What is Ecofeminism?
By Sarang Godbole
The ecofeminism discussion by Bina Agarwal
Ecofeminism embodies within it several different strands of discourse, most of which have yet to be spelled out fully, and which reflect, among other things, different positions within the Western feminist movement (radical, liberal, socialist). As a body of thought ecofeminism is as yet underdeveloped evolving, but carries a growing advocacy. In the ecofeminist argument, the connection between the domination of women and that of nature is basically seen as ideological, as rooted in a system of ideas and representations, values and beliefs, that places women and the nonhuman world hierarchically below men. And it calls upon women and men to reconceptualize themselves, and their relationships to one another and to the nonhuman world, in non-hierarchical ways.
There are many insights and lessons that can be derived from Ecofeminism in the Indian perspective-
First, the processes of environmental degradation and appropriation natural resources by a few have specific class-gender as well locational implications- it is women of poor, rural households who are most adversely affected and who have participated in ecology movements. “Women” therefore cannot be (as the ecofeminist discourse has typically done) as a unitary category, even within a country, let alone across the Third World or globally.
Second, the adverse class-gender effects of these are manifest in the erosion of both the livelihood systems and the knowledge systems on which poor rural women depend.
Third, the nature and impact of these processes are rooted interactively, on the one hand, in ideology- (in notions about development, scientific knowledge, the appropriate gender division labour, and so on) and, on the other hand, in the economic advantage and political power predicated especially, but by no means only, on property differentials between households and between women and men.
Fourth, there is a spreading grassroots resistance to such inequality and environmental destruction-to the products, people, property, power, and profit-orientation that underlie them. Although the voices of this resistance are scattered and localized, their message is a vital one, even from purely growth and productivity concern and more so if our concern is with people’s sustenance and survival.
Conclusion
The experiences of women’s initiatives within the environmental movements suggests that women’s militancy is much more closely linked to family survival issues than is men’s. Implicit in these struggles is the attempt to carve out a space for an alternative existence that is based on equality, not dominance over people, and on cooperation with and not dominance over nature. However, a mere recognition that there are deep inequalities and destructiveness inherent in present pro-cesses of development is not enough. There is a need for policy to shift away from its present relief-oriented approach toward nature’s ills and people’s welfare in which the solution to nutrient-depleted soils is seen to lie entirely in externally added chemical nutrients, to depleting forests in monoculture plantations, to drought starvation in food-for-work programs, to gender inequalities in ad hoc income-generating schemes for women, and so on. In short, an alternative, transformational approach to develop-ment would involve both ways of thinking about things and ways of acting on them. In the present context it would concern both how gender relations and relations between people and the non-human world are conceptualized, and how they are concretized in terms of the distribution of property, power, and knowledge, and in the formulation of development policies and programs.
