstrual cycles, lactation and birth, which keep them in touch with the seasonal and life giving rhythms of nature.

There is a lack of agreement between the different positions mentioned above. The first two positions see the connection between women and nature as patriarchal and the fourth position sees this connection as empowering to women. A few nature-based religions like paganism, witchcraft, goddess worship and Native American spiritual traditions contain strong images of female power. Spiritual ecofeminists are those feminist who aim to review the goddess worshiping culture, which centers power in women, in opposition to the patriarchal religions, where power is centered in man. This party began with works like Mary Dalys Beyond God-the Father, Starhawks The Spiral Dance, Carol Christs Womanspirit Rising, Merlin Stones When God Was a Woman and Gloria Feman Orensteins The Reflowering of the Goddess. Spiritual ecofeminists view spirituality as an important dimension of ecofeminism and consider it to be an important dimension of ecofeminism and consider it to be an attitude of reverence for the earth and of an ecological and non-sexist consciousness. Janet Biehl, on the other hand, challenges the Goddess revival trend, by arguing that there is no correlation between Goddess worship and an elevated status for women.

There are some criticism against ecofeminism, that it is dualistic, partial, anti -rational and essentialist. Some critics argue that ecofeminism conceives women as a homogenous whole without making adequate distinction between different races, nationalities and classes. But, due to shared circumstances, women have similarities in experiences and consciousness across national and class boundaries.

One major attack against ecofeminism is that it claims woman an essential nature, a biological connection and a spiritual affinity to nature that man does not have. Some Carolyn Merchant posits womens relation to environment as socially constructed and as arising out of historical and materialist conditions. They are of the view that womens environmental enlistment arises out of womens political agency, rather than an essential similarity to nature. Regardless of their theoretical positions, both the essentialists and the anti- essentialists agree that there are important conceptual connections between the oppression of woman and that of nature. Most ecofeminists agree that fundamental social change is necessary; everything in nature has got intrinsic value; anthropocentric view should be replaced by a bio-centric view; man should work with the land instead of trying to control it; one should move beyond power and accept an ethic based on mutual respect; and the false dualism based on male-female polarity should be integrated.

Liberal, Marxist and Socialist feminism differ from ecofeminism in that they are anthropocentric they raise humans above animals and nature and hence fail to tackle the environmental issues. Liberal feminism argues for equal opportunities, but does not question the underlying structure of patriarchy. Marxist feminists argue that economic inequalities should be abolished and women should be integrated into production for their liberation. But Marx viewed animals and nature as just objects to be used in the service of humanity. Compared to Marxist feminism, the theory of socialist feminists is more comprehensive. They have incorporated gender analysis which class analysis, but they lack a concern for animals and nature. In short, anthropocentric theories aim at integrating women into the realm of culture and production.

On the other hand, radical feminism, addresses the connection between women and nature/animals. They see women as closer to nature and men to culture and reject the cultural in favor of the natural. They raise what they considered to be womens values and thus echo the patriarchal notion that women and nature are essentially connected. Radical feminists just turn the hierarchy upside down; they devalue men and thus fail to eliminate the oppressor and the oppressed.

The difference between ecofeminism and environmental theories such as eco-Marxism, eco-socialism, mainstream greens, deep ecology, and social ecology is that the latter is gender blind and so; it hides problems rooted in dominance, power and masculinity.

Eco-Marxists are at the extreme of the environmental movement because of their faith in industrial technology and their view of progress as liberation from nature. Orthodox eco-Marxists also assume that scientific laws of nature and instrumental reason would help humans to predict and control the consequences of disrupting natural process. The solution to environmental problems are dictated by masculines terms like control, choice, change, rather than feminist concerns of relationship, communication and caring, that are necessary for living in harmony with nature.

Eco-socialists like Raymond Williams, Joe Weston, Martin Ryle locate the root of ecological problems in the control of resources and accumulation of wealth by few. Socialists aim to bring social reform by rearranging external social relations. They do not theorize the personal dimension of power or power or link the masculine psyche with structures of power.

Mainstream greens, the vast majority of environmental activists, are those who have recognized the fundamental interconnections between social justice, peace, democracy and environmental quality. But they believe that the given political system is adequate. They assume that man is rational and social change can be achieved by appealing to reason.

Deep ecologists believe that mans failure to identify and empathize with nature results from the way he experiences the world. They believe that anthropocentricism and human chauvinism have led to mans estrangement from nature. Deep ecologists deny the significance of gender and feminist analysis and so perpetuate the dualistic thinking which they wish to transform.

