Gender and Ecology: Feminist Perspectives and Conservation Approaches

The relationship between gender and ecology is far more than academic-it shapes how communities manage forests, water, food, and land across the world. From the philosophical origins of eco-feminism to real-world conservation led by rural women, the intersection of feminism and environmentalism reveals deep structural connections between the oppression of women and the degradation of nature. Understanding these perspectives is essential for anyone interested in sustainability, ecological economics, or social justice.

The eco-feminism movement: origins and philosophy 🔗

French author and activist Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term “eco-feminism” in her 1974 book Le Féminisme ou la mort (Feminism or Death) . The book was a rallying call: d’Eaubonne argued that the global environmental crisis was rooted in an age-old patriarchal social structure that put both people and the planet on a path toward destruction . Her core idea was straightforward-the same patriarchal systems that oppress women also enable the exploitation of nature . For d’Eaubonne, liberation of one required liberation of the other.

The movement she launched grew rapidly. By the late 1980s, eco-feminism had expanded beyond academia into a popular movement, with feminist theorist Ynestra King playing a key role in its popularisation . As it evolved, the philosophy splintered into distinct schools-radical eco-feminism, cultural eco-feminism, and socialist eco-feminism-each offering different analyses of how patriarchy, capitalism, and environmental destruction are interlinked.

Carolyn Merchant and the Scientific Revolution connection 🔗

One of the most influential eco-feminist thinkers is Carolyn Merchant, an American historian of science and philosopher. Her landmark 1980 book, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, was one of the first works to examine the Scientific Revolution through the lenses of feminism and ecology . Merchant traced how, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe shifted from viewing the Earth as a living organism to seeing it as a machine. This transition, she argued, justified both the exploitation of nature and the subjugation of women .

Before the Scientific Revolution, nature was commonly depicted as a nurturing mother-an organic, living whole. Merchant showed that as mercantilist capitalism consolidated and mechanistic science rose, the earlier image of nature gave way to one of a wild or inert mechanism to be controlled . This worldview, she contended, continues to shape modern attitudes toward both women and the environment.

Contemporary advocates: Shiva, Salleh, and Mies 🔗

Eco-feminism has been carried forward by scholars and activists across the globe. Vandana Shiva, an Indian physicist-turned-activist, is among the most prominent. Her work, particularly Staying Alive, documented how industrial development models harm both nature and women, especially in the Global South. Maria Mies, who collaborated closely with Shiva, argued that women use the environment sustainably rather than for capital accumulation or profit, and that devaluing this balanced productivity leads to ecological crisis .

Ariel Salleh, an Australian eco-feminist, brought a global perspective to the movement, examining links between eco-feminism and deep ecology, green politics, eco-socialism, and decoloniality . Together, these thinkers broadened eco-feminism from a Western philosophical framework into a truly global discourse on gender, power, and the environment.

Criticisms of eco-feminism and alternative approaches 🔗

Despite its influence, eco-feminism has faced significant criticism. Several scholars argued that the movement placed too much emphasis on ideology and symbolic connections between women and nature while neglecting the material realities of class, caste, and economic power.

Bina Agarwal’s feminist environmentalism 🔗

Bina Agarwal’s “feminist environmentalist” perspective is rooted in material reality and views the relationship between women and nature as structured by gender and class organisation of production, reproduction, and distribution . Writing from India, Agarwal argued that eco-feminism’s focus on patriarchal ideology overlooked the interconnected material sources of dominance rooted in economic advantage and political power .

Agarwal pointed out that the processes of environmental degradation and resource appropriation have specific class-gender and locational implications, meaning that women cannot be treated as a single unified category . A wealthy urban woman in Delhi and a landless rural woman in Bihar have fundamentally different relationships with nature-and different vulnerabilities to environmental damage.

Instead of locating women’s connection to the environment in spiritual or biological terms, Agarwal focused on lived material realities: who collects water, who gathers fuel, who tends livestock, and who bears the heaviest burden when ecosystems degrade. Her framework suggests going beyond ideological constructions of gender and environment to examine how gender and class organisation shape livelihoods and knowledge systems .

Feminist political ecology and other frameworks 🔗

Dianne Rocheleau developed “feminist political ecology” as another alternative lens for viewing gender and environmental relationships, while Cecile Jackson advanced “gender, environment, and development” as a related framework . These approaches share eco-feminism’s concern with gender and environment but place greater emphasis on political economy, power dynamics, and institutional structures.

Critics like Rosi Braidotti further challenged eco-feminism’s tendency to romanticise women’s closeness to nature, cautioning that this could inadvertently reinforce patriarchal stereotypes that confine women to nurturing roles. However, since the 2000s, a more generous treatment of eco-feminism has emerged, recognising that the movement is not limited to the characterisations offered by its early critics .

Women’s pro-environmental attitudes: what research shows 🔗

Beyond philosophical debates, a growing body of empirical research consistently shows that women tend to display stronger pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours than men.

