Eco-Feminism and Feminist Environmentalism

1. Women in India are an intimate part of nature both in imagination and in practice. At
one level nature is symbolized as the feminine principle and at another she is nurtured
by the feminine to produce life.
2. The Indian tradition views the world as a dialectical play of creation and destruction.
The tension between the opposites from which motion and movement arises is depicted
as the first appearance of dynamic energy, “Shakti”. All existence arises from this energy
which is the source. The manifestation of this energy is called “nature” or “prakriti”.
Nature, is an expression of Shakti. It is the feminine principle and with association with
the masculine, prakriti or nature creates the world.
3. Prakriti or nature is inherently active, a powerful and productive force. According to the
Indian tradition, there is no divide between man and nature or between man and
woman and person and nature. Purusha and Prakriti are a duality in unity.
4. Every form of creation bears the sign of this dialectical unity, of diversity within a
unifying principle and this dialectical harmony between man and nature becomes the
basis of ecological thought and action in India. Since there is no dualism between man
and nature and because nature as prakriti sustains life, nature has been treated as an
integral part.
5. Nature is characterized by creativity, activity, productivity; diversity in form and aspect,
connectedness and interrelationship of all beings, continuity between the human and
the natural and sanctity of life in nature.
6. Conceptually this differs radically from the western concept of environment as a
resource. In it, the environment is seen as separate from man. Nature or environment is
seen as his surroundings and not his substance. The dualism between man and nature
has allowed the subjugation of the latter by the former. This has also led to a different
world view and created a development paradigm which cripples nature and woman
simultaneously.
7. Shiva asserts that the shift from Prakriti to natural resources is not a progressive shift
from superstition to rationality. Viewed from the perspective of nature, the shift is
regressive and violent. It marks the beginning of the disruption of nature’s processes
and cycles, and her interconnectedness. The death of prakriti is a beginning of women’s
marginalization, devaluation, displacement and dispensability.
8. With the violation of nature is linked the violation and marginalization of women
especially in the Third World. Women produce and reproduce life not merely
biologically but also through their social role in providing sustenance, food and water.
All ecological societies comprising of forest dwellers and peasants whose life is
organized on the principle of sustainability, embody the feminine principle. Historically
however, when such societies have been colonized, the men have usually started to
 participate in life-destroying activities. The women meanwhile continue to be linked to
life and nature through their role as providers to sustenance, food and water.
9. Shiva further argues that, the notion of productivity that emerges out of this western
mode of accumulation views the man as being productive since he produces
commodities using nature’s wealth and women’s work as raw material. Nature and
women working to produce and reproduce life are declared unproductive. Moreover
with noted economist Adam Smith’s assertions, the wealth created by nature and
women’s work has turned invisible. Male labor came to be regarded as the only
important form of work that supplies all the necessities and conveniences of life. This
kind of an assumption has led to dualities within societies and between nature and man.
All other forms of work by different sections of the society were considered as marginal
to the framework of the industrial society.
10. The devaluation and de-recognition of nature’s work and productivity has led to the
ecological crises. This has also created inequality between men and women. Women’s
work is invisible because it is decentered, local and in harmony with nature. This kind of
work is rooted in stability and sustainability. This kind of work is also linked with
diversity and sharing. Its destruction through homogenization and privatization leads to
the destruction of diversity. The sustenance economy is based on creative and organic
nature, on local knowledge, on locally recycled inputs that maintain the integrity of
nature etc. The commodity and cash economy destroys natural cycles and reduces
nature to raw materials and commodities.
11. Marginalization of women has become the main source for healing the diseased
mainstream of patriarchal development. This is so because it is women who have access
to holistic ecological knowledge. Women and nature are closely interlinked because
they are the ones who also participate in and lead ecology movements in countries like
India. Women’s and ecological movements challenge patriarchal mal-development.
12. Ecology and feminism can combine to recover the feminine principle and through this
recovery can intellectually and politically transform societies. The recovery of the
feminine principle is based on inclusiveness. A liberated society is one in which all
distinctions fade away and man is integrated with nature.
13. Bina Agarwal: Eco-feminism conceptualizes the link between gender and environment
primarily in ideological terms. However struggles in the developing world demonstrate
the material basis for this link and sets the background for an alternative formulation to
eco-feminism, which Agarwal terms as feminist environmentalism. She argues that on
the one hand, women especially in rural households in India are victims of
environmental degradation in gender specific ways. And on the other they also emerge
as active agents in movements of environmental protection and regeneration. To
 understand women’s relationship with the environment it becomes imperative to
contextualize women as both victims and actors in concrete terms.
14. Agarwal begins by criticizing the eco-feminist argument. According to her, the main
highlights of the eco-feminist argument are as follows: a). There are important
connections between the domination and exploitation of nature b) In patriarchal
thought women are identified as being closer to nature and men as being closer to
culture. Nature is seen as inferior to culture; hence women are seen as inferior to men;
c) Because the domination of women and the domination of nature have occurred
together, women have a particular stake in ending the domination of nature d) The
feminist movement and the environmental movement both stand for egalitarian, non –
hierarchical systems.