Social ecologists, who follow the work of Murray Book chin, trace the origins of the exploitation of nature to hierarchical social institution, beginning with gerontocracy and patriarchy. But, fundamental to this theory is a rather masculinist conception of evolution. All these theories fail to demystify the ideological props that support the exploitation of nature, such as, the idea that humanity is, by nature, masculine. They fail to recognize the fact that the causes of environment problems, as well as those of racism, colonialism, capitalism and militarism, stem from the elevation of values considered to be masculine, such as, competitive individualism, instrumentalism and progress, as freedom from natural constraints. As these theories are gender blind, they cannot tackle the abuse of power at personal and political realms and hence fail to provide a holistic approach to the problem.

Ecofeminists argue that the phallocentric metaphysical dualism like culture/nature, human/animal, reason/emotion, mind/body, self/other, subject/object, activity/passivity, form/matter, and man/woman is the reason for all oppressions. In dominant patriarchal cultures, higher value is associated with masculinity, a construction that is called hierarchical dualism. The western metaphysics, as well as modern schools of thought possesses an andocentric stance which eventually results in all forms of domination. Nature and woman are together associated and attributed with a passive and secondary status.

Aristotle argues that women, by nature, are inferior to men, thus biology is used to perpetuate hierarchical power relations between the sexes that keep women dependent and suppressed. Aristotle demarcates the realm of men and women by identifying men with polis or public sphere and women with oikos or house hold. In Nicomachean Ethics, he says, man is born for citizenship (qtd. in Pettus 135), by which he means that such a privilege is denied to woman. It is significant to note that the term ecology, like economy, originated from oikos, whose master is man.

Hegle, following the Greek notion, identifies home and women with natural existence and men and polis, with the sphere of universality. Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Descartes consider reason to be of supreme value and identify it as different from body and emotions. They devalue changeable matter and nature and relegate them to the realm of the non-rational. In western and eastern metaphysics, the feminine has been identified with the earth, nature and body.

According to Nietzshe, women lacks the artist forming power and so she can serve only as an object to be idealized and perfected by artists vision. Thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Jean Jecques Rousseau, Sigmund Freud and Sartre also consider woman to be inferior to man.

Nature, imaged as female, is depicted as other, out of which culture and masculine identity took shape. An examination of Homers Illiad and Aeschylus Orestia revels that polis as a concept is established through its opposition to nature and to the unruly female forces associated with it. Francis Bacon, who envisioned creating a blessed race of heroes and supermen wanted to dominate both nature and society. In Bacons New Atlantis, women are in the same of submission as in Aristotles oikos.

Mans alienation from nature and domination of the same is central to Karl Marxs analysis of modes of production. For Marx, all production involves transformation of nature by human beings through and within definite forms of society. Human freedom and social progress can be achieved only by dominating nature and making it human nature.

Nature and women came to be recognized as objects to be utilized as resource and to be controlled and subjugated. The Greek concept of techne and phusis, which roughly meant culture and nature respectively, had an underlying dichotomous nature. Phusis came to be understood as standing reserve of energy in service of techne.

In Christian conception of Being, God is the great craftsman and phusis is the passive matter created by God. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nature was still the formed matter of God, but was understood as a complicated mechanism whose structure was believed to be rationally known. With the advent of modern physics, nature began to be understood as energy. During the industrial revolution of the mid eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, technology, with the help of physics, was able to attach nature. Today, nature has been reduced to a field of objects controlled, manipulated and utilized by the humans. Carolyn Merchant, in The Death of Nature, assesses the role of science in resulting the destruction of nature:

The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the cosmos constituted the death of nature the most far reaching effect of the scientific revolution. Because nature was viewed as a system of dead, insert particles moved by external, rather than inherent forces, the mechanical framework itself could legitimate the manipulation of nature. Moreover, as conceptual framework, the mechanical order had associated with it a framework of values based on power, fully compatible with the directions taken by commercial capitalism. (182)

