Ecofeminist

Philosophy

A Western Perspective on
What It Is and Why It Matters

Karen J. Warren

ROWMAN

PUBLISHERS, INC.
New York Oxford

& LITTLEFIELD

Lanham

Boulder

Chapter
Nature Is

One

Feminist Issue

Motivating Ecofeminism by Taking

Empirical Data Seriously

Trees, forests, and deforestation. Water, drought, and desertification. Food production, poverty, and toxic wastes. The biodiversity crisis, wildlife, and maltreatment of animals. What do such environmental issues have to do with women,

people of color, the poor, and children?

Ecological feminists ("ecofeminists") claim that there are important connections between the unjustified dominations of women, people of color, children,
and the poor and the unjustified domination of nature. Throughout this book, I
refer to unjustifiably dominated groups as "Others," both "human Others" (such
as women, people of color, children, and the poor) and "earth Others" (such as
animals, forests, the land). The reference to "Others" is intended to highlight the
status of those subordinate groups in unjustifiable relationships and systems of
domination and subordination. According to ecofeminists, "nature" (referring to
nonhuman animals, plants, and ecosystems) is included among those Others
who/that have been unjustifiably exploited and dominated. "Nature is a feminist
issue" might well be called the slogan of ecofeminism.
What does it mean to say "nature is a feminist issue"? Minimally, something is
"feminist
issue" if an understanding of it helps one understand the oppression,
a
subordination, or domination of women. Equal rights, comparable pay for comparable work, and day care centers are feminist issues because understanding
them sheds light on the subordination or inferior status of women crossculturally. Racism, classism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, and
colonialism are feminist issues because understanding them helps one understand
the subordination of women. (More is said about this in chapter 3.) According to
ecofeminists, trees, water, food production, animals, toxins, and, more generally,
naturism (i.e., the unjustified domination of nonhuman nature) are feminist issues
because understanding them helps one understand the interconnections among

Chapter

One

the dominations of women and other subordinated groups of humars ("other

human Others"), on the one hand, and the domination of nonhuman nature, on the
other hand. I call these interconnections women-other human Others-nature
interconnections.
What does it mean to take a feminist approach to untangling these interconnections? A feminist approach uses gender analysis as the starting point; gender
is the lens through which the initial description and analysis occur. Ecofeminism
uses a feminist approach when exploring women-other human Others-nature
interconnections.
If ecofeminism is about interconnections among all systems of unjustified
human domination, why is special attention given to women--only one of many
groups of humans who are unjustifiably dominated? Ecofeminists begin with
gender as a category of analysis. As such, ecofeminists highlight claims about
women as women in their discussions of interconnected systems of unjustified
domination (rather than, for example, on women as humans, as mothers, as
wives, as daughters, as sisters). But this is not because gender oppression is
more important than other forms of oppression; it is not. It is because a focus on
"women" reveals important features of interconnected systems of human domination: First, among white people, people of color, poor people, children, the elderly, colonized peoples, so-called Third World people, and other human groups
harmed by environmental destruction, it is often women who suffer disproportionately higher risks and harms than men. Second, often female-gender roles
(e.g., as managers of domestic economies) overlap with a particular environmental issue in a way that male-gender roles do not. Third, some of the Western ideologies that underlie the conception and domination of "nature" are male-gender
biased in ways that are distinct from other sorts of bias (a topic discussed in chapter 3). So, in order to unpack specific gender features of human systems of domination, ecofeminists often (but not exclusively) focus on "women."
This chapter uses a feminist approach to discuss empirical women-other
human Others-nature interconnections. These empirical considerations set the
stage for subsequent considerations of a variety of ecofeminist positions (given
in chapter 2) and the particular version of ecofeminist philosophy (given in chapter 3) I defend throughout this book.

WOMEN AND

TREES, FORESTS, AND FORESTRY

In 1974, twenty-seven women of Reni in northern India took simple but effective
action to stop tree felling. They threatened to hug the trees if the lumberjacks
attempted to cut them down. The women's protest, known as the Chipko movement ("chipko" in Hindi means "to embrace" or "hug"), saved 12,000 square
kilometers of sensitive watershed. The Chipko movement also gave visibility to
two basic complaints of local people: commercial felling by contractors damages

Nature Is

Feminist Issue

a large number of other trees, and the teak and eucalyptus monoculture plantations are replacing valuable indigenous forests. 2
Forests have been central to the evolution of Indian civilization, India being
known in ancient times as "Aranya Sanskriti" or a "forest culture. ''3 The commercialization of forestry under British rule, however, restricted the access of
local Indians to forests, and management practices that aimed at maximizing timber output for a cash economy were introduced. This led to widespread Gandhian
satyagrahas---campaigns of nonviolent civil disobedience by local Indian
women. The Chipko movement is "historically, philosophically and organisationally, an extension of traditional Gandhian satyagrahas. ''4
Both the earlier forest satyagrahas and their contemporary expression in the
Chipko movement are responses to conflicts over forest resource use and degradation. According to Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, what distinguishes Chipko from the earlier struggles is its ecological basis:

The new concem to save and protect forests through Chipko satyagraha did not arise
from resentment against further encroachment on the people's access to forest resources.
It
It arose from the alarming signals of rapid ecological destabilisation in the hills
has now evolved to the demand for ecological rehabilitation. Since the Chipko movement is based upon the perception of forests in their ecological context, it exposes the
social and ecological costs of short term growth-oriented forest management. This is
clearly seen in the slogan of the Chipko movement which claims that the main products
of the forests are not timber or resin, but "soil, water, and oxygen .-5

"Soil, water, and oxygen." The Chipko

women understand the ecological significance of forests.