15. In the eco-feminist argument, therefore, the connection between the domination of
women and nature is conceptualized in ideological terms. It is seen as rooted in a
system of ideas and representations, values and beliefs that places women and the non-
human world below men. Agarwal contends that Vandana Shiva, one of the leading
advocates of eco-feminist thought’s argument also suffers from three principal flaws:
First, her examples relate to rural women but her generalizations tend to conflate all
third world women into one category. Second, she does not indicate by what concrete
processes and institutions ideological constructions of gender and nature have changed
in India. Moreover her ideological constructions about purusha and prakriti only relate
to the Hindu philosophy. Finally, Shiva attributes existing forms of destruction of nature
and the oppression of women principally to the third world’s history of colonialism and
to the imposition of western science and a western model of development. Agarwal is of
the view that by doing so, Shiva is missing out on the very real local forces of power,
privilege and property relations.
16. Agarwal, therefore suggests the feminist environmentalist perspective to study
women’s and men’s relationship with nature. According to this perspective, men and
women’s relationship with nature needs to be understood as rooted in their material
reality. Gender, class and caste based division of labor structure people’s interactions
with nature, and therefore structure the effects of environmental change on people and
their responses to it.
17. Poor peasant and tribal women have been responsible for fetching fuel and fodder and
are often the main cultivators as well. They are likely to be affected in quite specific
ways by environmental degradation. Moreover they can be seen as both victims of the
destruction of nature and as repositories of knowledge about nature, in ways distinct
from men.
18. Feminist environmentalism as a perspective attempts to understand struggles over both
resources and meanings associated with the environment. It would imply grappling with
 the dominant groups who have the property, power and privilege to control resources
and other groups who control ways of thinking about them, via educational, media,
religious and legal institutions.
19. To concretize her discussion, Agarwal cites India’s experiences. According to her, though
forests and other natural resources have been available to the poor, in recent times, it is
being severely eroded by two parallel trends- First, natural resources are degrading both
in terms of quantity and quality owing to several factors and second, their increasing
statization and privatization. These two trends, both independently and interactively
underlie many of the differential class-gender effects of environmental degradation.
20. The process of statization especially with regards to forests has had debilitating
consequences. According to Agarwal, state control over forests has grown with selective
access being granted to a few. Customary rights of the local population have been
curtailed. Moreover, the promotion of scientific forest management led to the
development of commercial species often ignoring the species used by the local
population. Local systems of forest management have been eroded leading to tension
between the forestry officials and the local people.
21. The process of privatization has also led to a series of changes giving rise to class-gender
conflicts as regards the environment. Earlier, it were a group of people i.e. a community
who had access to natural resources, say for instance, a village pool. The village
community as a whole had access to it. However with tube wells and other such modern
facilities coming into the picture, there are inequalities in the distribution of what is an
underground commons. Tubewells are concentrated in the hands of the rich.
22. Apart from these two main factors there are other intermediary factors like erosion of
community management systems, population growth, choice of agricultural technology
and local knowledge systems that have led to different kinds of consequences for the
environment and the people.
23. These factors have had different kinds of implications for different classes and gender.
These processes have had adverse effects on poor households because of the noted
greater dependency of such households on communal resources. There is also a critical
gender dimension. Women and children are the ones that are most adversely affected
by environmental degradation. The reasons for this are three fold. First, there is a pre-
existing gender division of labor. Second, there are systematic gender differences in the
distribution of subsistence resources including food and health care within rural
households. Third, there are significant inequalities between men and women’s access
to the most productive resources in rural economy, agricultural land and production
technology. Fourth, women also have a disadvantaged position in the labor market.
24. These effects relate to at least six critical aspects: time, income, nutrition, health, social
survival networks and indigenous knowledge.
 In each of these dimensions it is women who are affected the most by any kind of
environmental changes.
25. Agarwal concludes by stating that, ecological movements like the Chipko, suggest that
women’s relationship with the environment needs to be contextualized by means of the
feminist environmentalist perspective. This is so because women’s relationship with the
environment is both symbolic as well as materialistic. Their relationship is determined
by the different forms of interaction that they have with the environment by virtue of
belonging to a specific class and gender. As the Chipko case demonstrates, women’s
involvement in the same has not been due to a feminine sensibility. For instance, first of
all the women protested against the commercial felling of forests and often went
against their male counterparts because they knew that they would be deprived of their
access to food, fuel and fodder. Second, they appointed watchwomen to guard and
regulate the extraction of forest produce by villagers so that management of the forests
does not become the sole responsibility of the government. Third, while replanting
trees, women’s priorities often did not match the choices of the men. The women
typically preferred trees that provided them with subsistence needs while the men
preferred the more commercial ones. These instances therefore substantiate the
viewpoint that instead of an eco-feminist view which conceptualizes women’s
relationship with nature in pure ideological terms, a more holistic understanding of the
same can bne achieved by adhering to a feminist environmentalist perspective.