It is significant that patriarchy equates both woman and nature using sexist and naturist language, thereby foregrounding the exploitation of both. Terms like Gaia, which in Greek means goddess of the earth; Mother earth, Virgin forest, are some examples for this. The two dominant images of woman, Pandora Eve, bear semblance with the dominant images of nature, as beastly and seductive. Both nature and woman are depicted as either objects to be possessed and idealized or as evil some, irrational and wild, so that it should be enslaved or destroyed. It is significant to note that the concept of masculinity is associated with heroic deeds of hunting, killing and colonizing. In many tribal cultures, initiation rites include a young mans endeavor to hunt and kill a beast. Triumph over a demonic beast is a recurrent theme in patriarchal mythologies. Thus Apollo slays Gaias python, Perseus kills the three headed Medusa, Hercules defeats the multitheaded Hydra and in Christian tradition, archangel Michael is depicted as a notable dragon-slayer. Roderick Nash, in Wilderness and the American Mind, quotes a guide book for pioneer settlers: You look around and whisper, I vanquished the wilderness and made the chaos pregnant with order and civilization, alone I did it! (qtd. in Devine 65). The sexual imagery involved in this statement cannot go unnoticed.

Ecofeminism, as a discourse, is interested in the processes by which woman and nature have been associated over the centuries, in order to liberate both, from the dualities, man and culture. The western metaphysics and epistemology are based on a sense of human subject. The paradigm of human being as a rational creature, divorced from environment, is a concept which represses ones body, emotions, desires and sensitivity. As Bigwood says:

To reweave relations between culture and nature, we need a philosophy of the human being that celebrates difference and diversity, a rationality that is open to contingency and passion and a techne that works in accordance with the rhythms of phusis, that lets beings appear not only in the light of an instrumental reason but in their own wondrous coming-forth from concealment. (201)

Women, animals and nature are seen to be exploited and manipulated for commercial gains. In the name of research and scientific progress, there is so much of exploitation of animals. It has been found that between seventeen and seventy million animals are killed in US laboratories even year. Animals are exploited and often genetically manipulated for consumption as food. The industrialization of agriculture has resulted in controlling the reproductive system of female animals. The egg and milk industries are apt example of corporate exploitation of female animals like hens and cows. Dairy cows are impregnated annually in ordered to keep them in constant lactation. After the infant is taken from her at birth, she is impregnated again. Man, who harnesses animals as his slaves, denigrates woven as breeders of children.

The new developments in biotechnology and genetic engineering have affected the rhythms and regenerative capacities of woman and nature. Commercialization of reproduction has made reproductory organs new sites of investment and experimentation. Shiva states in Ecofeminism: the land, forests, rivers, oceans, having all been colonized, it becomes necessary to find new spaces to colonize because capital accumulation would otherwise stop. The only remaining spaces are those within - within plants, animals and womens bodies (274).

Ecofeminists question the objectification of female body for the purpose of male consumption. Pornography and rape are the two patriarchal practices through which female body is manipulated as an object to satisfy male sexuality. Pornography presents images of selected areas of dissected female body. Shiva states in Ecofeminism:

Like the yearning for nature, the yearning for the dissected, naked female body is wholly consumerist. It cannot be satisfied by interaction with a living person but only by the response to lifeless pictures. [] a further point is that these one-dimensional images in no way threaten the male ego. (135)

Violence committed to female body through rape reduces the body to the status of a raw material. When women become victims of violence, treatments of animals are recalled. Victims of rape have often reported to have been treated as pieces of meat, at the hands of their oppressors.

Ecofeminist theory recognizes sympathy and compassion as the fundamental feature of any libratory theory. It overcomes the pitfalls of feminist and animal liberation theories by its non hierarchical analysis of social issues. For anthropocentric feminists, other is non-human animals and nature; for radical feminist it is culture and man; for animal liberationists, it is human emotion and collectivity. Ecofemiist theory opposes the dualistic constructions and aims to establish a different system of values where the category of other is re-evaluated. Ecofeminists argue that life on earth exists as an interconnected web, not as a hierarchy. There is no natural hierarchy; human hierarchy is projected into nature and then used to justify social domination.

Ecofeminists theory seeks to show the connections between all forms of domination, including the domination of non-human nature, thus ecofeminists practice is necessarily anti-hierarchical. Ecofeminism, which argues for a harmonious interrelationship among men, women and biosphere, becomes the need of the hour, to ensure the survival of humankind.

Ecowomanists and African-American ecofeminists, express related concerns. They identify with racism as the first and most dominant oppression in their experience, while sexism is secondary. As Shamara Shantu Riley points out in Ecofeminism and the Sacred:

There are several differences between ecofeminism and Afrocentric ecowomanism. While Afrocentric ecowomanism also articulates the links between male supremacy and environmental degradation, it lays far more stress on other distinctive features, such as race and class, that leave an impression markedly different from ecofeminists theories (Riley in Adams 1993: 197).

