Amidst unprecedented global warming, an international refugee crisis, and rising far-right populism and fascism, it is clear that a globalised capitalist economy running on extractivist industries and rooted in patriarchal and white supremacist ideologies is harming women and the planet and that these harms are connected. Climate breakdown disproportionately harms women, especially poor women, women of colour, and women from Indigenous Nations.
In many ways, this current context of gendered domination resembles what the author and activist Francoise d’Eaubonne decried: Feminism or death. That was the choice d’Eaubonne presented in her book of the same title, published in 1974, which identified the global environmental crisis as the product of patriarchy and emphasised the tight connection between climate justice and social justice, calling for “ecofeminism” as a combined approach to both.
D’Eaubonne was not alone. Ecofeminist ideas were developed in activist and political theory contexts across the world from the late 1960s, demanding feminist and environmentalist solidarity, learning from civil rights and women’s liberation movements. These include the work of the scientist Rachel Carson and the writer Ariyoshi Sawako’s critiques of industrial pollution, published in 1962 and 1974 respectively, the philosopher Val Plumwood’s 1993 account of the relationship between women and nature, the feminist Ivone Gebara’s 1997 work on the entwinement between environmental breakdown and poverty, and many more.
D’Eaubonne and several of these others argued that the historic development of agricultural technologies created a male-oriented social structure in various parts of the world, in which men appropriated women’s bodies and labour at the same time as exploiting nature through increasingly intensive agriculture and industrialisation. As crops were intensively planted and fertilised to maximise yield frequency on the plantations, women’s reproductive capacities were also exploited as what Toni Morrison describes as “property that reproduced itself without cost”. Such technologies served a narrow genre of humankind, a category of person the writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter calls overrepresented man, or homo economicus, a white male pursuing wealth for his own interest.
Spatial practices, including architecture and urban planning, have often been designed by and for this exclusive and exclusionary genre of human. In resistance, the foregrounding of accessibility in the provision of public space has characterised much feminist design and theory, with studies by feminist scholars Leslie Kern and Caroline Criado-Perez highlighting the importance of gender-disaggregated data in ensuring socially and environmentally responsible design.
Today, many feminist architects contend that gendered systems of oppression underpin a man-made industrial world which is concretised in environmentally damaging buildings and is complicit in environmental breakdown. The architect Gabu Heindl, for example, shapes her philosophy around a rejection of “chauvinist, racist or discriminating architecture, exploitative project proposals, suburbanising single-family homes or speculation ventures”. This approach to understanding space and society as interlinked power structures, intimately bound with climate, speaks to much recent work in queer theory, environmental justice organising, and anti-colonial feminism. All of these identify the violence of white, patriarchal modernity, and search for critical and caring alternatives. Vital in such a shift in the understanding and usage of space is a concept of justice that posits architectural practice in an interrelation of careful dependency and creative alliance with other disciplines. To borrow from the feminist philosopher of science Donna Haraway, such alliances “stay with the trouble” of climate breakdown and social injustice with the recognition that “we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations”. Similarly, in fields of architectural theory, writers including Hélène Frichot and Peg Rawes have drawn attention to the importance of relational ecologies of care in challenging patriarchal design norms for being fundamentally anti-social and un-environmental.
The political scientist Joan Tronto describes how both care work and the built environment are shaped by relations of power and, as such, have the potential to be transformed into relations of care. Combined with numerous other ecological and decolonial approaches, these feminist approaches make a critical intervention into spatial theories and productions, proposing social, economic, cultural, and ecological principles of cooperation.
Common to these approaches is an understanding that humanity’s relationship with the planet must disengage from extractive and alienating activities that perpetuate patriarchal domination. In the words of the former New Zealand Member of Parliament and goat farmer Marilyn Waring, within conventional systems of economics and governance, “safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people – namely women – count for nothing”. What Waring points to is a complete reconsideration of how we value things and ecologies. Eco-feminism has a critical role to play in forming alliances between those human and more-than-human aspects of the world that have been overlooked, exploited, and dominated by patriarchal systems. Only with such a realignment of forces can climate justice be accompanied by social justice.
Annotated bibliography
Rachel Carson. Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
Writing despite intimidation from the chemical industry, the scientist Rachel Carson raised public awareness of environmental matters which led to changes in government and the banning of harmful pesticides such as DDT in the US and several other countries. A major source of inspiration and information for environmentalists around the world, Silent Spring combined scientific rigour with lyrical prose in its calls for reform. Carson faced misogynistic rebuttals from climate sceptics, but was championed by women’s movements for public health and environmental justice. These latter groups understood the value of her work in connecting ecological concerns with issues of gender, race, and socioeconomic justice.
Hélène Frichot. Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).
In this creative book of design research, the architect and philosopher Hélène Frichot explores other ways of doing architecture as alternatives to designing and critiquing iconic buildings and canonical styles. Frichot draws from feminist theories of care to call for architecture’s reconfiguration as a network of diverse concerns within wider communities and environments. Her emphasis on relational ecologies fundamentally challenges tenets of design that protect anthropocentric, patriarchal individualism, and profit-based short-term thinking.
Matrix. Making Space: Women and the Women and the Man Made Environment (London New York: Verso, 2022).
First published in 1984, this book challenges the built environment over its impact on women’s lives. Written by women engaged in building work, teaching and research, several of whom worked in the London-based Matrix Feminist Architects’ collective, the book exposes the sexist assumptions that shape architecture and urban planning. Matrix worked on design projects including community, children’s, and women’s centres, proposing socially inclusive alternatives to the patriarchal built environment in domestic and public contexts.
Val Plumwood. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (London: Routledge, 1993).
In this foundational text for ecofeminism, philosopher Val Plumwood brings feminist and postcolonial thinking to bear on issues of environmental degradation and white patriarchal oppression, revealing enduring connections between women and nature in western capitalist society. Plumwood identifies a damaging form of dualism at the heart of Western capitalism whereby humanity is separated from nature to legitimise man’s right to plunder natural resources. Tracing the extension of such binary logic in the exploitation of raced, classed, and gendered subjects, Plumwood provides a compelling argument for eco-intersectional solidarity.
Joan Tronto. Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Tackling the unfair apportioning of care duties to women, the American political scientist Joan Tronto suggests that essentialised associations between women and caring duties are both historically inaccurate and ethically wrong. Unpicking care’s ideological bindings, Tronto demonstrates how other members of unprivileged groups in the Global North, such as the working classes and people of colour, also undertake disproportionate amounts of caring for little or no pay. If we continue to undervalue care work, Tronto cautions, we degrade a fundamental social activity and perpetuate white patriarchal privilege.
Marilyn Waring. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).
In this polemical study of economics, environmentalism, and gender justice, the former New Zealand Member of Parliament and goat farmer Marilyn Waring criticises the conventional metric of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an inaccurate and harmful measure of worth. Within conventional systems of economics and governance, where a nation’s GDP supposedly indicates its wellbeing, “safe drinking water counts for nothing. A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people – namely women – count for nothing”. Reconsidering metrics for measuring value so that they account for reproductive labour and environmental assets is vital, Waring argues, for protecting the planet and recognising the contributions of women.