On Women and Nature

In the modern world, we hear many things about the state of the planet, this Spaceship Earth, this “Mother Nature” that we depend on for our support. With a growing awareness of planet wide issues such as pervasive air and water pollution, ozone depletion, global warming, and over-consumption, many environmental organizations are encouraging global citizens to think about the central role that the earth plays in their sustenance. And indeed it is a prevailing view that the planet is here for mankind, and we rely on it. This is not a new concept, though it may be being constructed in new ways as a direct response to the environmental crisis. Throughout history, the Western world has conceived an instrumental and operational idea of nature as a resource to be used by humankind, and has fashioned its contemporary societies on such a view. Humans have largely tended to value land only in so much as it can be directly useful to our species, providing timber, mineral resources, or other goods designed to heighten our quality of life. This has contributed to the creation of a global environmental crisis manifested by large far reaching problems such as climate change and ozone depletion, to local problems linked by the fact that they are occurring all over the world for similar reasons. These would include widespread air and water pollution arising from certain methods of industrial production and the depletion of both renewable and non-renewable resources as diverse as timber, oil, and minerals.

Our understanding of the current crisis is necessarily incomplete without understanding the historical and continuing realities and consequences of the long-standing belief that the earth exists for the use of men. We cannot combat the environmental problems that have arisen as a consequence of this viewpoint without understanding the political, societal, technological, and other forces behind the formation of the instrumental worldview. We must therefore ask ourselves: what has contributed to the construction of this view? What are the current consequences for the environment and what future repercussions could emerge from this mindset? If we cannot even begin to comprehend a portion of the answers to this question, we are unlikely to come up with any solutions to the greater problem at hand. This paper looks at a small part of the creation of this Western mindset, and investigates the implications of that theoretical and ideological construction.

I argue that this Western view has been largely affected by theoretical connections drawn between women and nature and has played a significant role in creating the environmental crisis. In addition, I will also argue that, through its circumscription of women’s roles in environmental governance and development projects, this mindset is becoming increasingly significant in its contribution to environmental problems resulting from the development of Third World countries, problems that disproportionately impact women. It is fundamentally important to keep these theoretical women-nature connections in mind, because, as I will demonstrate in this paper, the instrumental view of the earth would not be so strong or prevalent without the conception of the earth as a female being. A male earth, in conjunction with an overwhelmingly male dominated society, could not have been so easily subjugated in thought or action. Only with this piece of the puzzle can we make any headway in changing the destructive patterns of development

In this paper, I will briefly lay out ideas of women-nature connections, and locate my main analyses in the historical and conceptual associations focusing on the change during the Enlightenment period from a relatively benevolent view of women and the earth to one seeing both women and nature as outside human rationality and therefore inferior and to be exploited. I will then describe why this viewpoint is problematic, specifically in its role in environmental degradation and the creation of a technological or modern ideal in developed countries. Finally, I will discuss the further impact this ideal has had and could continue to have in the global context, focusing here on the role of women in environmental governance, the way women’s roles in the environment have be constructed, and experiential associations between women and nature as the Western ideal spreads to the developing world through development and modernization ideologies. I will then recommend what I hope will be useful ways of thinking about women, the environment, and development that take into account these Western-based ideological links.

Much work has been done in recent years, primarily by ecofeminists, concerning the character and location of women-nature connections.[1] Although they agree that these connections clearly exist on multiple levels such as language, perception, and experience, there is a debate over which connections are the most important or useful in breaking the mutually reinforcing subjugations of women and the earth. In general, there are eight main types of connections examined by ecofeminists: historical and causal, conceptual, empirical and experiential, epistemological, symbolic, ethical, theoretical (philosophically), and political.[2] All are premised on the idea that the societal domination of women and nature are connected, but locate this link in different areas or ways of thinking. For example, empirical connections are shown by drawing correlations between pollutants and their disproportionate impact on women and children, while ecofeminists investigating the symbolic look at the ways that women and nature are connected and devalued by traditional portrayals in fields such as art and literature. Yet because “many of the important claims made about one kind of connection…often depend on insights gleaned from others,”[3] clear ties need to be established between the various types of connections.

In this case, since I am investigating the historical phenomenon that resulted in the creation of a largely conceptual mindset, I find it necessary to look at the impact the theoretical or ideological connections between women and nature have had on the environment. Because the instrumental mindset toward the environment is largely created due to certain conceptions of women, it is then interesting to look at how these conceptions (and the actions resulting from them) are changing the experiences of women living or working with their own local environments, something that can be called women’s lived experiences in the environment. I primarily locate the main theoretical links carried by Western culture and tradition in the so-called historical and conceptual connections, mentioned previously, finding this to be the most useful lens for investigating how the ways in which women and nature have been characterized throughout Western history (particularly since the Enlightenment) have affected the environment. The ideological perception of a feminine nature has created a worldview of development, progress, and technology that contributes to environmental degradation. Since the connection between women and nature contributed largely to this problem, it is logical to further look at the realities of the continuing links, and here the lens of experiential women-nature connections is useful in looking at the effects on the environment in developing countries. Thus, I am looking at how conceptual women-nature links affect experiential links through the influence of a distinctly Western modernization ideology.

Many ecofeminists emphasizing conceptual connections have “argued that, ultimately, historical and causal links between the dominations of women and of nature are located in…the way women and nature have been conceptualized, particularly in the western intellectual tradition.”[4] A subset of this view looks, not at the overall historical links in the western tradition, but specifically at the transformations that have occurred in the perception of women and nature by that thought tradition. Women and nature, in this view, “have an age old association—an affiliation that has persisted throughout culture, language, and history,”[5] and though this fundamental connection has been maintained, the character of the link has changed from relatively positive (or at least benign) to overwhelmingly negative. It is only through this change in associated values that the large-scale negative consequences for the environment emerged.

