Month: April 2020

For my activism, I drew attention to the organizationWEDO, as their missions and values became very important to me as the semester progressed. Through this course, I have made more of an effort to be environmentally conscious and implement aspects of ecofeminism into my daily life and thinking. With the personal being political, I felt that this activism best fit with the course of action I wanted to take, and here are my results.

I initially posted on all my social media platforms about a brief explanation of WEDO’s impact and mission, and linked their website as well as a fundraiser for any who wished to donate. I made my personal contribution to WEDO, as donating to causes I care about is an act that I do when I am financially able to. The post initially did not garner much attention, but I did find that over time some people reached out to interact with me about this post. Family members messaged me inquiring about the organization, which was great because I would not consider the family members who reached out to be environmentally conscious. I had friends who share similar views as I do show my posts some attention as well. Conveniently, Earth Day fell on a day while my post was published, so I reshared to attempt to initiate a conversation about what can be done on an individual level, even if it is just learning and spreading awareness. I even received messages from a few people who I had not previously spoken to very often to reach out about this organization. It was a great feeling to know that my post generated some sort of interest in learning about the impact that WEDO has for women engaging in environmental politics.

As stated, I linked a fundraising option to my post, which I was surprised to see that I had contributed $60 in donations, other than my personal contribution. It may not seem like a very large sum of money, but it made me very grateful that others saw the value and passion in this organization that I saw. Especially during this time of financial hardship for many people right now, it was humbling to see those contributions being made to a fundraiser that was created to benefit such an important cause. I feel that my activism is a gesture that many people can do, and I firmly believe that not all activism has to be large-scale to be impactful.

Activism is an important part of inciting change in issues one would like to reform, but how can it be done? There are different levels to activism, being personal, more general to encompass communities, or even global activism. In order to begin my personal journey of activism, I am starting on the personal level to incite change within my own life that will hopefully translate into future activism on higher levels. Through this class, I feel as though I have learned a great deal about a theory of feminism that I was once skeptical about, and would like to try to give back to causes that support women’s human rights as well as environmental well-being. In one of the past blog posts, a supplemental source that was given was a link to the organization WEDO’s website. I find that a cause I am increasingly passionate about is the impact of environmental degradation on women’s lives, and WEDO is an organization that I would like to give back to.

(Pictured here are founders and contributing women of WEDO.)

To provide some information on WEDO, this non-profit organization works to ensure that women are able to engage as decision-makers, advocates, and leaders to fight for environmental related issues, as well as develop sustainable policies that are gender-related to present for implementation (“Vision & Mission” 1). WEDO was founded in 1991 by former United States Congresswoman Bella Abzug and feminist activist and hournalist Mim Kelber. Since their establishment, the organization grew on a global scale and included influential women such as Gloria Steinam, Wangari Maathai (The Green Belt Movement), and Vandana Shiva (Environmental activist in India) to advocate for their cause (“Herstory” 1). WEDO participates in international government processes to ensure that women’s voices are heard in the conversation about environmental struggle and provides a platform for women to lead this conversation to hold governments accountable (“Processes” 1). 

My plan to donate to WEDO is to, undoubtedly, donate a sum of money myself to contribute even a small amount to the work that they do. The other part of my plan is to try to gain awareness and educate others on this organization to see if others would donate to the cause as well. I am going to create posts on my social media accounts to describe the organization’s main objectives and encourage others to donate, or even simply learn about the impact that this organization has on gender-related political activism to benefit the environment. The posts I will make will contain a link to WEDO’s donation page directly on their website, and also a link to their mission statement so others may learn about the organization. My goal for my personal activism is to help an organization whose message and missions I care deeply about to donate what is possible so they can continue doing the work they do for global women.

During this time of quarantine under COVID-19, it may not be possible for many people to donate money, which is understandable. What I hope to achieve is to raise more awareness about ecofeminism and how there are organizations in the world that are advocating for reform to combat issues facing women and the environment by including women in global political discussions about policies. I think my plan will be well received, not only because of the people I interact with on social media, but because I feel it is a great way to raise awareness to this cause. If I can manage to have even one person ask me to explain a little more about what WEDO contributes, I will consider that a victory. The personal is political after all, and I hope I can spark some sort of activism within others to benefit this cause.