The Chipko movement--a grassroots, women-initiated, ecologically aware,
nonviolent protest movement--is ostensibly about trees. But it is also about
women-other human Others-nature interconnections. This is because, in India
(as in many countries of the Southern Hemisphere, hereafter referred to as the
South), forests are inextricably connected to rural and household economies governed by women. Tree shortages in India pose significant problems for rural
Indian women. The "eucalyptus controversy" illustrates why this is so.
As a result of First World development decisions, indigenous, multispecies forests
have been replaced in India by monoculture tree plantations, most notably eucalyptus plantations. The replacement of natural forests in India with eucalyptus plantations typically is justified by outside development theoreticians on the grounds of
increased productivity. While eucalyptus covers nearly half a million hectares, it is
very unpopular among local women. According to Bandyopadhyay and Shiva:

What has been called the "eucalyptus controversy" is in reality a conflict of paradigms, between an ecological approach to forestry on the one hand, and a reductionist, partisan approach which only responds to industrial requirements on the other.
While the former views natural forests and many indigenous tree species as more

Chapter

One

than eucalyptus, the reverse is true according to the paradigm 9 f Commercial Forestry. The scientific conflict is in fact an economic conflict over which
aoods and whose needs are important.

lltlfi. "vo

Which needs and whose needs are important? Ecofeminists insist that the needs
of women as primary managers of household economies are important for at least
three reasons.
First, in the South women are typically more dependent than men on tree and
forest products,7 and they are the primary sufferers of forest resource depletion.8
Trees provide five essential elements in these household economies: food, fuel,
fodder, products for the home (including building materials, household utensils,
gardens, dyes, medicines), and income-generating activities. 9 As trees become
scarce, it is women who must walk farther for fuelwood and fodder and who must
carry it all back themselves (e.g., without the help of animals). As men increasingly seek employment in towns and cities, especially to work in eucalyptus plantations, it is women who must carry out men's former jobs plus the laborious
tasks of collecting and processing forest products on degraded soils. As
new technologies targeted at cash economies are introduced, it is women who
have
decreased opportunities to use trees as a source of income (e.g., by making
objects that can be sold at market). As development projects that fail to address
women's specific needs are introduced, it is women who are confronted with the
challenges of cooking with inferior fuelwood. Because of their gendered responsibilities for maintaining domestic households, tree shortages have significant,
a
direct, and disproportionate impact on women. As the U.N. publication The
World's Women, 1995 states:

Rough estimates of the proportion of rural women affected by fuelwood scarcity-based on estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
of the percentage of household energy provided by fuelwood--are 60 percent in 32
African countries, nearly 80 percent in 18 Asian countries, and nearly 40 percent in
14 Latin American and Caribbean countries. 10

highly

deforested areas, the situation for women is the worst, since women
devote
must
more time to collecting fuelwood, thereby reducing the time available to do other activities.
Second, there are customs, taboos, and legal and time constraints that women
face that men do not face. As the United Nations documents:
In

Economic productivity and development in rural areas of developing regions

are low,
and women in poor rural regions are overwhelmingly disadvantaged in dealing with
their environment. They have less education and training than urban
women or rural
men, and they are excluded from traditional rural development programmes that
might provide such training--and from the credit and other institutional support
needed for rural development. 11

Nature Is

Feminist Issue

Men and women often have different access to credit and land. The rights of
men and women regarding trees often differ significantly. In the United Republic
of Tanzania, for example, women (who may be one of several wives of one man)
often are permitted to stay on land they do not and cannot own at the discretion
of their husbands or fathers. 12 Women in rural areas of developing countries are
largely without access to the sort of institutional support needed to participate in
and control local development:
In rural areas, women's roles are those of the poorest-paid labourers--weeding, hoeing and carrying water and wood, combined with the traditional family roles of cooking, child care, health care and reproduction--without even the pay that a labourer
expects. While consciousness of these traditional roles has fostered the idea that
women are in some sense natural custodians of the environment in rural areas, there
is no evidence of this notion and women in rural areas are largely ill-equipped for it.
They are without training, status, access to community-based organizations and
cooperatives, land and property rights, capital, or environmental institutions that
make up the dense fabric of rural life and control its development. 13

Third, key assumptions of commercial Western forestry work

to women's disOne
such
assumption
is
that
the
outsider
knows
best--that
the First
advantage.
World forester (an "outsider") has the requisite technical expertise to solve the
problem of the lack of trees in Third World countries. But this assumption is false
or problematic. Sometimes it is "the insider" (i.e., the local people most inside the
culture) the Chipko women of India, for example--who are the experts, who
have what feminist foresters call "indigenous technical knowledge" about
forestry production. 14 Because local women are the primary users of forest commodities in most developing countries, their "day-to-day, hands-on involvement
with forestry goes far beyond that of many professionally trained foresters, m5 For
example, in a Sierra Leone village, women were able to identify thirty-one products from nearby bushes and trees while men could identify only eight. 6
Women's indigenous technical knowledge grows out of their daily, felt, lived
experiences as managers of trees and tree products.
A second assumption of commercial Western forestry is that activities that fall
outside the boundaries of commercial fiber production are less important. 17 Yet these
activities are precisely those that women engage in on a daily basis. Conceptually,
the "invisibility" of what women do accounts for the mistaken assumption that management and production policies of orthodox forestry are not gender-biased. It also
explains why many foresters "literally do not see trees that are used as hedgerows or
living fence poles; trees that provide materials for basketry, dyes, medicines, or decorations; trees that provide sites for honey barrels; trees that provide shade; or trees
that provide human food. ''18 Because these foresters literally do not see these multiple uses of trees, they also often do not see a lot more, for example, that a diversity
of tree species is useful, that men and women may have very different uses for the
same tree or may use different trees for different purposes.