Prior to the modern era, before the Enlightenment and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, women-nature associations clearly existed, but they simply did not have the negative environmental consequences seen today. Because of different available technologies and certain belief structures and normative constraints, humans were unlikely, or physically unable, to create large-scale changes in their surroundings. The reality of human induced changes in the local environment was small enough to be practically non-existent, especially by modern standards. Partly because of this, early environmentalists created the idea of the ecologically noble savage, a kind of hunter-gatherer living in perfect harmony with the land. Although this has since been shown to be a fallacy, and it has been stated that man has altered his environment from the earliest moments of his existence, these small scale changes are not so clearly created by a certain worldview and are outside the scope of this investigation. But, despite the inability to make large impacts, the early creation of linkages between women and nature paved the way for later ideas of manipulation.

In the early period of recorded human history, many inhabitants of the West, primarily Europe, believed in an earth goddess creator and a nurturing “Mother” Earth. This implicitly and explicitly linked women and the earth through a role of reproduction. All humankind was a child of the earth, just as any human was the child of a certain mother. To early man, “all nature seemed…like a mother: the land [was] woman and in woman [dwelt] the same dark powers as in the earth.”[6] There was a very clear sense in which the Earth and the tangible existence of nature created the idea of an intangible yet nurturing female earth spirit with unimaginable powers of production. Early religions prayed to an Earth Goddess who controlled the cycles of life and seasons, sowing and harvest times were dedicated to this Goddess, and there existed an awareness that all life, and all support for the human life, emanated from the earth. All this is exemplified in an early Anglo-Saxon incantation, which reads, “[h]ail, Earth, mother of men, may you be fertile in the embrace of God, and may you be filled with fruits for man’s use.”[7] Similarly, in Greek mythology it is Demeter who represents the earth, changing the seasons and the harvest, and it is Persephone who brings the spring in her footsteps. As Carolyn Merchant has stated in The Death of Nature, her chronicle of changes in the women-nature connection, various early religious and ethical traditions spoke to the relative positions of men, women, and the Earth. In addition to the Anglo-Saxon pagan religions, early Greek philosophies had a feminine earth to be served by men, in order that she might in turn be pleased enough to serve and grant blessings of resources upon them.[8]

But these ideals could not explicitly sanction the rampant exploitation of resources seen today, because implicit in the view of the female and mothering earth were certain constraints on behavior. In the early years of civilization there may well have been matriarchal or matrilineal societies where women were highly respected and thus given some form of power in their own society. Where this was the case, it is easy to see that a greater “Mother Earth” received similar esteem. The dark powers mentioned previously, the ability to create seen in women and nature, inspired a sense of reverence and value. “Such powers inspired in men a respect mingled with fear, which was reflected in their worship. In woman was to be summed up the whole of alien Nature,”[9] and this Nature was living. This fact created certain limits on man’s behavior towards the earth. “The earth was alive and considered to be a beneficent, receptive, nurturing female...[the fact that] nature was considered to be a person-writ-large was sufficiently prevalent that the ancient tendency to treat it as another human”[10] remained in place through the early Renaissance period.

This recognition of the earth as living and the inclusion of the female as fully human is extremely important in shaping the behavior of men, historically the prime actors in changing and recreating their own surroundings. In many ways this effectively rendered the male’s societal pre-eminence null and void, for “[i]f the respect or the fear inspired by woman prevents the use of violence toward her, then the muscular superiority of the male is no source of power.”[11] Similarly, his societal superiority is of no power if it is not used in domination. So it was with the female earth. Though mankind may have had at this time a physical ability to damage or exploit nature and her resources, there were moral systems in place that prevented that outcome. As long as the earth was respected, mankind’s tools and ability presented no real danger. The capability may have been there, but the ideology did not allow such exploitation. The earth’s resources were believed to be a gift, freely given, and were acknowledged with grateful thanks and praise.

Though these ideas and reverence prevented widespread degradation, the women-nature connections that would become problematic in later times were clearly already beginning to emerge. Although the idea of a mother earth goddess encouraged mankind to respect the land in order that they might have the use of the goods of the land, when taken out of this specific religious or spiritual context, the “Mother Earth” idea is not nearly so beneficial to the environment. The image of the nurturing mother in a more modern context encourages use of resources, creating the expectation that the earth will provide for humankind as a mother cares for her dependent children, out of love and not necessarily requiring recognition or return. In particular, as society became more patriarchal and began to change its attitudes towards women mothers, no longer admitting them as heads or partners at the head of the family, the sanctions allowing taking without return became more explicit. Just as traditional mother’s work in the home is undervalued, under-recognized, taken for granted, and more particularly hidden in the structures of a market economy, so the resources mankind takes from “Mother Earth” are devalued, and the costs of the goods not seen.[12] The gifts were expected and taken for granted, and thus would produce a relationship that took on the character or something wrested away from whoever controlled it.

This view underwent a slight alteration during the revival of the pastoral tradition, characterized by visions of utopian or arcadian nature, from the late fifteenth through the sixteenth century.[13] This change was important not for its practical but for its theoretical implications. Similar to the early view of Mother Nature, the pastoral view that characterized the early modern agricultural period of Europe postulated a feminine and benevolent earth, one working with man in his own interests. With the advent of Christianity, which will be explored later, the pagan viewpoint of an earth goddess became less popular. However, unlike this previous notion, this view generally saw nature as passive, simply allowing mankind to act as they saw fit in reference to the earth. Although not conveying an active sense of Nature freely granting the use of her resources, as in the Mother Nature picture, passivity granted tacit consent, which permitted man to do as he wished. “By conceiving of nature as passive, [this view] …allowed for its use and manipulation” in the future.[14]

Fortunately, agriculture in West Europe at this time was still primarily for sustenance alone and thus was very small scale. Generally, European farms relied on peasants bound through a communal structure to a certain portion of land, and therefore using the land to maintain a certain subsistence level. Without a well-developed market economy, large scale plowing and planting, as well as private property, were unnecessary. Instead, a shared type of farming, based on use of common land and a spirit of cooperation were the norm for manorial farms.[15] However long before this period, indeed as early as the thirteenth century and particularly in England, pressure on agricultural land was intense. Population rose quickly and this “was accompanied by a continuous process of land reclamation which, in the absence of any serious improvements in agricultural techniques, provided the principal means by which the expanding population could be fed, but by the middle of the thirteenth century the land available for colonisation was beginning to run out…[and] intensive cultivation probably led to soil exhaustion.”[16] By the fifteenth century, though population pressures had changed due to the plague in Europe, land conditions could not have been much better.

