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Women/nature or gender/
history? A critique of
ecofeminist ‘development’
a
Cecile Jackson
a
School of Development Studies , University
of East Anglia , Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ
Published online: 05 Feb 2008.
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Women/Nature or Gender/History? A
Critique of Ecofeminist 'Development'
CECILE JACKSON
The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, April 1993, pp. 389-419
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
390 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
LOCATING ECOFEMINISM
Two major strands in western environmentalism have been defined as the
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dominion, over nature, the opposition between the transcendent and the
immanent has been constant in western European thought, with male
transcendentalism valued above female immanence. Simone de Beauvoir
expressed this in her analysis of the nature of women's subordination -
because men are unable to create through biological reproduction, theirs
is an artificial creation - human culture.
The female, to a greater extent than the male is the prey of the
species; and the human race has always sought to escape its specific
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destiny. The support of life became for man an activity and a project
through the invention of the tool; but in maternity woman remained
closely bound to her body, like an animal It is male activity that
in creating values has made of existence itself a value; this activity
has prevailed over the confused forces of life; it has subdued Nature
and Woman [de Beauvoir, 1988: 97],
Some ecocentric perspectives blame the ideology of scientific and tech-
nologicalprogress for initiating the exploitation of women and nature,
while others posit deeper and more universal roots of such exploitation,
however, both turn upon the association of women with nature and tend
to deal with gender ideologies and metaphors in isolation from changing
material conditions of life.
Ecocentric environmentalism originates largely in American transcen-
dentalism and that European romanticism which revolted against
rationalism and science, and which valued instinctive, intuitional and
emotional forms of knowledge. 'Poets and artists like Wordsworth,
Shelley and Blake in England lambasted the 'dark satanic mills' of the
first Industrial Revolution and turned to a celebration of the countryside
and rural life which was qualitatively new in it's conscious rejection of
industry, the city and even of scientific rationality itself [Kitching, 1982:
2) Romanticism values nature above culture, and reappears in contem-
porary 'deep ecology' and bioethics as well as ecofacism and
ecofeminism. The current resurgence of ecocentric environmentalism
against the 'economic' and the instrumental represents an assertive
romanticism with a clear political agenda [Scarce, 1990].
Agrarian populists idealise peasants as self-reliant, independent,
cooperative, innovative and resistant to the inequalities of capitalism.
'The appeal of such virtuous constructions of peasant life is reinforced by
another pervasive motif of resistance to urban industrial civilisation and
its discontents, that of a direct relation with nature in securing a liveli-
hood from the land' [Bernstein, 1990: 70]. Ecofeminists conceive of the
virtuous woman in the same manner that agrarian populists conceive of
the virtuous peasant: they idealise women and obscure the divisions
392 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
a peaceful, if mythical, rural idyll out beyond the high rise flats and
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Defining Ecofeminism
Although ecofeminism is still taking shape it is possible to outline some
key positions shared by a range of ecofeminist literature - these can be
grouped around the woman-nature linkage, the opposition to domina-
tion of nature by culture and the belief in non-hierachical networks in
nature.4
Perhaps for most feminists the alleged women and nature connection
has been seen as an important underpinning of the subordination of
women [Brown and Jordanova, 1982], with the implication that by
challenging this connection with nature women will be liberated. This has
been called the masculinising wave of feminism: aiming at equality
through becoming like men. Ecofeminists argue against this 'resolution'
of the woman: nature question. Will separation from nature make
women fully human? If humanity has been defined in the absence of
women, and in opposition to nature, and we align ourselves with the
human, where does that leave the 'non-human'? Is it progressive for
WOMEN/NATURE OR GENDER/HISTORY? 393
women to be absorbed into a masculine defined relationship with the
non-human based on dominance, control, and exploitation? The eco-
feminist position suggests that
risen from savages; everyone else believes they descended from the gods'
[Sahlins, 1976: 52-3].
A second type of explanation is offered by feminist anthropologist
Sherry Ortner [1974] who has suggested that women were subjected
because of their perceived 'naturalness'. Maternity is more obvious than
paternity and women's bodies and functions make them appear more like
animals.