Chapter

A third assumption of orthodox Western forestry concerns efficiency: it usually

is better to have large-scale production using a small number of species than
small-scale, community-based forestry using a wide variety of species. Again, the
Chipko movement challenges this assumption. Since small-scale production
reflects local priorities, involves multiple uses of many species of trees, and is
responsive to the social reality of women's importance in agriculture and forest
production, to threaten small-scale production is to threaten the livelihood and
well-being of women.
The empirical data about women and trees in India remind us to notice that
other issues usually raised outside an ecofeminist context, such as the loss of oldgrowth temperate and rainforest trees and the effects of deforestation on indigenous cultures, can usefully become part of an ecofeminist discussion as well.
Consider, for example, the impact of the destruction of native forests--those
never logged or planted by humans--on indigenous and land-based peoples in
Brazil. In the northwest Amazon, an invasion of gold miners has "wrecked devastation on the Yanomami--one of the largest and most culturally intact indigenous groups in the Amazon. ''19 Despite current action by the Brazilian government, the destruction of Yanomami culture and livelihood has continued:
Yanomami gardens have been destroyed; streams have been polluted with deadly
mercury; malaria and other illnesses contribute to the death, starvation, and malnutrition that plagues these native peoples. Between 1987 and 1990, nearly 13
percent of the Yanomami population (about 1,300 people) died as a result of the
miners' actions. 2 The military governments that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985
viewed indigenous people as "ethnic cysts" to be "excised" from or assimilated
into the body politic. 21 Blatant disregard for the culture and health of indigenous
peoples is intimately connected with the destruction of the forests and land that
constitute their homes.

WOMEN, WATER,

Nature Is

One

AND DROUGHT

The demand for water for agricultural irrigation in developing countries

accounted for 30 percent of the growth in water consumption in 1990. World
water use is divided among irrigation uses (73 percent), industry uses (22 percent), and domestic uses (5 percent). But less than 3 percent of all water on earth
is fresh. The atmosphere, rivers, streams, lakes, and underground stores hold less
than percent of the earth's water.
Furthermore, millions of humans have difficulty getting sufficient water necessary for survival, about 5 liters per day. In more than half of the developing
countries, less than 50 percent of the population has a source of potable water or
facilities for sewage disposal. The World Health Organization estimates that
approximately 85 percent of all sicknesses and diseases in developing countries,
including diarrhea, trachoma, parasitic worms, and malaria, are attributable to

Feminist Issue

inadequate potable

water or sanitation. It also estimates that as many as 25 million deaths a year are due to water-related illnesses. The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 15 million children
die every year before they are five; half of them could be saved if they had access
to safe drinking water. 22
Water scarcity is of special concern for women and children. According to The
World's Women, 1995, the majority of countries in Africa and many countries of Asia
and Latin America are considered water-scarcity countries. 23 In these countries,
Small-scale studies
women and children perform most of the water collection work.
in Africa and Asia indicate that women and girls spend up to forty-three hours per
week collecting and carrying water (e.g., in Africa, approximately seventeen hours
in Senegal, five hours in rural areas of Botswana, and forty-three hours on northern
farms in Ghana; in Asia, seven hours in the Baroda region of India, one to five hours
in Nepalese villages, depending on the ages of the girls, and three hours in Pakistan) .24 Because of natural resource depletion, women also must walk farther for
water (e.g., up to fifteen kilometers daily through rough terrain in Uttarakhand,
India). The effects on women in these countries is significant:

of rural women affected by water scarcity is estimated at 55 per cent in

in Asia and 45 per cent in Latin America. Even where water is abundant overall in countries, there still are significant parts of many countries where at least
seasonal water scarcity burdens women with added time for water collection. 25

The

proportion

Africa, 32 per

cent

Seager, approximately half the population in the Third

World is still without safe drinking water. 26 There are 250 million cases of waterrelated diseases, resulting in ten million deaths, reported each year. 27 Drinking
water is often drawn from public bathing and laundering places, and the same
water is frequently used as a public toilet. Lack of sanitary water is of special conproviders of household water,
cern for women and children since, as the primary
they experience disproportionately higher health risks in the presence of unsani-

According

tary

water.

to Joni

Contaminated water and its disproportionate effects on women, particularly

among people of color and the poor, is not just a problem in developing countries.
In 1980, the United States produced 125 billion pounds of hazardous waste,
enough to fill approximately 3,000 Love Canals. By the mid-1990s, 38 percent of
the rivers in the United States were too polluted to swim in. Groundwater, the
drinking water source for nearly half of the population of the United States, is
contaminated by leaking chemical wastes and other substances .28
As an example, in Hardeman County, Tennessee, in 1964, the Velsicol
Chemical Company dumped 300,000 fifty-five gallon barrels of unknown
chemicals on their 242-acre farm. Some of the barrels burst open, and their
contents seeped into the soil. In 1967 a U.S. Geological Survey report showed
that the chemicals from the dump site were reaching local water wells. No
action was taken. By 1977 residents noticed that their drinking water had a

