“Destroy the patriarchy, not the planet.”

Last year I saw this phrase on a bumper sticker. My first thought was, “Where can I get one?!” I deliberately ignored the fact that the sticker would ooze irony if it was stuck over the exhaust of my ten-year-old gas car, and really started to question whether I even knew how patriarchy and climate change were related. I knew that both phenomena negatively affected the well-being of most people in the world, but beyond that I couldn’t really parse the explicit connection between them.

Mainstream environmentalism, which typically focuses on climate change and habitat protection, often proposes individual-level solutions, implying that if we all drove electric cars, went vegan, and avoided plastic, our environmental problems would be solved. While these actions would certainly help, they do not address the systemic causes of climate change or the problems it creates, such as the displacement of predominantly female, low-income communities forced to relocate due to extreme weather events and dwindling resources.

Climate change exacerbates existing gender, racial and financial inequalities. Systemic gender discrimination means that women, especially in developing countries, face harsh working conditions, low wages and a higher risk of gender-based violence as climate disasters become more frequent.

Ironically, women are also leading the environmental movement – ​​from growing the majority of the world’s food to changing businesses to make more environmentally conscious choices.

We really need to embrace an environmental philosophy that critically analyzes the intersections between social inequality and the exploitation of natural resources. And this is where the environmental philosophy of ecofeminism comes in. But what is ecofeminism? And how can it help us solve environmental problems?

Women as environmental activists

Women, especially in so-called developing countries, often play a major role in outdoor work and are therefore very familiar with the impacts of climate change. Women’s usual tasks include working in agriculture and/or collecting water and fuel for their families. Due to frequent severe weather, women have to travel further from home than usual to find sufficient resources for their families. These long walks also increase women’s vulnerability to gender-based violence.

Women’s strenuous outdoor work also brings enormous benefits to the rest of the world, as women are responsible for producing half of the world’s food – a figure that rises to a full 80% if one looks at developing countries alone.

Given these invaluable talents, you might think that supporting female workers would be at the forefront of the environmental movement. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as women in developing countries are victims of discriminatory laws that prohibit them from owning land. This, in turn, prevents women from benefiting from climate finance opportunities and other government subsidies, as they cannot provide collateral when applying for loans.

Nor do indigenous women receive the support and respect they deserve for their agricultural innovations. The valuable ancestral knowledge that indigenous women use includes novel forms of natural pest control, such as applying ash and fertilizer to crops, as well as discovering underground water sources by identifying specific plant species, which can be of great benefit during severe droughts.

However, due to systematic gender and racial discrimination, the voices of indigenous women in agriculture are often not heard. This means that only male farmworkers typically have access to important technology and education, even though women are equally entitled to them.

Based on a 2023 estimate, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted that if women farmers had access to the same agricultural training, technology and finance as men, we could feed an additional 45 million people worldwide. While 43 countries worldwide suffer from worrying or severe hunger, according to the Global Hunger Index, society continues to exclude some of the most promising people in agriculture: women.

There is no doubt that women’s ideas and concerns regarding climate change should be given more prominence, even though they are at the forefront of environmental protection. However, mainstream environmentalism ignores women’s concerns and prefers to cater to an economic structure dominated by male-dominated industries. However, there is an alternative environmental philosophy that prioritizes the liberation of women and the environment.

Ecofeminism: What is it?

The term ecofeminism was originally coined by Francoise d’Eaubonne, a courageous French feminist who published numerous articles on this ideology in the 1970s. It posits that gender inequality and environmental injustice are both the result of patriarchy and capitalism. Therefore, to make real progress in creating a more just society, we must reject the patriarchal structure and the oppression it fosters.

But what does patriarchy have to do with the economy? Domination is inherent in the concept of patriarchy, which describes a society in which men wield disproportionate power in political, economic, and social spheres. Ecofeminist scholars recognize that in a male-dominated society, women and the environment are disadvantaged due to the dominance of traditional gender roles.

For example, in developing countries, women are perceived as custodians of the land, which makes sense given the statistics on women and food production mentioned earlier. Despite being well versed in agriculture, women are not given the opportunity to make decisions about how land and natural resources are managed – a blatant case of sexism.

Much like men demonstrate their dominance over women by assuming the role of decision maker, men convey a similar sense of power over nature. The oil industry is a timeless example of patriarchy in action, as the industry is overwhelmingly male-dominated and has a long history of racism and sexism. Furthermore, oil production has essentially become synonymous with environmental destruction. In a patriarchal society, it is not surprising that a male-dominated industry would willingly exploit the land for profit, even knowing the harmful environmental impacts of their work.

Giving women the opportunity to have a say in environmental issues could lead to more progress in the environmental movement. According to a study by the European Corporate Governance Institute, female leaders, especially in the corporate world, make more environmentally friendly decisions than men.

Rejection of mainstream environmental protection

At one of the first women-led international environmental conferences, the Women’s Congress for a Healthy Planet in 1991, thousands of women came together to announce a new climate agenda. One of their agenda items, conspicuously absent from the agenda of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, was raising awareness that environmental destruction is the result of the military-industrial-capitalist economy.

Unfortunately, in the report Our Common Future, the UN opted for a green growth paradigm that has largely shaped the rhetoric on climate change to this day. Green growth exploits the idea that technological innovations that enable energy efficiency will ultimately lead to sustained economic growth and thus a sustainable society. However, such a report fails to recognize that the economic growth of the “developed” world only serves to exacerbate inequalities in the first world as the gap between the super-rich and the poor widens.

Ecofeminism is at odds with mainstream environmentalism because it does not encourage unbridled economic growth, even if it does so in supposedly sustainable ways. Instead, it advocates an approach to environmentalism that recognizes that the world’s richest countries are responsible for climate change, even though it is some of the poorest countries and the women who live and work in those countries who suffer the most from the effects of climate change.

Ecofeminism advocates compassion and empathy and fundamentally changes the way we treat each other and the environment. By challenging the assumed superiority of humans over nature, ecofeminism seeks to remind humanity that we are not separate from nature, but form one large global community. This shift could permanently alter the ease with which our society makes record profits at the expense of nature.