Sources:

“Herstory.” WEDO: Women’s Environment & Development Organization, wedo.org/.

“Processes.” WEDO: Women’s Environment & Development Organization, wedo.org/.

“Vision & Mission.” WEDO: Women’s Environment & Development Organization, wedo.org/.

Among the different activist demonstrations and raised awareness for environmental issues, such as the Chipko movement, the Standing Rock protests, and the Green Belt movement, there is very evidently a link to the oppression of women and the environment. Over decades of time and different locations around the world, women face patriarchal oppression often in the form of endangering the environment. It is important to note that in most of the articles that are going to be discussed are the accounts of the women who displayed activism and addressed their experiences with the negative impacts they faced as a result of the oppression of the environment.

This image can be seen in the video linked to the article by Sam Levin, where Caro Gonzales and another indigenous women kneel to pray in front of law enforcement before being forcefully removed from the site.

In the article by Sam Levin detailing the female-led fight in opposition of the Dakota Access Pipeline, he discusses the inhumane treatment that these women faced from law enforcement and other patriarchal establishments. The video accompanying the article shows the harrowing stories of women being abused by police, injured and threatened with arrest, and discriminated against for their protest efforts against the degradation of the indigenous lands. Indigenous women not only faced this during time of protests but also faced increased rates of sexual assault, human trafficking, and drug crimes due to the volume of male non-native oil workers staying in camps (Levin 1). It is said that women serving as water protectors were the core of the operations to fight against the pipeline, and are believed to not only be fighting for the rights of their tribes’ land and right to clean water, but for the systematic oppression in the form of racism, sexism, and abuse by law enforcement (Levin 1). 

Other examples such as the Green Belt movement display how impactful women have been in activism for environmental struggles. Wangari Maarthai was the instrumental driving force in the Green Belt movement that has, since 1977, planted over fifteen million trees to benefit the environment and the crop production (Maarthai 1). It is stated that women were increasingly aware of the environmental degradation due to the fact that they are the ones responsible for the planting, tending, and harvesting of crops for sustenance (Maarthai 1). Maarthai saw that these struggles were being faced, and initiated the movement to plant trees to curb soil erosion, provide shade, and create sources of lumber so that (Maarthai 1).

When women that were close to the environment noticed it was suffering, many took action because if the environment suffers, women suffer. Indigenous youth council leader and string contributor to the resistance of the pipeline, Lauren Howland, stated that she felt the discrimination was disproportionate because they are not white (Levin 1). This stuck with me, as most of the examples addressed in this posting regard women and nations of primarily people of color. The struggles of women of color are seemingly overlooked and are further disempowered on the basis of all forms of oppression they face. Marginalized groups experience failures from systems that most other non-marginalized people are protected by, and this is why the women of Standing Rock and the Green Belt movement and other movements initiated the activism for their environmental causes.

Sources:

Halton, Mary. “Climate Change ‘Impacts Women More than Men’.” BBC News, BBC, 8 Mar. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43294221.

This article by Mary Halton further displayed the disproportionate rates in which women are impacted by climate change based on findings from the United Nations. Halton details how women are at risk around the world due to environmental degradation, such as the drying of Lake Chad in Central Africa, as well as natural disasters that leave women susceptible to a multitude of other issues.

Levin, Sam. “At Standing Rock, Women Lead Fight in Face of Mace, Arrests and Strip Searches.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Nov. 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/04/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-standing-rock-women-police-abuse.

Maarthai, Wangari. “Speak Truth to Power | The Green Belt Movement.” The Green Belt Movement, www.greenbeltmovement.org/wangari-maathai/key-speeches-and-articles/speak-truth-to-power.