By the pastoral period, then, changes were clearly beginning to appear in both the reality of the situation of nature and the perception of nature. Inauspiciously, though this time of transition between a societal sense of the living earth and a perception of a dead earth lasted a few centuries, it did not outlast the introduction of major technology. The conception of passive, if still living, nature quite clearly “contained the implication that nature when plowed and cultivated could be used as a commodity and manipulated as resource,”[17] and this paved the way for the market economy and increasing mechanism which would reconstruct the earth as female, but largely dead. Even without the technology or ability to effect large scale change, it is significant that the most common belief of this time was that “humankind was given hands to transform the earth’s resources and was given dominion over them: timber was to be used for houses and ships, soil for crops, iron for plows, and gold and silver for ornaments.”[18]

Accompanying the change from an active and giving earth to a passive and accepting one was the spread of the Christian religion and the increasing prevalence of the Judeo-Christian tradition of dominion over the earth, which allowed mankind more leeway in their actions towards the land and helped to cement the primacy of the principle of dominion. The story of the creation says quite explicitly of the first humans, “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”[19] Pre-industrial societies in the era of the pre-eminence of a church whose tenets were dictated to the people as absolutes, creating a strong emphasis on religion, coupled with a general lack of scientific or other knowledge that could otherwise explain the existence of humans, accepted this view without question. Furthermore, the Christian religion of the time promoted man’s domination over women. Wives were to submit to their husbands, and outside of marriage they were evil temptations.[20] As the bringer of original sin, it was seen as “just and right that woman accept as lord and master him whom she led to sin.”[21] It became a basic premise of society that man was the first and the perfect being, and that nature which was created before him but for his sustenance, and women, created out of him and having led him into sin, were to be under his control.

It might be argued that stewardship was required of God’s land. Many have said that God’s gift of the land to humankind required careful management and care of both resources and other beings, but this idea was (and remains) a vague and contested concept. The domination viewpoint has largely remained prevalent. Therefore, if the earth was accepting, and mankind was dominant, then there are few, if any, ethical constraints on human behavior. Therefore, once united with the views and the technical abilities of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, these ideas of a passive earth subordinated to man’s will were key in the increasing exploitation of natural resources. In short, in this transformation, “the female earth was central to the organic cosmology that was undermined by the Scientific Revolution and the rise of a market oriented-culture in early modern Europe.”[22] The earth was gradually coming to be seen less as an active living being and more as a tool, and both women and nature had become simply gifts to mankind for his use or pleasure. These views of dominion and passive nature are both implicated in the creation of the post-Enlightenment codification of the instrumental vision of nature.

Sometime in the intellectual ferment that was the Enlightenment, this attitude towards the female earth completed its conversion, thanks both to technology and to further ideological changes, to an attitude that sanctioned exploitative actions. The tradition of religious dominion gained strength, and “[b]etween the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the image of an organic cosmos with a living female earth at its center gave way to a mechanistic world view in which nature was reconstructed as dead…to be dominated and controlled by humans.”[23] The groundwork for this view was already in place, as mentioned previously, with religious traditions of dominion and views of passive nature in the early agrarian tradition. In this time period, the 1500 and 1600s, “scientists like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton…along with Enlightenment philosophers like René Descartes, David Hume, and John Locke created a worldview that desacralized nature and provided ideological fuel for the industrial revolution.”[24] With the end of a living female earth, and the view of women as carriers of original sin, there was no longer any sacred being inherent in the earth. Again, this worldview relied heavily on the conception of the earth as feminine, but that idea was accompanied by a change in the ideology of the “feminine.”

As mentioned above, in the early periods of civilization nature was seen as alive, female, and fully human. In this period, nature was seen as dead. It was also still female, and consequently either sinful through the Christian tradition or less than fully human. Women and the feminine were already constructed as natural and closer to nature due to their reproductive function, but now this was taken to mean that they were therefore wild and irrational, and in an era so focused on rationality, this gave further sanction to the ideals of domination. In the Enlightenment period, the prestige of abstract knowledge was highly promoted, and scientists and philosophers became intent on discovering the truth or the true nature of things. And, as Susan Griffin has stated, “it is the elevation of abstraction above other forms of knowledge…that gets us into trouble.”[25] The ability to think clearly and rationally about the world through abstraction is first and foremost associated with masculine capabilities, and secondly with the men who were thinking, writing, and discovering during this time. This is largely because abstract thought is by definition not grounded in any physical reality. Instead, it takes place on a “higher” plan, a realm of perfect forms or truths divorced from experience. This obviously dissociates it from the perceived character of women, and because of their grounding in the tangible world, women were unquestioningly seen as incapable of the highest levels of cognition.

At this time the way connections are drawn between the earth and the feminine clearly begins to cut both ways, hurting both women and nature in a mutually reinforcing cycle of subjugation. As mentioned previously, women were viewed as incapable of the transcendent thought privileged by Enlightenment and later thinkers. Part of this view was due to the fact that they were seen as so thoroughly grounded in the material world. Therefore, they were (and in many ways remain) highly disadvantaged by their connection with the earth. More particularly relevant in this analysis, the conception of nature as feminine allowed the earth to be consequently devalued due to the devaluation of women.