Quantitative studies analysing individual differences in environmental concern have consistently found that women are more likely to hold pro-environmental attitudes than men, although the underlying reasons remain debated . A major cross-national study published in Sex Roles used data from the World Values Survey across 45 countries and found that attitudes of gender equality are positively correlated with environmental concern.

Recent literature has established that women engage in more pro-environmental behaviours, while men tend to distance themselves from environmental issues partly due to social expectations around masculinity . These differences are not innate or genetic-they are largely shaped by socialisation, cultural norms, and the roles societies assign to different genders.

Women’s environmental activism worldwide 🔗

Women’s environmental leadership is visible in organised movements around the world. In India, the Chipko Movement, which spread through Uttarakhand’s Himalayas starting in 1974, saw rural women embracing trees to prevent commercial logging . This grassroots protest became one of the most iconic examples of women-led ecological resistance.

In Kenya, Wangari Maathai established the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to address rural women’s concerns about drying streams, shrinking food supplies, and longer treks for firewood . The movement empowered women to plant trees, improve soil quality, and earn income-earning Maathai the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. In Latin America, Indigenous women have been at the forefront of defending the Amazon against deforestation. In Africa’s Sahel region, women have led grassroots reforestation through agroecology, helping combat desertification and improve food security .

These are not isolated cases. From community-level forest protection in Odisha, India, to water conservation projects in rural Ghana, women’s environmental activism operates at every scale-local, national, and international.

The economic compulsion behind women’s ecological conservationism 🔗

A crucial but often overlooked dimension of women’s environmentalism is its economic basis. In many poorer communities, especially in rural areas of the Global South, women’s conservation efforts are not driven by ideology alone-they are a matter of survival.

Globally, women make up nearly half the agricultural labour force and are primary providers of household water, fuel, and food . Their daily tasks-tending crops, managing livestock, collecting firewood, fetching water, and gathering wild foods-keep them in constant interaction with local ecosystems. In rural areas across Africa and Asia, women typically spend one to four hours daily collecting water and two to three hours gathering firewood .

This daily engagement with natural resources gives women deep, practical knowledge about sustainable resource management. Their interaction with land, forests, water, and biodiversity equips them with critical knowledge about ecosystem management, seasonal changes, and sustainable practices . They understand when soils need rest, which plant species indicate water availability, and how seasonal cycles affect resource replenishment.

Conservation as necessity, not luxury 🔗

For these women, conservation is not an abstract ideal-it is an economic necessity. When forests are cleared, the walk for firewood grows longer. When water sources dry up, entire daily routines are disrupted. When soil fertility declines, crop yields fall and families go hungry. Women in the developing world are predominantly responsible for managing and conserving resources for their families, and when drought, erratic rainfall, or storms affect access to basic resources, women’s lives and their families’ lives are intensely affected .

This perspective aligns closely with Bina Agarwal’s feminist environmentalism: women’s ecological knowledge and conservation behaviour emerge from their material conditions, not from an essentialist spiritual connection to nature. Women’s relationship with nature is governed by gender, class, caste, and race-they care for the environment because their daily lives, especially in marginalised rural communities, are directly linked to it .

Traditional ecological knowledge and seed sovereignty 🔗

In many indigenous communities, women serve as knowledge keepers, preserving information about wild food sources, medicinal plant properties, and sustainable harvesting techniques . This traditional ecological knowledge represents an invaluable-and often undervalued-resource for conservation.

In India, the women-led Navdanya movement has championed seed sovereignty and biodiversity conservation , challenging corporate agriculture by preserving indigenous seed varieties. Research has shown that forest patches managed by women had 51% less deforestation than those managed by men, underscoring the practical effectiveness of women’s stewardship.

Bridging philosophy and practice 🔗

The debate between eco-feminism and its alternatives-feminist environmentalism, feminist political ecology-is not merely academic. It has real implications for how policies are designed. If we treat women’s environmentalism as ideological or spiritual, we risk ignoring the structural inequalities-in land ownership, resource access, education, and political participation-that shape women’s relationship with nature.

The international community has increasingly recognised the importance of involving women in water and resource management . The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, the Rio+20 outcomes, and various UN resolutions have all emphasised women’s role in environmental governance. Yet women hold only 12% of the world’s top conservation leadership positions , a gap that persists despite decades of advocacy.

Effective sustainability policy requires both the philosophical insights of eco-feminism-that patriarchy and ecological destruction share common roots-and the material analysis of feminist environmentalism-that gender, class, and resource access determine who bears the burden of environmental change. Neither perspective alone is sufficient.

What do you think? Can environmental conservation truly succeed without addressing gender inequality at its root? And how can policymakers better integrate the traditional ecological knowledge that women in rural communities have preserved for generations?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Merchant
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism
3. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-023-01397-3
4. https://www.worldwildlife.org/our-work/locally-led-conservation/women-and-girls/
5. https://www.nathab.com/blog/5-reasons-to-support-women-in-conservation