With the growing recognition of the extensive environmental racism in the United States and on a global scale, ecowomanists and others determine that their political alliances need to shift from a feminist agenda to one more directly engaging issues of race and class. This complexifying of interconnected oppressions, a central tenet of ecofeminism, continues to arise within the varieties of ecofeminism itself.

Globalization of all aspects of environmentalism has begun to shift the momentum in ecofeminism as well. Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Ruether, ed. 1996) provides insight into Latin American, Asian and African ecofeminism. Ruether remarks that while ecofeminism is not a movement in these large geographical areas, the global dialogue inspired by connections between the oppression of women and nature needs to be recognized. The contributors are all local/global activists and their work speaks to the globalization of ecofeminisms. The Con-Spirando Collective in Chile collaborated with Ruether in developing the volume. Con-spirando, translated as breathing with or spiritual conspiracy, tries to weave a network of women throughout Latin America who are interested in feminist theology, spirituality and ecofeminism while also holding womens rituals (1996: 51). This collective publishes a magazine by the same name and operates a womens center in Santiago in addition to focusing specifically on ecofeminist activisms and analyses.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, from the tribal community of the Igorots in the Philippines, reflects on the spiritual links between women and nature in Igorot culture. But the introduction of high-yielding varieties of rice seeds (HYV) has disrupted womens spiritual leadership roles (in Ruether 1996: 105). Finally, Sarah Mvududu, with the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project in Zimbabwe, claims gender is also fundamental in understanding human interaction with the environment and with respect to natural resources (in Ruether 1996: 144). She explains this by analyzing Shona beliefs and woodland management. Spirit mediums, often women, are deeply involved with sustainable woodland development in Zimbabwe and their connection to sacred places where trees are protected is requisite for reforestation.

Ecofeminism has not been without critics, from ecofeminists themselves as well as from others. Some of the most ardent critics question the woman/nature link that is sometimes placed at the core of ecofeminism, as evidenced in the title of such essays as Sherry Ortners Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? (1974). Because of the strong womannature connection assumed and developed in some ecofeminist positions, various feminists distance themselves from ecofeminism and suggest that it is essentialist in nature. Essentialism claims that cross -culturally and cross-historically those of a particular race, gender or other category share the same traits. Many expressions of feminism and ecofeminism argue against all such essentialist constructions, while others expressions seem to maintain essentialism. Kate Nash, in her 1994 essay The Feminist Production of Knowledge: Is Deconstruction a Practice for Women? published in Feminist Review, clarifies the tension between the deconstructive politics of feminism and the assertions, or constructions of unified identity that feminists are frequently called on to make on behalf of the category women which gives the project its political specificity (Nash 1994: 756).

Various attempts at typologizing feminisms and ecofeminisms have been made and are helpful for clarifying the diverse perspectives, though it should be noted that even these designations are understood differently by different ecofeminists. Cultural and radical forms tend to idealize the feminine whereas activist (and theoretical) ecofeminists usually see their position as an analysis of a particular historical and cultural phenomenon. Some activist ecofeminists do engage in shifting political alliances that employ essentialist arguments functionally, but disengage from these alliances and reform others as requisite for effectively subverting patriarchal structures. One of the most helpful treatments of this continuing, sometimes heated, interaction among diverse manifestations of ecofeminism is Noel Sturgeons work Ecofeminist Natures: Race, Gender, Feminist Theory and Political Action (1997). In addition to these groupings within ecofeminism are ecowomanism, mentioned above, with a focus on race as the primary lens through which to view oppressions, and animal rights-oriented ecofeminism. There are also those who consider themselves spiritual ecofeminists, such as Starhawk, embracing the religious, Earth-goddess-based components of the position.

As ecofeminism continues to shift and grow, different positions will surely form and surface, while other positions and alliances will fade away or be replaced by more urgent connections. Diverse understandings regarding the nature of the web of relationships between various spiritual/religious traditions and ecofeminism could endure. Ecofeminism and deep ecology may continue wrangling. Issues of racism, population growth and the valuing of some humans over others, or of all humans over other than-human animals, will fold the thoughts and actions of ecofeminists on a global scale.

Toni Morrison is also considering like great ecofeminist writer because her eco feminist concern for nature has seldom been studied. Her works are significantly inclined through the nature and environmental issues. In this sense, the third and fourth chapters analyze the aspect of eco feminism concept.