As Griffin has also stated, “any time you have the transcendence of the spirit, you have the degradation or devaluation of nature,”[26] because of the disassociation of spirit and matter. The matter came, during this period, to be seen as unnecessary. The spirit, the soul, these and similar abstractions were the most important areas to men, necessarily excluding and devaluing women and nature—either seen as so thoroughly grounded in the material, or in reality the material itself. This set up the dualism that allowed “instrumentalism—the view that the excluded sphere is appropriately treated as a means to the ends of the higher sphere or group, that its value lies in its usefulness to the privileged group that is, in contrast, worthwhile or significant in itself.”[27] So, the image of the female earth, which once prevented exploitation through fear and love, now played squarely into this instrumentalism and devaluation nature through a lack of belief in the importance of the physical.

Just as the notion of the female earth once inspired reverence, it now required subordination to man. Nature, which may have always been seen as a capricious woman who must be flattered and cajoled into bestowing blessings upon men, was now purely dangerous in its inconstancy. The kind of irrationality associated with the hysteria of women and unpredictable character of natural phenomena simply could not be tolerated in an era that privileged the cool rationality of scientific man. Due to a change in the underlying values of society, the very constraints once imposed on men’s actions due to the construction of a female earth now became implicit instructions to subdue her, and to take by force what could not be gained by other means.[28] Society had created a dualism that privileged these masculine values and understandings. Knowledge was only valued if it was scientific and rational, thereby excluding any of the traditional knowledge of women; furthermore, their supposed natural inferiority prevented women from acquiring any of the valuable knowledge. Dualisms were created, forcing men, culture, rationality, and spirit over women, nature, emotion, and matter. Thus constraints on behavior towards the feminine earth vanished. The possibilities were there all along in the women-nature connection, but only at this time does the instrumental mindset manifest itself. Nature has become no more than another tool in man’s search for transcendence.

Also, along with the privileging of abstract knowledge came an ideal of market systems and technology. Coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition of man’s dominion over the earth, political theorist John Locke created a structure that valued ownership and cultivation of land, a necessity for capitalism, and this was a large part of his role in the desacralization of nature. Therefore, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the moral justification, or indeed the moral imperative, for massive appropriation became widespread, and market-based societies expanded.[29] With the advent of money and trade, men could make or buy all that they wanted, without worrying about spoilage, and thus any natural limits on appropriation were ended, and increased consumption ensued. Technological innovations also made possible greater enclosure of land and cultivation of larger tracts of land, and what technology made possible new mindsets on markets made allowable. There was ever-increasing commercialization, and a faith in the morality of a market system. In addition, this mentality led to a lack of recognition of the intrinsic or inherent value of natural goods. Instead, goods and services, such as those resources provided by nature, received value only as they appeared in the public sphere and were valued by people for their use.[30] This clearly instrumentalizes all areas of nature, encouraging mankind further to think of the earth only as it benefits him, and leading to exploitation.

All of these Enlightenment philosophers and theorists privileged the idea of logic, expressed in general terms through the self-interested behavior of rationalist man. “Many feminists reject the liberal view of individual, instrumental rationality on the ground that it is a gendered conceptualisation which universalises essentially male, market-oriented behaviour.”[31] This is indeed the case, as the whole concept of rational actions is itself based on a privileged, Enlightenment, masculine view of what is appropriate behavior under certain hypothetical and abstractly postulated circumstances. Regardless, this is the prevailing conception that has created the modern western world.

Throughout history, with the privileging of rationality and market economies, the West has come to think of the earth only as the earth can be useful to mankind and society. It is a long-standing one-way relationship, where nature gives and mankind receives, with seldom any thought to replenishment or stewardship. In large part, this is due to the continuing association of women and nature. In a society where man is dominant, a female earth simply cannot be highly valued for any intrinsic worth. It therefore becomes merely instrumental, something that exists for the use and good of the dominant class. This instrumentality would not have been socially common or even acceptable if prevailing conceptions of the earth were male, or if male characteristics were not privileged above all others in society.

Although the environmental movement is trying to change the common perception and exploitation of nature, it tends not to look at these underlying structures, instead relying on the tweaking of these structures (such as the market) to take into account environmental goals. This mindset can prevent or circumscribe any thoughts of inherent value in the earth. It gives mankind license to run rampant over the planet, mining, extracting, logging, and using all things as he alone sees fit. Without this instrumental ideal, the man-made environmental crisis would not be of such dire proportions.

These Enlightenment ideas created an ideal of modernity and development that is still used today. Enlightenment values have to a large extent become inherent in society due to their place in the Western intellectual tradition, and the idea of rationality is still highly privileged. The modern liberal state and modern economic assumptions, both of which are dominating views in the West and in development ideology, are all based on the premise of man as a self-interested, rational actor.

Prevalent in the international arena there is, in general, a dependence on the ability of growth and technology to solve the world’s problems of poverty, illness, hunger, and pollution. The Western world has developed through the exploitation of their own and other’s resources, and has a quality of life envied by other countries. Many developing countries looking at this model have been reluctant to change their patterns of development in response to environmental problems, or accept any forms of environmental regulation. This is evident in the reluctance of developing countries to sign on to international agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol, that may have the effect of changing their style of development to one less dependent on non-renewable resources. In general, the assumption has been that the western view of progress is possible for all countries.[32]

Throughout attempts to formulate structures for global environmental governance, there has been what has been described as a North-South divide, focusing mainly on the growing tension between environmental and development concerns.[33] Northern, and generally more developed countries, have generally stressed the need to conserve resources such as tropical forests and stop pollution and overpopulation, while Southern (and generally less developed) countries have repeatedly required “assurances that environmental concerns would in no way impede their development goals.”[34] Nearly every compromise reached in the treaties of international environmental politics reflects this tension and the attempts to merge these two (competing) concerns.

