by Jessica Stubbs
A staggering female majority champions modern environmental revolutions and sustainability movements. Yet, this pervasive and seemingly intuitive trend has not been thoroughly explored. Women’s capacity for reproduction has long tied their biological identity to the symbiosis of the natural world. Similarly, their historical and cross-cultural roles as agricultural producers and home managers have linked them to the land in which they cultivate. These powerful connections, however widespread, do not categorize women, instead they are vehicles for women to define their own distinct essence and impact on the world. Some consider the acknowledgment of women’s intimate relationship with nature to be essentialism–the reduction of all women to a ubiquitous socially-constructed set of attributes. In reality, it allows for multi-layered analysis of the diverse and copious interactions between women and the natural world, far beyond their presence in environmentalism.
Women’s biological and historical interrelatedness to nature fortifies a “special connection”, in ecofeminist professor Noel Sturgeon’s words, that women share with the non-human natural world (Merchant, Ecology 242). This “special connection,” no matter how individually potent, provides women the opportunity to engage with the world in dynamic and reciprocal manners. Monthly reproductive cycles, pregnancy, childbirth, rearing and raising young are biological processes that “ground women’s consciousness in the knowledge of being coterminous with nature’’ (Merchant, Ecology 216). Some assert this makes women increasingly sympathetic to environmental struggles, as they biologically relate to many natural flows and disturbances, resulting in their dominant environmental advocacy. Many push this further to advocate for social and legal protections to safeguard this biological vulnerability such as reproductive freedom and maternal health rights.
Historically and culturally, women have tended to predominantly fulfill roles in agricultural production and household administration, providing the main source of nourishment for families and communities. Currently, women produce 60 to 80 percent of food in the global south and remain critical in collecting and storing water, securing fuel sources, and managing agricultural lands (Owren, 2012). These profound responsibilities have further bonded women to the environment as entire communities depend on women’s collaboration with the natural world. This induces women to often notice environmental problems more quickly and exigently as they interact with the environment in situations of considerable closeness and regularity (Merchant, Ecology 242). To many women, this instills a cogent and personal responsibility to preserve and respect nature. But, some argue that this historical proximity to nature can be interpreted as environmental dependence which often drives women to reach into divergent fields (Blum 9). Both reproductive abilities and enduring labor positions of women provide powerful insight into how an innate closeness to nature manifests in multifarious characteristics, belief systems, and courses of action.
The dichotomy between essentialism and thoughtful understandings of women and nature has long been steeped in misconstruction. On one hand, the interrelatedness of woman and nature “turned upside down becomes the source of women’s empowerment and ecological activism” (Merchant, Radical Ecology 482). Many celebrate this connection asserting that it inculcates characteristics of strength and guardianship resulting in the construction of women as protectors of the environment. This, in many ways, is essentialism which is the view that all entities are defined by a certain set of physiological characteristics. Essentialism in this innocuous manner is used as a tool to bolster the idea of women being uniquely and dynamically related to nature as a way to uplift women’s capacity to interact with the environment.
On the other hand, essentialism has the potential to and currently is employed in our society at a detriment to women and the environment when utilized for repressive purposes. It can be facile to assume that women’s biological relation to nature inherently makes their essence sympathetic to the environment. However, this is a dangerous generalization as essentializing women to blanket characteristics restricts their capacity for change and individuality. It also provokes the question “do women have a special relationship to nature that men cannot share?” that ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant challenges (Merchant, Ecology 243). If, according to this essentialist perspective, all individuals assigned as women at birth have inherent fixed “feminine” characteristics, then men, sexually non-binary, or transgender individuals must inherently lack sympathy and regard for nature. According to environmental philosopher Kenneth Worthy, personal connections to nature in modern times are more profoundly established by occupation, leisure activities, and location rather than by biological sex. Declaring that a woman is one specific thing excludes others and subjects women to an inaccurate, socially-derived notion that restricts their freedom. Reconciling these two seemingly similar but powerfully divergent concepts (essentialism and woman’s “special connection”) has been an enduring polemic.
One way to comprehend the “special connection” of women and nature while preventing essentialization is by addressing and then demobilizing harmful social constructions actively propagated by a male-dominated society. The explanation that “humans are biologically sexed and socially gendered” can help deconstruct this tension (Merchant, Radical Ecology 482). Women are closely interrelated to nature because of their biological capacity for reproduction and historical context, but it is the societal applications of these truths, cultivated by patriarchy, that leads to adverse essentialism. Women’s reproduction has been perpetually and systematically “bruised by derogatory patriarchal attitudes” and used to legitimize the oppression of women (Merchant, Ecology 216). Men have enslaved the female womb and used reproduction to further their own ends by the process of essentialism — defining what they believe women should be in accordance with their biological ability. This “special connection” has been used “in the service of domination to limit their social roles to childbearers, child-rearers, caretakers, and housekeepers,” but not without objection and resistance (Merchant, Radical Ecology 483). The global phallocracy exploits the relationship by fabricating a repressive characterization of all women to exert and maintain power over “both women and nature as mutually subordinated spheres of life” as investigated by Worthy. To recognize women’s intimacy with nature while avoiding this malignant essentialism, one must look beyond androcentric social constructs to understand that the “special connection” does not define women, rather it allows many women to define their individualistic and dynamic self in the natural world.
The intimate relationship between women and the earth is a channel for varied and ample interactions, whether it be through environmental advocacy or searching for legal protections to defend their environmental vulnerabilities. The ability to reproduce empowers women to choose diverse paths for their own lives, communities, and the population as a whole. Their historical and cultural relation to nature as agricultural providers and managers of household operations provides an understanding of the multifaceted ways of interacting with the environment. However, the multiplicity of interactions provided by this “special connection” can only be fully explored when male propagated social constructionism is abandoned for a holistic understanding of the fluidity and complexities of women and nature. Women are actively achieving this by confronting and dismantling destructive essentialist conceptualizations through the envisionment and manifestation of divergent gender roles, political practices, employment routes, and ideational expression.
Jessica Stubbs is a first year majoring in Society and the Environment and Conservation and Resource Studies. Jessica joined Perennial to explore the ethical and ecological crises steaming from society’s unsustainable relationship with the planet. She hopes to cultivate purposeful and environmentally conscious interactions with the natural world through analytical investigation and meaningful commentary. She has interests in environmental justice, ethics, and policy. In her free time she enjoys wildlife photography, political activism, and spending time outdoors.