Chapter

Nature Is

One

foul odor and taste. Nell Grantham, a licensed practical nurse, took samples of
their water for testing. The results confirmed their suspicions: Their water contained harmful chemicals, twelve clearly identified. Local residents were told
the water was not safe to drink, cook with, bathe in; vegetables and animals
could not be raised on their land. Residents experienced a host of health problems: skin rashes, liver damage, birth defects. 29
A different sort of water issue that affects women, people of color, the poor,
and children are the so-called natural disasters of droughts and floods. A drought
is too little water; a flood is too much water. Traditionally, droughts and floods
are considered "disasters" only when humans, human communities, and property
have been seriously affected. Humans make land more drought-prone and more
flood-prone (and, hence, more disaster-prone) by removing the vegetation and
soil systems that absorb and store water. As Anders Wijkman and Lloyd Timberlake claim about droughts, "reduced rainfall may trigger a drought, but human
pressure on the land is the primary cause. ''3
Wijkman and Timberlake argue that forces of nature ("natural events") trigger disaster events, but they are not the main cause. In the developing world, they identify
three main causes of "natural disasters": human vulnerability resulting from poverty
and inequality; environmental degradation owing to poor land use; and rapid population growth, especially among the poor. 31 But these three main causes involve a
complex set of institutional, economic, cultural, and political factors. According to
Wijkman and Timberlake, these complex factors bear an important and typically
undernoticed causal role in the occurrence of "natural disasters," such as droughts
and floods, that affect millions of humans and animals.
Economic or class interests head the list of human-induced factors that affect
the occurrences and locations of droughts as "natural disasters." Wijkman and
Timberlake poignantly express this point when they claim that "no wealthy person ever died in a drought," "no relief worker has starved to death during a
drought," and "no journalist has died of hunger while covering a drought. ''32
Are droughts and floods--obvious environmental issues with class implications-also gender and age issues? Yes, especially considering that it is poor
women and children who are most significantly affected. This is due to a constellation of interconnected factors--with poverty a major factor. No matter how
poverty is measured, the poor population is largely and increasingly comprised of
women and children. Poverty differentials among both groups are magnified by
race, ethnicity, and age. 33 For example, cross-culturally, women are paid less than
men, and women in most regions spend as much or more time working than men
when unpaid housework is taken into account. 34 Women everywhere control
fewer resources and reap a lesser share of the world's wealth than men: Women
do more than one-half of the world's work, but receive only 10 percent of the
world's income and own only 1 percent of the world's property. 35 Women-headed
households are a growing worldwide phenomenon, with between 80 and 90 percent of poor families headed by women. 36 When one remembers that the three

Feminist Issue

elements that make up the major part of Third World disasters are deforestation,
desertification, and soil erosion, and that, among humans, it is the poor who are
most significantly affected by them, one can then understand why women and

children will be

disproportionately

victims of these disasters.

WOMEN, FOOD, AND FARMING

It is estimated that women farmers grow at least half of the world's food. According to Mayra Buvinic and Sally Yudelman, between one-third and one-half of the
agricultural laborers in the Third World are women. 37 They claim that:
women farmers work longer hours, have fewer assets and lower incomes than
farmers do, and have almost as many dependents to support. The disparity is not
due to lack of education or competence. Women farmers are poorer because their access
to credit is limited. Without credit they cannot acquire productive assets, such as cattle,
fertilizer or improved seeds, to improve the productivity of their labor. 38

As

rule,

men

Women's share in farming varies widely cross-culturally, but in general men do

animals is
more of the actual fieldwork when access to machinery or large farm
involved (such as in the United States or India), and women do more when the
work is done by hand (such as in Amazonia and sub-Saharan Africa).
Women in Africa produce more than 70 percent of Africa's food, typically
without tractors, oxen, or even plows. 39 "When one speaks today of 'the African
farmer,' one is talking about a woman. ''4 The Ugandan poet Okot p'Bitek
poignantly expresses this view in his "Song of Ocol."
Woman of Africa

Sweeper
Smearing

floors and walls

cow dung and black soil
Cook, ayah, the baby on your back
Washer of dishes,
With

Planting, weeding, harvesting

Store-keeper, builder
errands,
Cart, lorry, donkey...
Runner of

Woman of Africa
What are you not?

41

To illustrate the plight of women farmers in Africa, consider the root crop cassava. Women do 70 to 80 percent of the growing and harvesting of cassava, and
100 percent of the processing, which includes washing out the natural cyanide
found in it (a process that takes eighteen five-hour days). Yet little money has
been devoted to research on cassava and the development of processing tech-

Chapter

10

Nature Is

One

nologies that would increase both the productivity of women farmers and the
demand and price for cassava. 42
The so-called feminization of agriculture refers to the increasing proportion of
women in the agricultural labor force. Women are farm owners and farm managers, with major decision-making responsibilities about production and most
agricultural tasks. Women are farm partners, sharing responsibility for agricultural production, typically with another household member. Women are farm
workers, either as unpaid family laborers or as wage laborers. 43 The number of
women for each 100 men working in agriculture is seventy-one in Africa, fiftyfour in Western Europe, forty-seven in Asia and the Pacific, and eighty-four in
Eastern Europe. 44
However, a failure to realize the extent of women's contribution to agriculture
(e.g., by First World development policies and practices) has contributed historically
to the invisibility of women in all aspects of agricultural work: in ploughing, planting, caring for farm animals, harvesting, weeding, processing, and the storing of
crops. It also has contributed to a failure to see ways in which women and their families have been deeply affected by development decisions and projects that have
depleted the resource bases on which their productive activities depend (e.g., subsistence agriculture, food processing). This is exacerbated by the fact that women
historically have often had little input into those decisions and projects. 45
Chris Cuomo argues that farms are sites of human oppression in the United
States as well:
Eighty

ninety percent of the approximately two million hired farmworkers are Latino,
followed by African-Americans, Caribbeans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, Vietnamese,
Koreans, and Jamaicans. It is estimated that as many as 313,000 farmworkers experience pesticide-related illnesses each year. Not surprisingly, Hispanic women generally
show higher levels of pesticides in their milk than white women do .46
to

Although it is not
States, including

known how many of the agricultural workforce in the United

the percentage of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, are
the
U.S.
Department
of Agriculture (USDA) has determined that 22 perwomen,
cent of all hired farmworkers in the United States are women. Of this 22 percent,
9 percent are classified as migrant workers, and 45 percent of migrant farmworking women were Hispanic, 45 percent were white, and 6 percent were classified by the USDA as "Black and Other. ''47 This sort of empirical data shows
why fanning, agriculture, and food are important to ecofeminist philosopherz.