Largely this is due to the conception that the Western model of development through resource use and extraction is the best model, and the correspondingly unquestioned faith in this ideal. Western and Northern countries seem to be doing well after having gone through this development process, and it is this standard that many developing countries are trying to live up to, so the model seems to be appropriate. This faith has also been compelled by the fact that “science-based technologies have formed the basis for industrialization of the more developed countries over the past century. Those developing countries that have invested in their own modern scientific and technical capabilities have been able to join in the development process,” while those who have not have been marginalized.[35]

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have played a large role in the continuing push for rather traditional development, largely dependent on neo-liberal market structures and trade liberalization, which is sometimes called “Anglo-American capitalism.”[36] In general “[t]he orthodox camp…argues that developing countries should follow a reform formula proven to boost economic growth…[and] [t]he World Bank and the I.M.F. are not shy of using their enormous lending power to push for these ends.”[37] And why should they be? The reform model merely pushes the countries to develop in a traditional Western manner, and while this current model of technological development still “works” in the sense that it can create capital and increase the living standards of the most noticeable people in a country (namely elite males); when a country that does not subscribe to that model is marginalized in the global political arena, it is not surprising that countries will choose to develop only in the established manner.

Though many have begun to criticize “the stranglehold that the logic of market and faith in untrammeled growth has on people in Less Developed Countries,” the mindset prevails.[38] The impact of this worldview on the environment in developing countries has been, and will continue to be, disastrous in its degradation of the environment unless some change is made in the underlying ideologies of growth. The current hegemony of western development discourse dramatically shapes environmental governance in the global political arena and the situation of women in their local environments in the Third World, and it is through this lens of women’s experience of environmental degradation that many of the problems of the Western-style development project can be meaningfully viewed.

Bella Abzug has stated that in the Western world “we have done almost everything in pairs since Noah except govern. And the world has suffered for it.”[39] Throughout the development of civilizations, women have been largely excluded from structures of governance. There have been notable exceptions, but these have largely been women willing to accept or able to manipulate the masculine world, and they have not significantly changed overarching views on women’s ability to meaningfully govern or participate in policy decisions.[40]

Since women are primarily affected by the environmental degradation of development, due to their traditional rights and responsibilities in their local environments, and have long been associated with nature, one would expect them to be involved in governance relating to these issues. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and it is partly because of the theoretical women-nature connections that space for women in environmental governance has been circumscribed. Among the mindsets created by the Western ideal is, as I have stated, the idea the women are more “natural” than men. Thus, they have been deprived of rationality, or at least widely perceived to be lacking in the capabilities for higher level and complex thought. At least partially resulting from this view is the exclusion of women from the global political arena in general. Some scholars have noted that this is at least as true, if not more so, in the area of environmental governance as in governing structures as a whole. Women have been left out of environmental governance both because of the perception of their capability for reason, and more particularly because “environmental science and ‘the international environmental movement’ have been largely cast as the domain of men,”[41] probably again due to a long-standing conception of women’s ability for abstract or scientific thinking. This is highly problematic, particularly in the case of the environment, where women’s lives are so closely affected.

“At one level the participation of women…in environmental governance is demanded as a condition for the adoption of better policies and for the successful pursuit of sustainable development. At another level, demands for their voices to be heard in the processes of environmental governance are representative of a broader concern with political expression and emancipation.”[42] Although this lack of participation is symptomatic of a larger problem that has yet to be fully addressed, some attempts to change the implementation of development projects in order to account for women’s issues have been made in recent years. The World Bank, in a report on gender equality, has stated, “gender equality is a core development issue—a development objective in its own right,”[43] and the institution shows signs of recognizing gender issues in its development projects. There has, in fact, been a growing “recognition of the relevance of gender issues to global environmental politics,”[44] and this has led to an inclusion of women’s issues in certain areas of International Relations (IR).

In recognition of this fact and as part of this expansion of IR, many international organizations have attempted to take into consideration women’s roles and responsibilities when examining development policies. The United Nations Environment Program “has taken a lead in acknowledging and responding to the linkages between environmental degradation and women’s lives.”[45] Again, the World Bank is beginning to recognize women as a priority, stating, “the Bank seeks to reduce gender disparities and enhance women’s participation in economic development through its programs and projects.”[46] Whether this strategy is working, however, is up for debate. Too often the attempt to change the way women are affected results only in a superficial change of development policy, not in any significant change to the modernization ideology underpinning the entire framework of development. “Attention tends to focus upon the plight of the women rather than upon the causes of that plight, so that the problems emanating from the disruption of women’s traditional relationship with the natural world are neither identified nor addressed.”[47] Although it is extremely important to attempt to ameliorate the conditions under which women live, and to change development policies so that they truly help women, this must be done within the recognition of the larger problem and an overall rethinking of the western mindset that so thoroughly permeates the modern ideal.

The theoretical constructs already discussed and the lack of women actors in the field of environmental politics have largely influenced the ways in which women are perceived to relate to the environment, and this has prevented the creation of any balanced or useful mainstream characterizations of the position of women in the environment. Instead of addressing the reasons or causes that underpin women’s disproportionate injuries from environmental degradation, or the views that cause that degradation, any recognition of women’s roles tends to focus on superficially changing the plight of the women and not on changing the underlying causes of that predicament.

Charlotte Bretherton has identified three main types of women-environment links that have been depicted in the IR arena; these conceptualizations are important in considering the construction of women’s identity in relationship to the environment, and their experiences. In her interpretation, these links “fall broadly into three categories: women as the problem; women as victims; and women as saviours.”[48] These are key issues because they show that women have been constructed in the international arena as either objects of policy (by the mainstream) or the only means to their own salvation (by certain feminist scholars).

