Eco-feminism and Black feminism

1. Eco-feminism: meaning

The term éco-féminisme was coined by the French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne in Le Féminisme ou la mort (1974). Eco-feminism holds that patriarchy and environmental destruction are connected: the same way of thinking that treats women as inferior treats nature as an object to be controlled and used. Liberation of women and protection of the environment must therefore go together.

2. Main ideas

1. Dualisms: Western thought ranks culture over nature, reason over emotion, mind over body, man over woman. Women are placed on the side of nature and both are devalued (Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 1993).
2. Scientific revolution as domination: Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (1980), argued that the shift from an organic to a mechanical view of nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries licensed its exploitation, and paralleled the control of women.
3. Maldevelopment: Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (1988), argued that Western, patriarchal development destroys the “feminine principle” (prakriti, shakti) and with it the subsistence economies that women sustain: forests, water, seeds.
4. Women as subsistence producers: Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (1993), linked capitalist patriarchy, colonialism and the treatment of both women and nature as “free resources”.
5. Ethic of care: an alternative based on interdependence, sustainability and care rather than control.

Strands

• Cultural (spiritual) eco-feminism: women have a special closeness to nature, through the body and motherhood; celebrates goddess traditions.
• Social (materialist) eco-feminism: the connection is social and economic, not biological; women depend more on natural resources because of the gendered division of labour.

Indian movements

The Chipko movement (from 1973 in the Garhwal Himalaya, now Uttarakhand), where village women such as Gaura Devi of Reni (1974) hugged trees to stop commercial felling, is the standard example. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Medha Patkar) and women’s seed-saving networks are also cited.

Criticism

• Essentialism: claiming women are naturally closer to nature repeats the patriarchal stereotype it opposes.
• Bina Agarwal, “The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India” (Feminist Studies, 1992), proposed feminist environmentalism instead: women’s relation to nature comes from their material reality, their work, property rights and class and caste position, not from a feminine principle. Shiva romanticises pre-colonial India and overlooks caste and class among women.
• Romanticises subsistence and neglects the benefits of development to women.

3. Black feminism: meaning

Black feminism argues that Black women face a form of oppression produced by the interaction of race, gender and class, which neither the (white) women’s movement nor the (male-led) civil rights movement addressed. Their experience cannot be understood by adding racism to sexism; the forms combine into something distinct.

4. Development and key thinkers

• Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (Akron, Ohio, 1851): the ideal of delicate womanhood excluded enslaved women who laboured like men.
• The Combahee River Collective Statement (Boston, 1977): Black lesbian feminists described their struggle against “interlocking” systems of racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression and introduced the term identity politics.
• bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) and Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984): mainstream feminism, typified by Friedan, spoke for privileged white women; Black women’s position at the margin gives them a fuller view of the system.
• Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979/1984).
• Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989): coined intersectionality. Her starting point was American anti-discrimination law, which treated race claims and sex claims separately, so that Black women fell between them.
• Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990): the matrix of domination; Black women’s standpoint; controlling images (the “mammy”, the “matriarch”) that justify oppression.

5. Main propositions

1. Oppressions are interlocking and simultaneous, not additive.
2. The family may be a site of resistance to racism, not only of patriarchy, contrary to white feminist assumptions.
3. Black women’s paid work has a long history; “liberation through work” was a white middle-class demand.
4. Knowledge must be grounded in lived experience, dialogue and an ethic of care.
5. Struggle must be against racism, sexism and class exploitation together.

6. Indian parallel: Dalit feminism

Dalit feminists made the same argument about caste. Gopal Guru, “Dalit Women Talk Differently” (Economic and Political Weekly, 1995), argued that Dalit women face caste patriarchy from upper castes and patriarchy within Dalit communities. Sharmila Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender (2006), called for a Dalit feminist standpoint. The National Federation of Dalit Women was founded in 1995. Intersectionality is now a routine tool in Indian discussions of caste, gender and law.

Criticism of Black feminism

• Intersectional categories can multiply without limit, making general theory difficult.
• Concentrates on the USA; its application elsewhere needs adaptation.

How this is examined

“What are feminist theories? Explain black and eco-feminism” (August 2024): one paragraph defining feminist theory, then each school with meaning, names, propositions and criticism, and the table. “Eco feminism” as a six-mark note (April 2022): d’Eaubonne, Shiva, Chipko, Agarwal. For Black feminism paired with Marxist feminism (April 2022), contrast class-first analysis with intersectionality.