(1) woman's body and its functions, more involved more of the time
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with 'species life', seem to place her closer to nature... (2) woman's
body and its functions place her in social roles that in turn are
considered to be at a lower order of the cultural process than man's
... (3) woman's traditional social roles, imposed because of her
body and its functions, in turn give her a psychic structure, which...
is seen as being closer to nature [Ortner, 1974: 72-3]
than men, and this provides the basis for the universal subordination of
women' [Brown and Jordanova, 1982:392, original emphasis]. We might
also raise here the problem of the identity of the perceiver: who sees
women as closer to nature? Men, women or anthropologists? Ortner's
model assumes a common symbolic system, and therefore fails to inves-
tigate whether women see themselves as closer to nature. It seems a
strange irony that radical ecofeminists are likely, given the 'mutedness'
[Ardener, 1975] of dominated groups in expressing alternative world-
views, to be accepting the dominant male model.
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and the harmony between men and women. It ruptures the cooperative
unity of masculine and feminine and places man, shorn of the feminine
principle, above women and nature and separated from both [Shiva,
1989: 6].5
Shiva gives an account of the link as one of shared similarities: (i) both
women and nature are female, (ii) both create and sustain life, (iii) both
have suffered colonisation [Rao, 1991: 17]. But the circularity of the
argument fails to convince. Ecofeminist literature also relies heavily on
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relation to men that accounts for their participation in work for food
alone [Monimart, 1989]. Another example is an article which remarks
that women collect only dry wood for fuel... 'women have rules about
fuel collection that expressly prohibit the cutting down of living trees.
Dead and downed wood is preferred. In addition, certain species may be
protected by custom or religious sanction. In parts of India women water
the peepul tree as an act of piety' [Fortmann, 1986: 40]. What is not said
here is that dead wood is lighter and easier to carry. Environment friendly
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And furthermore -
The instance always cited to support these two points is the Chipko
movement, which developed out of a Gandhian social development
movement, in mid-late 1970s in Garhwal division of Uttar Pradesh. The
context was one of local anger over government forest policy which
denied local use of trees whilst giving logging rights to large companies.
Floods during the 1970s and land slips were perceived by the social
workers as caused by deforestation [Jain, 1984:1788]. The initial involve-
ment of women in the demonstrations occurred when village men were
lured away and the logging company arrived unexpectedly, but women
then became the mainstay of a movement which spread widely and
focused on demonstrations, in which trees were hugged, to prevent
logging.
Chipko is usually represented as demonstrating women's concern for
conservation, disembodied from material or ideological considerations,
and it has been very widely used as an example of spontaneous environ-
mental and community commitment by women. In addition, it is also
suggested, with reference to the Chipko slogan 'what do the forests bear?
Soil, water and pure air', that the Chipko women have 'a holistic
understanding of the environment in general and forests in particular'
[Agarwal, 1991: 53-4]. It is not clear, however, that an understanding of
hydrological cycles can be neatly read off from such a slogan given the
established influence in the area of the Gandhian social development
activists responsible for the mobilisation around their perception of
deforestation as causing landslides and floods. The verities of women's
environmental knowledge has to be assessed in the light of analysis which
suggests that geological forces rather than deforestation are the likely
WOMEN/NATURE OR GENDER/HISTORY? 403
once submissive and obedient wives who, through their great love for
trees, veneration of nature and instinctive understanding of ecological
principles, rose up spontaneously and risked life and limb for their
forests.
Gail Omvedt has commented that ecofeminists would argue that 'it is
precisely because women do tend to be bearers of continuity with the past
or of traditions in harmony with nature that they can stand in the
forefront of movements like Chipko and that such movements can come
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ever, who in some parts of Africa such as Nigeria constitute the majority
of rural-rural migrants [Mortimore and Wilson, 1965:35], the movements
consequent on marriage, divorce and widowhood mean that they may
well have a shorter term knowledge of, and commitment to, any
particular set of CPRs. Clearly, the degree to which this happens depends
on the extent of patrilocality, the degree of exogamy, the divorce rate, the
age gap between spouses, as well as the perceptions by women of the long
term security of their usage of particular CPRs. It is worth reiterating the
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Marxist truism that property relations exist not between people and
things but between people and people.
There is another sense in which life cycles mediate women's experience
of environmental incentives. There are power relations between women
within households; a woman may be dominated by her husband's mother,
or an elder wife in polygamous households, and carry a disproportionate
burden of wood and water collection as a young wife but come, with age,
to make use of junior women too. Thus the division of labour may
allocate wood collection to wives but if a wife can delegate the means by
which she meets that responsibility then the incentive (increased time in
collection) towards tree replanting may not be felt equally by all wives.