First is the idea of women as the problem. “Discussion of the potential for a global environmental crisis associated with increasing pollution and resource depletion identifies two broad causal problems: excessive consumption in the developed world and population increase in the South. In both of these ‘problem’ areas, women may be identified as bearing particular responsibility.”[49] In the developed world, women are considered to be the primary household buyers, bearing the majority of the responsibility for making decisions about consumption for themselves and their families. Tied to this is the idea that the (primarily Western) view of what women should be encourages them to adopt a consumer life-style, making them believe that they must have certain clothes, beauty supplies, appliances, or other goods in order to be the ideal woman, wife and mother.[50] This view has been interpreted so as to force women to be mere responders to policy changes, rather than implementers of it. Products may be marketed as “green” or “earth-friendly,” and decisions on their continuation based on how women respond to that label. Yet because women are constructed in the west merely as consumers, not as producers, they have not been allowed to instrument any substantial changes in production policy, instead being forced to rely on making their voices heard through their response to policies aimed at them by others.

The construction of women as mere objects of public policy is even more noticeable in the cases of developing countries. In the developing world, because of women’s prime role in child bearing (though, of course, they cannot create children alone) they are often considered to be responsible for the increasing population. This population growth is believed by many western scientists and environmentalists to be the main cause of most environmental problems, thereby implicitly laying the blame for this crisis squarely on women’s shoulders. Because of this understanding of population as the main problem, many environmental and other non-governmental organizations direct their efforts in developing countries towards lowering population growth. Means for this include increased access to all forms of birth control and promotion of female literacy and education, all designed to promote women’s ability to make their own reproductive decisions. Although these are both very worthy goals, I would argue that they are based on western conceptions about what rights and choices women should have, and very seldom are asked for by the women of the developing countries themselves.

One particular sector of global politics that has generally recognized women as either a large part of the environmental problem, or treats them merely as objects of policy, is the area of Women in Development (WID). Although WID (originally an initiative of the United Nations) recognizes that women have not been equitably sharing in the benefits of development, the general solution suggested by this theory would be to simply integrate women and their specific needs or situations into overall development structures. In general, however, this approach, which has been described as combining neoclassical economics and liberal feminism, does nothing to break down the underlying views which have structured the development project in ways that do not recognize women.[51] It does recognize that women have been forced into participation in many structures of development, and that their participation in this process is “asymmetric,” but does not realize why this has occurred.[52] And in the attempt to improve the conditions of women’s lives after the implementation of development projects, women are again objectified and portrayed as accepting of policies that will move them closer to the ideal and western standard. Making women policy objects may well help their condition, or contribute to a better environment, but in the long run this does nothing to address the larger underlying issue of the construction of a certain development ideal and what that does to women and the environment.

The second and third constructions of women’s roles by the global environmental policy arena, women as victims and saviors, are strongly linked. Many ecofeminists and others, including myself, in the analysis of developmental impact identify women as the central victims of environmental problems brought about by modernization. Although this is true, and is an issue that needs to be understood, simply identifying it does not necessarily lead to any useful framework by which to bring about change in the structures of development processes. This will be addressed further below. Some ecofeminists, by taking the idea of women as victims and from it positing a biological or essential closeness to nature, continue to theoretically connect women with nature and are attempting to reclaim this connection and turn it around for the mutual benefit of both. In doing so, they claim for women a place closer to nature and therefore make women primary actors in the restoration of it. Because of this inherent understanding and link to the earth, women are felt to be privileged environmental managers, to have the best knowledge on how to live with the earth. Some feminists holding this view are attempting to reverse the dominant epistemology, making society rely more on women’s ways of knowing the earth or accept women’s values as dominant in a new global arena. Whatever the conception, believing that only women have the greatest potential to save the planet, places an undue burden on them, and can thereby hinder any proactive actions they could take as human beings.

If there is any general acceptance of links between women and the environment in the global political arena, it is through one of these identifications of women as the problem, the victims, or the potential saviors. However, as we have seen, each of these conceptions fails to address the theories that have created these linkages, and therefore cannot meaningfully address the problem of the disproportionate impact of environmental degradation on women. Furthermore, they cannot change the development ideal to prevent this degradation or impact from occurring—they merely remediate the problems that it causes.

“It is difficult…to separate ‘women and the environment’ from the impact of development on women, especially in the Third World.”[53] Development in the traditional sense, an abstract ideal of industrialization and progress, has tended to rely on the modernization ideal described previously. As such, it has been largely created by women-nature connections and the impact of those connections on women’s realm of action and gender constructions, and in turn it has had a large impact on the lived experiences of women in relation to their own environments. There is little doubt that industrial development has tended to cause environmental degradation, and that women are disproportionately affected by this degradation because of the character of their responsibilities and relationship to the land. “Women’s overwhelming responsibility for the provision of fuel, water and food indicates a close relationship with, and dependence upon, the local environment—and hence a particular vulnerability to environmental change.”[54] This vulnerability has been seen through the fact that “where the key components of the ecosystem—energy, land, and water—are degraded it is women’s lives which are more like[ly] to be adversely and directly affected.”[55]

One of the key ideals of modernization or development ideology has been the liberal idea of private property. Long-standing in the western tradition, property and ownership are key ideas in western capitalistic structures. But as this ideal has been exported to the developing world, it has had drastic impacts on women. It has been stated that “woman was dethroned by the advent of private property,”[56] and though this statement is a bit strong, the case can clearly be made that private property can vastly change the way women relate to their environment.

