L9 Gender and Environment PDF

Ch 9: Feminism and the Environment Feminism and the Environment • • • • Gender and Environment From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism Feminist Approaches to Economies and Nature Feminist Approaches to Knowledge and the Environment • Thinking with Feminism and the Environment Gender and Environment...

Ch 9: Feminism and the Environment Feminism and the Environment • • • • Gender and Environment From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism Feminist Approaches to Economies and Nature Feminist Approaches to Knowledge and the Environment • Thinking with Feminism and the Environment Gender and Environment • Gendered relationships to nature are largely socially constructed • Woman hold intern positions and recent hires more than than roles of presidents, executive directors, board members or board chairs • How do various gender positionalities encourage/discourage certain relationships to nature and the environment? Relax Honey • Gendered relationships to nature and relationships to the power to make decisions about nature are largely socially constructed • Many of the ways women relate (and are related) to the environment and environmental justice are similar to that of the rest of society • Women will often make up the majority of the ‘carers’ • People who are concerned about a specific (environmental) issue or concern (and usually its ‘on the ground’) impact • When women try to instigate action as leader-activists however • ‘Hysterical Housewives’ narratives are used to silence voices • Devaluing these voices is relatively easy culturally because they are womens’ • We generally find it easy to devalue women’s work and ideas and our society is full of examples of this problem more generally Gender and Environment • When it comes to women’s position in environmental movements as seen in environmental organizations: • Woman hold intern positions and recent hires more than than roles of presidents, executive directors, board members or board chairs • Despite being the majority of activists and an ‘interested public’ for many decades • What about volunteers? • Who does the informal/unpaid of environmental organizations? Figure 9.1 Gender and environment Gender and Environment • Lets look at presidents/chairs etc. various environmental organizations specifically • Here is a list from U Berkley of the Biggest Environmental Organizations: • https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=496970&p=3427176 • I went through all of them • • • • All but 3 have male leaders. Every single one has more males in their leadership listing than women. Almost all of these organizations will be present at COP28 directly (are sending delegates). It will be almost exclusivly men who lead these delegations. • Also about Gender at the COP28: • President is male • Almost all world (and regional) leaders are Men • A large majority of all National delegation leaders are Men • Canada’s delegation is led by a Man and contains more men than women • Almost all large business owners are Men • A majority of industrial delegates are Men • While there will be lots of women among the 70 000 delegates, almost all organizing/decision making power is held by men From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism • What are the narratives around “Mother Earth”? • • • • • • • ‘natural’ ‘selfless’ ‘giver of life’ ‘giver of things needed for life’ Is there to serve mans needs Can be ‘used’ as needed ‘supports’ man’s endeavors • An earth that selflessly subsumes her interests to ours and provides for us, always From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism • Ecofeminism takes direct aim at how both women and nature are exploited by thinking and practices that could be called masculinist and rooted in patriarchy. • Both women and nature tend to be thought of as (private) property • Both tend to be devalued or non-valued (seen as having no value or no noticed value) in a way that allows economic exploitation to be normalized • Both are objects of the male gaze (scientific or otherwise) but are not acting subjects as such From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism • Original eco-feminist statements from the 70s sometimes get a little essentialist • Articulating a ‘male’ and ‘female’ experience that doesn’t speak to difference within the categories and tends to assume some ‘natural’ order in the thing (even if socially constructed) • However, many forms of ecofeminist thought do highlight difference within the category of women as well as nonbinary and fluid constructions of gender • Like with most forms of sociological thinking From Earth as Woman to Ecofeminism • In the 1970s and 1980s Black feminist thought emerged as a critique of the problematic whiteness of the feminist movement • Intersectionality was the term used originally to capture the double exclusion faced by Black women whose interests weren’t being considered by either feminist or anti-racist thought and action • For example: • A Black woman in a room of feminists is always a BLACK woman, while a Black woman in a room of Civil Rights protestors is always a Black WOMAN • Intersectionality more generally refers to the positional nature of social relations and how they overlap to create fairly unique experiences within social systems • Race/Gender/Class are the big three classically, but there are many more • Being a working class black woman will come with different experiences of gender and race than being a middle class or upper class one and vice versa Feminist Approaches to Economies and Nature • Social reproduction refers to the part of the economy that depends on unpaid labor, especially household work right? • Through a gendered division of labor, most of this work has been assigned to women historically – care work • This work is devalued or unseen because it is done by women • Formal work in markets is noticed and valued more • When care work moves to the formal economy, the parts done by women are also devalued • Think early childhood education, almost all healthcare positions (except specialist positions still held mostly by men) • The concept of diverse economies recognizes that the totality of economic activity exists outside formal markets • Women form the cornerstone of many non-formal economic activities From Hysterical Housewives to Care Labor: Social Reproduction and Nature • Disproportionate responsibility for social reproduction affects women’s lives in many countries , in many different ways • For example: in 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis • mothers left the workforce in droves as out-of-home child care (including schooling) suddenly came to a screeching halt • Women’s care work and service based jobs kept many either in harm’s way, or laid off • Huge economic losses for these women and for the economy as a whole • The effects of environmental change, exploitation, and development impinge heavily on those parts of the economy where the labor is largely unpaid and the labor force is largely invisible • A Text example: the Chipko movement • Top down, economically productive environmental development (a large solar farm) destroys local women’s abitily to • Get water • Gather fuel • Graze animals • Who are the delegates at COP28 again? Making Alternatives Visible • What kind of economies are hidden in plain sight? • Gibson-Graham suggests that most of the global economy and social life resides “below the water line,” out of view and beyond the control of markets (Figure 9.2) • By surrendering “capitalocentrism” and renouncing the idea of a monolithic “economy,” we might better see diverse and unique economies all around us Beyond One Point of View • Applying some of these ideas to the production of knowledge, Standpoint Theory and Situated Knowledges: • begin from the idea that, historically, scientific knowledge production is gendered too • was done by and for men • IOW Scientific objectivity came from men doing work from their own perspective • All knowledge is produced from a specific perspective and women’s perspectives (as well as those of other excluded people) have been marginalized both within science and as alternatives to scientific knowledge production • Concept studying up helps us understand the different information and conclusions existing if we specifically look at the world from the point of view the marginalized, including women in all their intersectionalities. When Ice is Not Just Ice: Feminism and Natural Science • What is a glacier? • Glaciology (the study of glaciers) as an example of how feminist approaches inform natural science • Glaciers are not “just ice” • They are complex systems When Ice is Not Just Ice: Feminism and Natural Science • Glaciology (the study of glaciers) as an example of how feminist approaches inform natural science • Glaciers are an objective (and therefore non-political) source of evidence of climate change • They are also vessels of culture, power, and gendered science • Women have been slow to gain a foothold in glaciology as it has been established as an area for “muscular gentlemen scientists” When Ice is Not Just Ice: Feminism and Natural Science • Studying up to understand how glaciers can be viewed and related to differently is an opportunity to relate to all of nature differently • Glaciers can be understood through indigenous and “folk” glaciologies for whom they represent sources of resources, dangers, and spirituality