WOMEN,

PEOPLE OF

COLOR, CHILDREN,

AND HEALTH

The health of women and children, particularly in poor communities of color, is

adversely and disproportionately affected by harmful human environmental practices. For example, in some developing countries, women spend much of their

Feminist Issue

11

straw, or dung--in poorly ventilated areas.

levels of indoor pollution. As the United
Nations reports in The World's Women, 1995, significant health risks are experienced by women who cook indoors in developing countries.

time

They

cooking with biomass--wood,

are thereby exposed to high

in Nepal found that women cook for about five hours a day, with indoor
concentrations in rural areas as high as 20,000 micrograms per cubic
meter. As a result, acute respiratory infections and bronchitis are said to be very
common in rural areas.
Nonsmoking women in India and Nepal exposed to biomass smoke have been
found to have abnormally high levels of chronic respiratory diseases--with mortality rates comparable to that of heavy male smokers. The enormously high levels of
women's exposure to indoor air pollution during cooking found in 15 countries of
Africa and Asia indicate very significant health risks to the many women who cook
indoors in developing countries. 48

One

study

particulate

Health issues in Western countries around chemical sensitivity also affect

women. There are three main ways in which chemicals can enter the body:
through inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin. 49 In the United
States and Canada, the chemical sensitivity literature shows that human sensitivities to substances like formaldehyde are strongly gender related (two to three
times the number of cases among women than men) and age dependent (children
and older women are the most vulnerable). In the Great Lakes Basin ecosystem,

pesticides, heavy metals, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), and dioxins have

been shown not only to produce reproductive impairments, cancers, and tumors

in fish and mammals and deformities in insect larvae, but in human tissue as well.
PCBs have contributed to adverse reproductive outcomes (including decreased
sperm count in males), low birth weight, infants born with smaller head circumferences, increased rates of cancer of all types, and circulatory and immune system diseases. 5 Similarly, pesticides and industrial pollutants contribute to many
types of reproductive impairment in humans, for example, difficulty conceiving,
miscarriages and spontaneous abortions, sperm toxicity, and ftal/infant related
health problems. 51 Due largely to their ability to cross the placenta, to bioaccumulate, and to occur as mixtures, persistent toxic chemicals pose disproportionate serious health threats to infants, mothers, and the elderly.
There are important psychosocial aspects of exposure to environmental toxins.
Studies in the United States of people exposed to relatively high levels of hazardous
substances in Love Canal, New York, and Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, show the
prevalence of fear and anxieties about the future health impacts of such exposure .52
According to Tom Muir and Anne Sudar, "These impacts are exacerbated by the
people's feelings that they have no control over the situation. ''53 They live in homes
and communities from which no escape seems financially possible. This high level
of distress has been shown to be associated with significantly poorer DNA repair in
lymphocytes, as compared to low-distress subjects.54

Chapter

12

Nature Is

One

Take, for example, the Exxon Valdez case. On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez
ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of oil, wip-

ing

countless numbers of birds and sea otters, and drastically affecting ecosysfunction
in the region. The toll on human lives has also been great. Aleut Indian
tem
villages of Chenega Bay and Tatilek and the cities of Valdez and Cordova face
increased depression and alcoholism. According to Paul Koberstein:
out

Valdez, records show the divorce rate is four times higher than before the spill. In
Cordova, a state survey indicates that nearly two-thirds of the population suffers from
In

post-traumatic
catastrophe or

stress
war.

syndrome,
In

an

Kodiak, admissions to
communities, health officials

many

emotional breakdown that

typically

occurs

after

Homer, demand for substance abuse programs doubled. In

the local mental health centers increased by nearly 50 percent. In
are

seeing

increases in child abuse and

neglect. 55

Like other indigenous populations, the seventy villagers of Chenega Bay "face
the paradox of good money for ruined lives. Many of them earned $2,000 a week
on the spill, but the tribe lost an entire year of subsistence fishing" and untold disruptions to their traditional way of life.
While environmental disasters such as those caused by the Exxon Valdez affect
both men and women, some environmental problems affect women more harshly.
In the United States, American Indian women historically have faced unique
health risks.
A survey of households and hospitals on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota
revealed that in one month in 1979, 38 percent of the pregnant women on the reservation suffered miscarriages, compared to the normal rate of between 10 and 20 percent... [there were] extremely high rates of cleft palate and other birth defects, as
well as hepatitis, jaundice, and serious diarrhea. Health officials confirmed that their
reservation had higher than average rates of bone and gynecological cancers .56

Inadequate sewage treatment facilities have led to fecal contamination of drinking and bathing water. "Tests done by government officials also showed high levels of radioactivity in the water. The reservation is downwind from old mines surrounded by uranium trailings."57
Children are also particularly vulnerable to toxins. According to "What's Gotten Into Our Children," published by Children Now, a California-based children's
advocacy organization, some characteristics unique to children make them particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards. Children Now cites four specific
areas in which children are physically more vulnerable than adults: food and
water, home, schools, and outdoor play areas. Children tend to consume greater
amounts of food that contain toxins, thereby multiplying the potential risk. 58 In
the United States, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates
that more than half of the lifetime risk of cancer associated with pesticides on
fruit is incurred before the age of six .59 In homes and schools, hazardous products
(e.g., cleaning products), and exposure to lead, radon, asbestos, and indoor air