Women, traditionally, have had very few ownership rights in the societies of the developing countries, rather, they have rights of use or access. “Women often have rights of renewable use, while men have rights of consumptive use.”[57] Consumptive use, use for market-recognized production rather than sustenance, has been privileged. By definition, consumptive use prevents renewable use, thereby depriving women of their traditional use of and relationship to the land. Furthermore, the ownership required by market structures severely hampers any access to land by others. “Access to resources—whether by de facto or de jure rights, exclusive or shared rights, primary or secondary rights, ownership or use rights—proves to be an important environmental issue for women virtually everywhere.”[58] As ownership of land is codified along western lines, it is women who lose their rights. Because of this change in structures of use and access to land, women’s work in the land has been dislocated much more so than male labor.[59]

Another contributing factor to women’s displacement from their traditional role and labor in the use of the environment is through the implementation of certain types of science and technology. This technology has contributed to a change and redefinition of gender roles, and “[t]he well-defined difference between men and women worldwide cannot be understood without explicit reference to the gender-specific nature of development, including scientific and technological contributions to the development process.”[60] Because men are most likely to have rights of ownership and use, they are the ones who will benefit most from traditional Western technologies that are likely to require ownership of some kind of capital, land, or equipment. Furthermore, although these technologies may benefit men, they may not benefit women and children, though this premise that what benefits the men of a society benefits all is what most development programs have been built upon.[61]

It is easy to see through the plight of women in developing countries that the model of Western development has had a dramatic impact on local environments. Women have to spend more of their time gathering resources needed to feed their families, as water sources have been depleted or polluted, fuel wood has been felled, and other sources of food cannot be grown or found because of changes in habitat. Transition has occurred to primarily male-oriented ways of using the land, promoting consumption and not methods of sustainable use. Ironically, this is the exact opposite of the newest Western conception of what a healthy environment should be. That conception includes clean air and water and secure systems of food, and most particularly the use of natural resources that will be sustainable for generations to come. Yet, somehow, it seems that the ideal of Western development, which is now clung to by so many developing countries, pushes the path of progress away from these environmental ideals, only to come back to them in a few years when the problems are there to be cleaned up.

If women are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation caused by development, then fixing the very system and worldview of development so it is no longer gender biased is likely to have a positive impact on the environment. Similarly, fixing the system so it no longer relies on huge consumption and creates environmental degradation is likely to be beneficial for women. The growing recognition that technological change impacts men and women differently leads to the implication that a gender impact analysis should be performed with the introduction of any new technologies, in order to determine the effects of that technology.[62] There is an increasing realization in the development community that such assessments must be done to evaluate the effects on development policies on both women and the environment. Then, if any detrimental impact is found to have occurred, steps will be taken to mitigate the impacts. These actions, though laudable and helpful in addressing the concerns of both women and the environment, are not enough.

Instead, we must look at the very gendered characteristics inherent in development and the treatment of the environment. This will likely entail breaking down and understanding the neo-liberal assumptions that define the very concept of “development.” All too often, development is merely equated with numerical growth. And while growth refers only to size, development can mean a fulfilling of possibilities and a qualitative rather than quantitative assessment.[63] Even the very market structures that are seen to be the best way of distributing resources may have to be examined for their role in perpetuating gender inequalities. First, because these structures are partially blind, in that they “assum[e] that ‘production’ takes place only when mediated by technologies for commodity production,”[64] and do not taken into account the productive nature of what is considered to be women’s work. Secondly, and even more so, “the traditional market makes resources available to those who can buy them rather than those who need them,”[65] and this often excludes both developing countries and women who are then left out of the privileged market system entirely. Finally, markets currently do not take into account true environmental costs, such as the health impacts of pollution, and indeed the monies spent on environmental remediation contribute to GNP. This creates a vastly skewed picture of the real costs and benefits of environmental degradation.

Although it may not be possible, or even desirable, to move entirely away from market-based structures and mechanisms, there must be an understanding that market forces are far from perfect. This must correspond with a more qualitative, rather than quantitative, assessment of the ideas and projects of progress, modernization, and development. Markets can be redesigned to take into account inputs and outputs that are now labeled externalities, but even if this cannot be accomplished, some things may be done. The development community, for example, must be prepared to look outside of pure numbers and be willing to make a more value-based or normative assessment of various projects. This may include adopting feminist methodologies for assessment such including interviews with women in developing countries.

Some ecofeminists have further suggested that the only way to save the environment or prevent the problem of women being disproportionately impacted by development is to completely flip the current paradigm of valued “gender” characteristics. It is an approach often called “revalorizing” the female or the feminine. In other words, “feminine” values such as cooperation, community, caring, and emotion would be valued over “masculine” values such as opposition, individuality, self-interestedness, and reason. Others think that these binary ideas should themselves be done away with. Although either of these may, on first glance, seem to be helpful, I would question both the usefulness of replacing one hierarchy with another and the practicality of ending binary thinking. Far more helpful, it would seem, than creating an overly matriarchal system, would be to recognize that many characteristics exist in each gender and that there is no essential “feminine” or “masculine.” In addition, because the human brain tends to organize into opposites, rather than ending binaries it would be more important to realize that there are times and situations when the character of each trait of a pair is needed. Although this may be difficult because of long-standing hierarchical structures, it is important to look beyond the traditional. The modern world cannot be held to established structures created by a society that did not (and was not forced to) take into account its impact on women and nature.

We no longer have the luxury of ignoring the consequences of the gender bias inherent in the structures of our own Western culture. This bias has been particularly important in its contribution to the creation of the global environmental crisis, arguably the most pressing problem for global civil society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Western male dominated society, perceiving a feminine earth, created a worldview that set men up over women and nature, a conception that has justified rampant and troubling exploitation of natural resources, both in the developed and now in the developing world.