 

When thinking of the concept of intersectionality, my mind used to always go toward the traditional feminist concepts of intersections of sex, race, gender, and so on. With the integration of ecofeminist theory, it has become more clear that the environment impacts social identities differently, while also being oppressed itself. Upon taking this course, intersectionality and feminism in general seems to have more of a presence in ecological oppression than I had initially thought. According to A.E. Kings, intersectionality had not explicitly been explored in ecofeminism as a framework of thought, and some ecofeminist thought continues to solely focus on the link between ecology and gender, rather than overlapping oppressions (Kings 1). However, it can be noted that many works insinuate intersectionality such as the writings of Laura Hobgood-Oster.

Intersectionality, as defined by the masses, was a term officially coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the overlapping of social oppressions that black women faced due to race and gender. It has since evolved into encompassing feminist idea based on sex, gender, race, religion, age, dis/ability, and other forms of discrimination (Kings 1). It is a framework of analysis that allows for a broader idea of what struggles people face based on their social identities rather than having a narrow, single-line type of view at oppression. When ecofeminist theories implement intersectionality into the ideas of ecological oppression, it allows for a discussion of the oppressions that face not only women and the environment, but the oppressions faced by human and even non-human beings and the environment. I loved the example that Kings describes in her work, by using a web. The spokes of the web represent the different types of social identities, while the spirals that interconnect with the spokes of the web represent individual identities. The spirals collide with the spokes at different levels, making it so each individual identity has its own complex experience with disadvantage or advantage (Kings 1).

I recall reading in Laura Hobgood-Oster’s writings about forms of discrimination connecting. “Classism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, naturism and speciesism are all intertwined (Hobgood-Oster 2).” When considering this, it makes me think back to the blog I posted about women in the Global South being disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation than most other populations in the world, and how intersectional analysis played a large part in this (UNWater 1). As Kings stated, there often lacks the understanding of more than just gender in ecofeminism, mainly playing on the idea that women and nature are connected. When considering “women,” it feels like a blanket statement that generalizes all women and their experiences instead of highlighting the individual dis/advantages they may face based on social identity. That is why the women in the Global South, being women and people of color of low socioeconomic status are often overlooked in ecofeminism. Not only women in the Global South, but as Cacildia Cain discusses in her article, black women are also seemingly left out of the mix. Cain details the struggles that black women face in the ongoing issues of the Flint, Michigan Water Crisis, and how classism and racism also play a large part in suppressing these women in their environments (Cain 1).

It is crucial for ecofeminism to encompass an intersectional standpoint due to the fact that women should not be generalized, and that the issues are not exclusively female. Although it is theorized that women’s patriarchal oppression is directly linked to the oppression of nature, it can also serve for interpretation of the varied oppressions among all social identities. Myself as a white woman in a “first world” nation does not have the same experience of the environmental impact that a woman in the Global South has, without an adequate water source available immediately and faces a multitude of negative impacts to simply obtain water.

 

Sources:

Cain, Cacildia. “The Necessity of Black Women’s Standpoint and Intersectionality in Environmental Movements.” Medium, Black Feminist Thought 2016, 23 Oct. 2018, medium.com/black-feminist-thought-2016/the-necessity-of-black-women-s-standpoint-and-intersectionality-in-environmental-movements-fc52d4277616.

Hobgood-Oster, Laura. Ecofeminism: Historic and International Evolution . 18 Aug. 2002.

Kings, A.E. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics & the Environment, vol. 22 no. 1, 2017, p. 63-87. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/660551.

UN-Water. “Gender: UN-Water.” UN, www.unwater.org/water-facts/gender/.

Villalobos, Briana. “Intersectional Ecofeminism: Environmentalism for Everybody.” IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, 26 Feb. 2017, ecology.iww.org/node/2100?bot_test=1.

This source provided an insight into how environmental issues are experienced differently based on intersectional social identities, as well as factors such as location. Villalobos discusses how the use of intersectionality was lacking in the mainstream feminist movement, and challenges this theme and attempt to use a more intersectinal framework to combat issues for feminism, environmentalism, and the LGBTQ+ movement.