Abstract:
In the era of globalisation, postmodernism, industrialisation, integrating ecofeminism in the curriculum holds the interest of academics, writers, and educators. This article critically examines different issues like the conceptual framework of ecofeminism, historical, philosophical, ethical and pedagogical approaches of ecofeminism. It is also focussing on ecofeminism in India. The main objective of the essay is to motivate academics, writers, and educators in a new way of exploration to impart critical thinking of the paradigm shift in the theoretical, ideological spheres in the light of postmodern, globalised ecofeminist perspectives.
Key Words: Globalisation, ecofeminism, cultural feminism, feminist transformation, ecofeminist literature
Ecofeminism is a movement committed to the survival of life on Earth. It arose as a result of growing awareness of the relations between women and nature in the 1970s. The Green Belt movement in Kenya, the Chipko movement in India and the 'Green Belt movement' in the U.S. are examples of 'ecofeminist' campaigns. Ecofeminism encompasses viewpoints that are mostly overlooked in the media, focusing on the neglect of women and the relationship between society and nature. It recognises the link between women's empowerment and the fight to save nature and life on earth.
The 'Chipko movement' or ‘Chipko andolan' in India is an example of a women's initiative to protect the environment from loggers and uranium processing units in Canada. It is a response to colonial dominance and brutality against women, colonised non-western, non-White cultures, as well as the threat of atomic annihilation.
Ecofeminism is a 'value system, a social phenomenon, and a practise' Ecofeminists argue that the dominance of women and nature, according to ecofeminists, is based on politics. By taking power and resources away from patriarchy, one will shift the system's patriarchal existence. Individuals do not attempt to dominate 'mother nature', rather collaborate, and should make an effort to transcend power dynamics. Ecofeminism contends that the method, rather than just the objective, should be prioritised. It is a political study that investigates the connections between androcentrism and environmental degradation. It claims that environmental degradation is inextricably related to Western world's mentality towards female members and indigenous cultures.
The various forms of ecofeminism embody various approaches to understanding the relationships between women and mother nature, and also highlights different shades of women inequality. Since its inception in the seventeenth century through the 1960s, liberal feminism has played a significant role in the evolution of feminism. An ideal environment can be created when each person maximises his or her own productive capacity. As a result, what is beneficial to each person is beneficial to society as a whole.
Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique influenced twentieth-century modern feminism (1963). De Beauvoir concluded that women could assume masculine virtues, liberating themselves from their biological fate as biological reproducers. Friedan debunked the myth that “I'm just a housewife” arose from post-World War II manufacturing powers that pushed the “reserve army” of woman labourers back into the private sector of the household, allowing soldiers to reclaim employment in the public domain. The liberal epoch of the women's movement, which erupted in the 1960s, sought equal pay for every women in both college and workplace for achieving a happy and prosperous life.
Rachel Carson has made the topic of life on Earth a public subject. Her book Silent Spring (1962) based on the death-caused by toxic insecticides collecting in the soil and living organisms' tissues—deadly elixirs that bombarded human and nonhuman beings from infancy to death. (Merchant, 2005:200).
Environmental challenges, according to liberal ecofeminists (and liberalism in general), are caused by excessively fast exploitation of natural resources and a refusal to control pesticides and other environmental contaminants. Women, as men, will lead to the advancement of the environment, the protection of natural resources, and the greater standards in the society, whether allotted with equality and equity in educational opportunities to become policymakers, attorneys, scientists, natural resource managers, or lawmakers. As a result, women will overcome the social bias associated with their biology and engage men in the cultural mission of environmental protection. (Merchant, 2005:200-201).
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, cultural feminism emerged. Cultural ecofeminism is a reaction to the idea that in Western society, women and nature are inextricably linked and devalued. “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?” by Sherry Ortner, published in 1974, raised the issue that many ecofeminists are motivated by. Because of their genetics, social structures, and psychology, women have been seen as being similar to nature than men throughout cultures and across history, according to Ortner. Men's physiology allows them to fly, hunt, perform warfare, and partake in public relations, while women's physiology allows them to bring life from their bodies, enduring the pleasures, pains, and stigmas associated with menstruation, conception, childbirth, and breastfeeding. In terms of social status, childrearing and household responsibilities have driven married women at home and away from the outer world.
Cultural ecofeminists believe that the only way out of this predicament is for women and nature to be elevated and liberated through direct political action. Many cultural feminists commemorate a period in prehistory when nature was symbolised by pregnant female figures, plants, insects, and snakes, and women were revered as life givers. Further the seventeenth-century industrial movement, which replaced Renaissance organicism and a loving world with the metaphor of a mechanism that could be regulated and fixed from the outside. Cultural feminists see their ontology and epistemology as highly masculinist and exploitative of a nature traditionally represented in the feminine gender. The world is ruled by technology, research, and industry created and regulated by men.
Cultural ecofeminism, which is also anti-science and anti-technology, promotes the bond between women and nature by reviving ancient ceremonies centred on goddess worship, the stars, wildlife, and the female reproductive system. Many ecofeminists find strength and empowerment in a vision in which nature is revered as a mother and goddess. The re-visioning of nature and women as strong powers includes goddess worship and ceremonies centred on the moon and female menstrual cycles, seminars, festivals, art shows, street and theatre performances, and direct political action. Intuition, a compassionate ethic, and web-like human-nature relationships are also part of cultural ecofeminist theory.
Socialist ecofeminism is a feminist transformation in socialist ecology that places the idea of a fair, natural environment in the context of reproduction rather than creation. It believes, like Marxist feminism, that nonhuman existence is the material source of all life and that food, clothes, shelter, and resources are all necessary for human survival. Nature and human nature are collectively and traditionally developed over time, and human praxis transforms them. Humans must establish healthy relationships with nature, which is an aggressive topic rather than a passive entity to be dominated. It moves beyond cultural ecofeminism to deliver a patriarchal hegemony analysis that reflects on the dialectical relationships between creation and reproduction, productivity, and ecology.