I have shown how this Western view was shaped by theoretical and conceptual links between women and nature, and how the change in those connections made by “rational” men in the Enlightenment period had a significant role in creating the environmental crisis. I have also demonstrated that women are both disproportionately underrepresented in environmental governance and excessively affected by the environmental degradation of development, and that looking at these areas further illustrates the effects of the Western instrumental view on nature on the environment of developing countries. Finally, I have also posed some ways of thinking about development and the environment that will hopefully help ameliorate the condition of both women and the environment in developing countries. This instrumental belief must be understood if the crisis is to be addressed, for without this mindset that nature is merely a tool for man’s use, the current global environmental crisis would not be so strikingly vast.

Abzug, B. (1998). The Century of the Woman (last speech of Bella S. Abzug, co-founder and president of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization). Social Policy, 28 (4), 61-64.

Bernstein, S. (2001). The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Braidotti, R., Charkiewicz, E., Hausler, S., & Wieringa, S. (1994). Women, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. London: Zed Books.

Bretherton, C. (1996). Gender and environmental change: are women the key to safeguarding the planet? In J. Vogler, & M. Imber (Eds.), The Environment and International Relations (pp 99-119). London: Routledge.

De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex (H. M. Parshley, Trans.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Dowie, M. (1995). Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Elliot, L. (1998). The Global Politics of the Environment. London: Macmillan Press.

Given-Wilson, C. (1987). The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages. London: Routledge.

Griffin, S. (2001, November 1). Our Current Ecological Crisis: Its Cultural, Historical, and Philosophical Roots within the European Tradition. Speech Given at Macalester College Philosophy Colloquim, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jagentowicz Mills, P. (1996). Feminism and Ecology: On the Domination of Nature. In K. J. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies (pp 211-227). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Macpherson, C. B. (1962). The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Merchant, C. (1998). The Death of Nature. In M. Zimmerman, J. B. Callicott, G. Sessions, K. J. Warren, and J. Clarks (Eds.), Environmental Philosophy (2^nd ed.) (pp 277-290). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Peterson, V. S. and Runyan, A. S. (1993). Global Gender Issues. Boulder: Westview Press.

Plumwood, V. (1996). Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism. In K. J. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies (pp 155-180). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Roach, C. (1996). Loving Your Mother: On the Woman-Nature Relation. In K. J. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies (pp 52-65). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Rocheleau, D., Thomas-Slayter, B., Wangari, E. (Eds.) (1996). Feminist Political Ecology. London: Routledge.

Shiva, V. (1995). Development, Ecology, and Women. In MacKinnon, M.H. and McIntyre, M. (Eds.), Readings in Ecology and Feminist Theology (pp161-171). Kansas City: Sheed & Ward

UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, Gender Working Group. (1995). Missing Links: Gender Equity in Science and Technology for Development.

White Jr., L. (1967). The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. In MacKinnon, M.H. and McIntyre, M. (Eds.) (1995), Readings in Ecology and Feminist Theology (pp 25-35). Kansas City: Sheed & Ward

Zein-Elabdin, E. (1996). Development, gender, and the environment: theoretical or contextual link? Toward an institutional analysis of gender. Journal of Economic Issues, 30 (4), 929-948.

[1] See for example, Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, Karen Warren’s Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and Why it Matters, Val Plumwood’s Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism, or Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest.

[2] Warren, Introduction.

[3] Warren, x-xi.

[4] Warren, xi.

[5] Merchant, 1998, 277.

[6] De Beauvoir, 68.

[7] Quoted in De Beauvoir, 68.

[8] Merchant, 1980, 3.

[9] De Beauvoir, 69.

[10] Merchant, 1980, 28.

[11] De Beauvoir, 36.

[12] Roach, 54-55.

[13] Merchant, 1980, 7-9.

[14] Merchant, 1980, 9.

[15] Merchant, 1980, 44.

[16] Given-Wilson, 22.

[17] Merchant, 1980, 8.

[18] Merchant, 1980, 23.

[19] NRSV, Genesis 1: 28-30

[20] De Beauvoir, 97.

[21] St. Ambrose, quoted in De Beauvoir, 98.

[22] Merchant, 1980, xx.

[23] Merchant, 1980, xvii.

[24] Dowie, 12.

[25] Griffin, Lecture.

[26] Griffin, Lecture.

[27] Plumwood, 170.

[28] Merchant, 1980, 41.

[29] MacPherson, 221.

[30] Arendt, 165.

[31] Bretherton, 107.

[32] Shiva, 161.

[33] Bernstein, 32.

[34] Bernstein, 35.

[35] Gender Working Group, 1-2.

[36] Kahn, New York Times.

[37] Kahn, New York Times.

[38] Zein-Elabdin, 932.

[39] Abzug, 62.

[40] Examples abound through history, from England’s Elizabeth I and Russia’s Catherine the Great, to the UK’s Margaret Thatcher.

[41] Rocheleau et al., 6.

[42] Elliot, 147.

[43] Summary to WB report, 1.

[44] Bretherton, 100.

[45] Elliot, 152.

[46] World Bank GenderNet.

[47] Bretherton, 105.

[48] Bretherton, 101.

[49] Bretherton, 101.

[50] Peterson and Runyan, 109.

[51] Zein-Elabdin, 931

[52] Shiva, 162.

[53] Elliot, 148.

[54] Bretherton, 104.

[55] Elliot, 148.

[56] De Beauvoir, 82.

[57] Rocheleau et al, 13.

[58] Rocheleau et al, 291, italics added.

[59] Gender Working Group, 9.

[60] Gender Working Group, 5.

[61] Gender Working Group, 29.

[62] Gender Working Group, 10.

[63] Hawken, 140.

[64] Shiva, 163.

[65] Cocoyoc Declaration, quoted in Bernstein, 55.

On Women and Nature: How Western Theoretical Constructions Affect Environmental Degradation and the Shaping of Roles of Women in Structures of Environmental Governance and Development

Catherine Neuschler