pollution (e.g.,

13

Feminist Issue

some carpeting, wallbe

particularly
harmful
to
to children since the
are
of
children
and
adults
is
believed
to produce higher
exposure to
same amount
concentrations in the smaller bodies of children. Outdoors, pesticides, harmful
sun exposure (due to depletion of the ozone layer), air pollution, and unsafe play
areas can result in serious health conditions in children (e.g., breathing certain
kinds of asbestos fibers can increase the chance of developing chronic diseases,
ground level ozone-cansed air pollution can cause respiratory problems such as
shortness of breath, coughing).
Furthermore, in the United States, over 700,000 inner-city children are suffering from lead poisoning (and the learning disabilities that result), 50 percent of
whom are African, Hispanic, and Asian American .6o While all children are at risk,
poor children are at greater risk: they are more likely to live in neighborhoods
with environmental hazards; poor families lack the financial resources to remove
hazards from their home or purchase alternative, nonhazardous products; poor
children are less likely to have access to health care for treatment; the families of
poor children often lack the necessary political clout to insist on the cleanup of
hazards in the neighborhood. 61 Furthermore, in Third World countries, usually
over half the people are under fifteen years old. So children are a majority of any
group. In increasing numbers, children are developing environmental sensitivities, allergies, and asthma (the study and treatment of which is developing into a
field of its own, clinical ecology).62

tobacco

board, and insulation)

smoke, formaldehyde found in

thought

WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENTAL

JUSTICE

1987, the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice published a
and now-classic report entitled "Toxic Waste and Race in the United
States." Using sophisticated statistical analysis, the report indicated that race (not
class) is the primary factor in the location of hazardous waste in the United
States: Three out of every five African and Hispanic Americans (more than 15
million of the nation's 26 million African Americans, and over 8 million of the 15
In

stunning

million

Hispanics),

and

half of all Asian Pacific Islanders and American

one or more uncontrolled toxic waste sites. The
nation's largest hazardous waste landfill, receiving toxins from forty-five states,
is in Emelle, Alabama, which is 79.9 percent African American. Probably the
greatest concentration of hazardous waste sites in the United States is on the predominately African American and Hispanic South Side of Chicago. In Houston,
Texas, six of eight municipal incinerators, and all five city landfills, are located
in predominately African American neighborhoods. 63
The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, documents that
lead poisoning endangers the health of nearly 8 million inner-city, largely African
American and Hispanic, children. Countless more live with crumbling asbestos
over

Indians, live in communities with

Chapter

14

One

housing projects

and schools. Seventy-five percent of the residents in rural

of the southwestern United States, mainly Hispanic Americans, are drinking pesticide-contaminated water. Yet Hispanics hold only 1 percent of substantive policy-making positions at the United States Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). 64 Hispanics thereby have limited institutional input at policymaking levels to the plights of Hispanic communities affected by lead poisoning.
Women, especially poor women of color, are organizing throughout the world
to fight environmental contaminations of all kinds in their communities. For
example, in the United States, Mothers of East Los Angeles (MELA), founded in
1985, protested a hazardous-waste incinerator in the small city of Vernon, California. According to Dick Russell:
in

areas

Even in state-of-the-art hazardous-waste incinerators, pollutants escape through the

stacks. In Vernon, the burning of an estimated 225,000 tons a year of solvents, pesticides, alcohols, oil and paint sludges, heavy metal residues, industrial liquids, and
infectious wastes from hospitals would also leave some 19,000 tons of highly toxic
ash, dust, and other by-products to dispose of. All this in close proximity not only to
twenty-six schools, but also dozens of food-related industries .65

Time

magazine reported

the outcome of MELA's activities:

week, after six years of agitation marked by four lawsuits, 16 hearings and six
mile-long protest marches, the 400-strong Mothers of East L.A. passed around cookies to celebrate a major victory: cancellation of a proposed commercial incinerator
they claimed could spew cancer-causing particles over the community by burning
22,500 tons of used motor oil and industrial sludge annually. Citing "political pressure" and the prospect of "interminable litigation," attorneys for Security Environmental Systems, which was to build the facility, ruefully announced "abandonment"
of the project. 66
Last

Women often play a primary role in community environmental activism

because environmental ills touch their lives in direct, immediate ways .67 AS Cynthia Hamilton writes:
Women often play a primary role in community action because it is about things they
know best. They also tend to use organizing strategies and methods that are the antithesis of those of the traditional environmental movement. Minority women in several
urban areas [of the United States] have found themselves part of a new radical core of
environmental activists, motivated by the irrationalities of capital-intensive growth.
These individuals are responding not to "nature" in the abstract but to their homes and
the health of their children
Women are more likely to take on these issues than men
precisely because the home has been defmed as a woman's domain. 68

Because of the direct

impact

working-class minority

women

tal issues.