Life cycle processes intervene in various ways to pattern both environ-
mental knowledges and incentives to positive environmental manage-
ment.
The importance of residence patterns in forming environmental at-
titudes has been hinted at above. Patrilocal marriage is the dominant
form in Zimbabwe, (although in some areas brideservice practices lead to
at least temporary uxorilocal marriage), which means that women are
outsiders in the place they come to live. The importance of patrilocality in
influencing environmental relationships depends on the distances
between the natal homes of spouses, which reflect not only degrees of
exogamy but also settlement patterns and population densities. High
population densities, evenly distributed and stable settlements may
mitigate the impact of patrilocality whilst aspects of livelihood strategies
such as risk avoidance may exacerbate it. It has been suggested that
households make marriage alliances across wide distances as a strategy
for risk management in precarious environments. For example, given the
great local variation in rainfall in semi-arid zones the probability of
drought striking neighbours at the same time is greater than that of it
occurring simultaneously in two widely separated areas, and therefore in-
laws may be more useful in times of drought if they are not close
neighbours [Rosenzweig 1988:249]. If this is the case then women in more
risky agro-ecosystems may tend to marry over wider distances, be more
alienated from natal environments and experience variable relations with
410 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
CONCLUSION
The association of women and nature has a place in the history of western
thought but it does not yield a universal truth, and has little value in
understanding women's environmental relations. This association con-
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NOTES
1. See, inter alia, Sontheimer (ed.) [1991]; Dankelman and Davison (eds.) [1989]; Rodda
(ed.) [1991]; and Munyakho (ed.) [1985].
2. The literature on ecofeminism includes King [1989], Biehl [1988], Rao [1991]; Warren
[1987]; Plumwood [1986; 1988], Cheney [1987], Zimmerman [1987], Ruether [1979],
Salleh [1989] and Fox [1989].
414 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
3. An exception to this is the work by historians of southern Africa, for example; Beinart
[1984]. A useful account of western environmentalism is given in Pepper, [1986].
4. 'Part of the problem of characterising eco-feminist practice and thought is that both
seem to be different in different regions or countries' [Faber and O'Connor, 1991].
There seems to be a dominant element of radical ecofeminism in US environmental
groups, and the west coast in particular, with a strong spiritual perspective. The socialist
ecofeminists are more characteristic of Europe and Australia. Both exhibit the elements
we discuss here to differing extents.
5. Shiva argues that 'The everyday struggles for the protection of nature take place in the
cognitive and ethical context of the categories of the ancient Indian world-view in which
nature is Prakriti, a living and creative process, the feminine principle from which all
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New presumably means hybrid seed, yet this is extremely uncommon in Zimbabwe.
Hybrid maize is widely used but hybrid millet is not and one wonders whether the
correct crop is named. When one seeks to check the source one finds it is not given in the
bibliography. Hence the making of a myth.
11. The populist character of Chipko is apparent in Guha's analysis - in addition to its
moralism it is anti-state, and its leadership influenced by traditions of peasant martyrs
[Guha, 1989a: 170-77].
12. This draws on field-work experience in Chivi Communal Area of Zimbabwe in 1988-9
during which time data were collected for a study of environmental degradation, gender
and rural livelihoods. The support of OD A for this research is gratefully acknowledged.
13. Kandiyoti uses the term 'patriarchal bargains' to cover the ways in which, women,
within particular sets of gender relations, and from a position of relative but variable
weakness, negotiate the best terms possible for themselves. This involves both com-
promise and struggle.
14. Space does not permit an adequate treatment of land tenure, or indeed many of the
social relations which are used here to raise questions - they are invoked in a stylised
manner for the purpose of argument.
15. This may or may not be available to women to use for firewood.
16. Beer brewing has been shown to demand substantial amounts of wood which is live and
of large dimensions since this gives the required slow burn. This distinguishes such
usage from fuel for domestic cooking [McGregor, 1991: 208].
17. Billig's analysis shows that the potentially positive effect of high sex ratios on the
position of women in the marriage market is countered by status hypergamy of several
types, as well as factors such as population growth which leads to larger availability of
women in the younger age cohorts [Billig, 1991: 356].
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