Women in indigenous and traditional societies have had important encounters with the world over the years as creators and reproducers of life. Women's intimate understanding of nature has aided in the survival of life in every human ecosystem on the planet.
Men are responsible for and dominate the production of trade goods under capitalism, according to sociologist Abby Peterson (1984:6), while women are responsible for reproducing the population and social relations. “Women's reproductive responsibilities include biological reproduction of the species (intergenerational reproduction) as well as intra-generational reproduction of the workforce by unpaid domestic labour. The replication of social relations—socialization—is also included here.” Reproduction is subordinated to creation in capitalist capitalism.
The reproduction of life is at the core of socialist ecofeminism. The biological reproduction of animals in the local environment is how life is spread in nature. Food, water, soil additives, greenhouse gases, bad weather, disease, and competition from other organisms will all affect offspring's ability to reach reproductive age. Reproduction is both biological and psychological for humans. To begin with, enough children must live to reproductive age in order for the population to replicate over time; too much place strain on the specific mode of development, disrupting the local ecosystem. Second, adults must provide adequate food, clothes, housing, and fuel on a regular basis to ensure their own subsistence and the efficiency of their ecological homes by engaging with external nature. Human and other species' intergenerational biological replication, as well as intergenerational reproduction of everyday life, are also necessary for life to continue over time. The preservation of the quality of all life is described as the conservation of an ecological-productive-reproductive equilibrium between humans and nature.
Women's bodies are being made into processing machines, sites of special interests' tests in order to research birth control methods and equipment, condoms (even some that have been considered unsafe and outlawed in Western countries), in vitro fertilisation experiments, and so on, according to feminists. Reproductive rights entails the ability to choose whether or not to have children in a society that both requires and cares for them.
Socialist ecofeminism, as cultural ecofeminism, opposes chemical attacks on women's sexual health, but does so in the form of fertility and development ties. It can also promote point-of-production activities such as the Third World's Chipko and Greenbelt campaigns, Native American women's demonstrations against cancer-causing nuclear uranium mines on reservations, and environmental justice activists' protests against waste dumps in urban areas. Socialist ecofeminism is a feminist transformation in socialist ecology. It places the idea of a fair, natural environment in the context of reproduction rather than creation. Food, clothes, shelter, and resources are all necessary for human survival. Reproduction is both biological and psychological for humans. Men are responsible for and dominate the production of trade goods under capitalism.
Women are responsible to reproduce the population and social relations. The preservation of the quality of all life is described as the conservation of an ecological-productive-reproductive equilibrium between humans and nature. The reproduction of life is at the core of socialist ecoFeminism. It believes that nonhuman existence is the material source of all lives and that humans must establish healthy relationships with nature. It moves beyond cultural ecofeminist analysis to deliver a patriarchal hegemony analysis that reflects on the dialectical relationships between creation and reproduction, productivity, and ecology.
The replication of social relations -- socialization -- is also included in the reproduction of everyday life in capitalist capitalism. It says that enough children must live to reproductive age in order for the population to replicate over time. Too much strain on the specific mode of development will disrupt the local ecosystem.
Socialist ecofeminism opposes chemical attacks on women's sexual health, but does so in the form of fertility and development ties. It can also promote point-of-production activities such as the Third World's Chipko and Greenbelt campaigns. According to Vandana Shiva, modern science and technology is a capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal endeavour that is inherently violent and perpetuates abuse against women and the environment. Third-world women, on the other hand, are not only victims of development; they also have the ability to affect progress, according to Shiva. She draws on the picture of a nonviolent social and ecological movement of the 1970s named Chipko movement in the Garhwal Himalayas by rural villagers, particularly women.
According to Rao (2012), the fight between men and women to preserve their food base has the potential to become a shared ground for women's emancipation and the sustainability of life on the planet. She seems to dismiss caste and political choices, ignoring the complexities of hierarchies, subordination, colonialism, and brutality in rural tribal and peasant societies. Women's unique understanding and belonging with nature for "staying alive" were consistently marginalised.
Bina Agarwal's ecofeminist outlook is grounded in the relationship between 'women and nature' as being shaped by gender and class/caste/race. Women's relationships to the world are socially and historically complex. They interact with the world in both constructive and negative ways. Women, especially those living in impoverished rural households, are victims of environmental destruction and active participants in environmental conservation and regeneration movements. The material foundation of women's knowledge is eroding as natural wealth is degraded and privatised. Women's work has intensified as a result of disappearing parks, village commons, and a lack of drinking water, among other factors. Deforestation has also limited the earnings of small women who sell firewood. This has a strong effect on the diets of low-income families. Women and female children receive secondary attention in terms of diet and health care due to existing gender differences within the family. People have been displaced as a result of massive dams or large-scale erosion, around the same time, they are not qualified to use the latest technology and are left out of the planning phase. The material foundation of women's knowledge is eroding as natural wealth are degraded and privatised.
Conclusion:
According to ecofeminist literature, women's degradation and dominance over nature go side by side and act as an essence of growth. Since women are perceived to be closer to nature than men, any harm to nature is assumed to be harmful to both men and women. These claims seem to ignore the fact that environment, history, gender disperity are historically and socially built and differ through and within societies and time periods. Traditional societies' productivity was undermined by imperial invasion and capitalist progress, she argues. Critics such as Susan Prentice contend that stressing 'women- nature' unique relationship and politics implies that men's endeavour to the world is evil, missing the possibility that men, like women, may cultivate a loving ethic for the environment. It also fails to examine capitalism's hegemony over nature.
References:
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