''69

of environmental degradation on their lives,

organize around "very pragmatic environmen-

Nature Is

15

Feminist Issue

of minority environmental activism in the

be found in Warren County, North Carolina, where, in 1982, the
state decided to build a PCB disposal site with $2.5 million in federal monies. The
EPA modified the permit to locate the site only fifteen feet above the water table
(normally fifty feet is required for PCBs). 7 The area's 16,000 residents--60 percent African American and 4 percent Native American--organized a series of
marches and protests involving "a cross-section of religious leaders, farmers,
educators, citizens of all races" because they felt the decision was racially motivated. The residents lost. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. General Accounting Office
reported "on racial and socioeconomic characteristics of communities surrounding hazardous waste landfills in the Southeast [United States]. It found that three
out of four were predominantly black and poor. ''71
Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE) released a report in 1989 on the Richmond, California, area, located sixteen miles across the bay from San Francisco
and home to about 100,000 residents, about half of whom are African American.
Richmond has more than 350 industrial facilities that handle hazardous chemicals, and 210 toxins are routinely emitted into the air, water, as solid waste or in
industrial storage sites. According to CBE, "All of the lower income, minority
neighborhoods are in the western and southern parts of Richmond where the
highest concentration of petrochemical facilities are also located. ''72
Navajo Indians are the primary workforce in the mining of uranium in the
United States. According to a 1986 report, "Toxics and Minority Communities"
by the Center for Third World Organizing (Oakland, California), 2 million tons
of radioactive uranium tailings have been dumped on Native American lands.
Reproductive organ cancer among Navajo teenagers is seventeen times the
national average. Indian reservations of the Kaibab Paiutes (northern Arizona)
and other tribes across the United States are targeted sites for hazardous waste
incinerators, disposal, and storage facilities. 73 On July 4, 1990, the Minneapolis
Star Tribune reported that members of the Kaibab Paiute reservation in northern
Arizona were negotiating to bring about 70,000 tons of hazardous waste each
year to the Kaibab Paiute reservation in Northern Arizona. An incinerator would
burn the waste, and the ash would be buried on tribal land. The Paiutes stand to
reap $1 million a year from the waste-burning operation. The Kaibab Paiutes and
other tribes are torn between the economic gains and the integrity of their land
and traditional ways. "The plans are seductive on reservations where unemployment averages 40 percent. ''74
Garbage and hazardous waste firms are well aware that the majority of reservations, governed by tribal leaders, do not have strict environmental regulations.
"On self-governing Indian lands, where tribal councils are the authority, waste
companies can avoid tough state laws and the prying eyes of county and local
governments."75As reported by the Christian Science Monitor:

The

early

roots of the upsurge

United

States

can

Recently,

over

South Dakota

objection of tribal members, the Rosebud

signed a contract with a Connecticut-based

the

Sioux Tribal Council in

waste disposal firm to

16

Chapter One

Nature Is

5,000-acre garbage dump that will accept wastes from Minneapolis, Denbeyond. The proposed dump, located on what is thought to be an ancient
Indian burial ground, is 70 miles from the site of the massacre at Wounded Knee and
in the heart of the unspoiled prairie [North] Americans recently viewed in [Kevin
Costner's epic drama] "Dances with Wolves." The contract states that not any existing environmental regulations of South Dakota are applicable and forbids the Sioux
from enacting any laws to govern the waste project. What will the Sioux receive in
return for receiving this waste? A little more than $1 per ton for the garbage they will

develop

ver, and

be host to forever.

76

In Canada, much of the land being proposed for parks is already claimed by original peoples. For example, Auyuittuq National Park Reserve, located on Cumerland
Peninsula, Baffin Island, established as a park in 1972, was probably first inhabited
about 4,000 years ago by Inuit. 77 While several native groups have proposed "joint
native-government management regimes," no joint management regimes now exist
in the Canadian national park system. 78 Furthermore, subjecting such land to be used
as parks and a government-run management scheme raises significant concerns
about whether national parks established on lands claimed by aboriginal peoples
legally prejudice future land claim settlements by natives.

CONCLUSION
This chapter uses a feminist approach to discuss empirical women-other human
Others-nature interconnections. While all humans are affected by environmental
degradation, women, people of color, children, and the poor throughout the world
experience environmental harms disproportionately. Nature is, indeed, a feminist
issue. I turn to a discussion of other sorts of reasons why nature is a feminist issue
in chapter 2.

NOTES
1. As I discuss in chapter 3, the category "women" is philosophically problematic.
However, for practical and strategic purposes of exploring empirical generalizations that
can truthfully be made regarding sex/gendered females,
use the term "women."
2. The State of India's Environment, 1983-84: The Second Citizen's Report (New
Delhi: Center for Science and Environment, 1985), 94.
3. Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Vandana Shiva, "Chipko: Rekindling India's Forest
Culture," The Ecologist 17, no. (1987), 26.
4. State of India's Environment, 28.
5. Bandyopadhyay and Shiva, "Chipko," 3, 5.
6. Bandyopadhyay and Shiva, "Chipko," 33, italics in original.
7. Restoring the Balance: Women and Forest Resources (Rome: Food and Culture

Organization

and Swedish International

Development Authority, 1987),

4.

Feminist Issue

17

8. Louise P. Fortmann and Dianne Rocheleau, "Women and Agroforestry: Four Myths
and Three Case Studies," Agroforestry Systems 9, no. 2 (1985), 256.
9. Restoring the Balance, 104.
10. The World's Women, 1995: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations,

1995), 48.
World's Women, 1995, 48.
Up, video (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Maryknoll World Productions, 1987).
World's Women, 1995, 48.
See, e.g., Louise P. Fortmann and Sally K. Fairfax, "American Forestry Professionalism in the Third World: Some Preliminary Observations on Effects," in Women Creating Wealth: Transforming Economic Development, Selected Papers and Speeches from
the Association of Women in Development Conference (Washington, D.C., 1988), 105-8;
Fortmann and Rocheleau, "Women and Agroforestry"; Linking Energy with Survival: A
Guide to Energy, Environment, and Rural Women's Work (Geneva: International Labour
Office, 1987); Restoring the Balance; Irene Tinker, "Women and Energy: Program Implications" (Washington, D.C.: Equity Policy Center, 1980); Women and the World Conservation Strategy (Gland: International Union for the Conservancy of Nature, 1987).
15. Fortmann and Fairfax, "American Forestry Professionalism," 105.
16. Marilyn Hoskins, "Observations on Indigenous and Modern Agroforestry Activities
in West Africa," in Problems ofAgroforestry (Freiburg: University of Freiburg, 1982);
cited in Fortmann and Fairfax, "American Forestry Professionalism," 105.
17. Fortmann and Fairfax, "American Forestry Professionalism," 106.
18. Fortmann and Fairfax, "American Forestry Professionalism," 106.
19. David Moberg, "In the Amazon, An Epidemic of Greed," In These Times, 1-7 May
11.
12.
13.
14.

From Sun

1991,3.
20. Moberg, "In the Amazon," 3.
21. Moberg, "In the Amazon," 3.
22. Cited in Waring, "Your Economic Theory," 257.
23. World's Women, 1995, 49.
24. The World's Women, 1970-1990, Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations,
1990), 75.
25. World's Women, 1995, 49-50.
26. Joni Seager, The New State of the Earth Atlas, 2nd edition (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1995), 104.
27. Seager, New State of the Earth Atlas, 19.
28. Waring, "Your Economic Theory," 259.
29. Nicholas Freudenberg and Ellen Zaltzberg, "From Grassroots Activism to Political
Power: Women Organizing Against Environmental Hazards," in Double Exposure:
Women's Health Hazards on the Job and at Home, ed. Wendy Chavkin (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1984), 246-47.
30. Anders Wijkman and Lloyd Timberlake, Natural Disasters: Acts of God or Acts of
Man? (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988), 6. To emphasize the causal role
human-induced factors play in so-called natural disasters, Wijkman and Timberlake urge
a conceptual change in the common view of natural disasters. They urge a distinction
between the trigger events of a nature disaster--too little rain, too much rain, earthshocks,
hurricanes, typically "natural events"-- and the associated disasters that affect humans and
other animals and that are largely human-made. A strong earthquake in an unoccupied

18

Chapter

One

desert area that affects no human or animal populations, then, would be a natural event,
but not a natural disaster.
31. Wijkman and Timberlake, Natural Disasters, 27.
32. Wijkman and Timberlake, Natural Disasters, 49.
33. Seager, New State of the Earth Atlas, 121.
34. World's Women, 1970-1990, 88, 82, respectively.
35. Seager, New State of the Earth Atlas, 120.
36. Seager, New State of the Earth Atlas, 21.
37. Mayra Buvinic and Sally W. Yudelman, Women, Poverty, and Progress in the Third
World (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1989), 22.
38. Buvinic and Yudelman, Women, Poverty, 24.
39. Jane Perlez, "Inequalities Plague African Women," Minneapolis Star 4
March 1991,4A.
40. Quoted in Lloyd Timberlake, Africa in Crisis: The Causes, the Cures of Environmental Bankruptcy (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986), 144.
41. Cited in Timbedake, Africa in Crisis, 145.
42. Timbedake, Africa in Crisis, 30.
43. Buvinic and Yudelman, Women, Poverty, 24-26.
44. Seager, New State of the Earth Atlas, 62.
45. World's Women, 1970-1990, 75.
46. Chris J. Cuomo, Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing
(London: Routledge, 1998), 20. The quote is from Beverly White, "Environmental Equity
Justice Centers: A Response to Inequity," in Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and
Solutions, ed. Bunyan Bryant (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995), 60.
47. Sonia Jasso and Maria Mazorra, "Following the Harvest: The Health Hazards of
Migrant and Seasonal Farmworking Women," in Double Exposure: Women's Health Hazards
on the Job and at Home, ed. Wendy Chavkin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 87.
48. World's Women, 1995, 49.
49. Jasso and Mazorra, "Following the Harvest," 94.
50. See Tom Muir and Anne Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals in the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem: Some Observations" (Burlington, Ont.: Environment Canada, 1988; unpublished).
51. Muir and Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals," 61.
52. Muir and Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals," 82.
53. Muir and Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals," 82.
54. Muir and Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals," 82.
55. Paul Koberstein, "Exxon Oil Spill Taints Lives of Aleut Indian Villagers," The Sunday Oregonian, 24 September 1989, A2.
56. Freudenberg and Zaltzberg, "From Grassroots Activism," 249.
57. Freudenberg and Zaltzberg, "From Grassroots Activism," 249.
58. Dana Hughes, "What's Gotten Into Our Children" (Los Angeles: Children Now, 1990),
6. (Children Now can be reached at 10951 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90064.)
59. Hughes, "What's Gotten Into Our Children," 6.
60. Cynthia Hamilton, "Women, Home, and Community," woman of
power: a magazine of feminism, spirituality, and politics, 20 (Spring 1991), 42.
61. Hughes, "What's Gotten Into Our Children," 35.
62. Muir and Sudar, "Toxic Chemicals," 78-9.
63. "Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and
Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites," 1987,

Nature Is

Commission

for Racial

Feminist Issue

19

Justice, United Church of Christ, 105 Madison Avenue, New

York, NY 10016.
64. Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, cited in Dick Russell, "Environmental Racism," The Amicus Journal (Spring 1989), 24.
65. Dick Russell, "Environmental Racism," 29.
66. "Mothers of Prevention," Time, 10 June 1991, 25.
67. For example, the South West Organizing Project (SWOP) has been actively

involved in protesting and publicizing acts of environmental racism. (SWOP can be

reached at 211 10th St. S.W., Albuquerque, NM 87102.)
68. Hamilton, "Women, Home," 43.
69. Hamilton, "Women, Home," 42.
70. Russell, "Environmental Racism," 24.
71. Russell, "Environmental Racism," 24.
72. Cited in Russell, "Environmental Racism," 25.
73. "Toxics and Minority Communities," the Center for Third World Organizing (Oakland, California), 1986.
74. "The Indian and Toxic Waste," Minneapolis Star/Tribune, 4 July 1990.
75. "The Indian and Toxic Waste," Minneapolis Star/Tribune, 4 July 1990.
76. Thomas A. Daschle, "Dances with Garbage," Christian Science Monitor, 14 February 1991, 18.
77. Nicholas Lawson, "Where Whitemen Come to Play," Cultural Survival Quarterly
13, no. 2 (1989), 54.
78. Lawson, "Where Whitemen," 56.