Women’s Interconnection with Nature: An Enduring Societal Polemic Jessica Stubbs

Women’s Interconnection with the Environment

An Enduring Societal Polemic

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 envi-

ronmental struggles, as they biologically relate to ate this connection asserting that it inculcates many natural flows and disturbances, resulting in characteristics of strength and guardianship retheir dominant environmental advocacy. Many sulting in the construction of women as protecpush this further to advocate for social and legal tors of the environment. This, in many ways, is protections to safeguard this biological vulneraessentialism which is the view that all entities are bility such as reproductive freedom and maternal defined by a certain set of physiological charachealth rights. teristics. Essentialism in this innocuous manner is Historically and culturally, women have tended uniquely and dynamically related to nature as a to predominantly fulfill roles in agricultural proway to uplift womens’ capacity to interact with duction and household administration, providing the environment. the main source of nourishment for families and communities. Currently, women produce 60 to 80 On the other hand, essentialism has the potential percent of food in the Global South remain critito and currently is employed in our society at a cal in collecting and storing water, securing fuel detriment to women and the environment when sources, and managing agricultural lands (Owren, utilized for repressive purposes. It can be facile 2012). These profound responsibilities have furto assume that womens’ biological relation to nather bonded women to the environment as entire ture inherently makes their essence sympathetic communities depend on womens’ collaboration to the environment. However, this is a dangerous with the natural world. This generalization as essentializing women to induces women to often blanket characteristics restricts their notice environmental capacity of change and individuproblems more quickly ality. It also and exigently as they inprovokes the question “do teract with the environment in situations of Do women have a women have a special relationship to nature that considerable closeness and regularity (Merspecial men cannot share?” that ecofeminist Carchant, Ecology 242). To many women, this relationship to olyn Merchant challenges (Merchant, instills a cogent and personal responsibilinature that men Ecology 243). If, according to this essenty to preserve and respect nature. But, some cannot share? tialist perspective, all individuals assigned as argue that this historical women at birth have inproximity to nature can herent fixed “feminine” be interpreted as environcharacteristics, then men, mental dependence which sexually non-binary, or transoften drives women to reach gener individuals must inherinto divergent fields (Blum 9). Both ently lack sympathy and regard for reproductive abilities and enduring labor nature. According to environmental phipositions of women provide powerful insight into losoper Kenneth Worthy, personal connections to how an innate closeness to nature manifests in nature in modern times are more profoundly esmultifarious characteristics, belief systems, and tablished by occupation, leisure activities, and locourses of action. cation rather than by biological sex. Declaring that The dichotomy between essentialism and subjects women to an inaccurate, socially-derived thoughtful understandings of women and nature notion that restricts their freedom. Reconciling has long been seeped in misconstruction. On one these two seemingly similar but powerfully diverhand, the interrelatedness of woman and nagent concepts (essentialism and woman’s “special ture “turned upside down becomes the source of connection”) has been an enduring polemic. women’s empowerment and ecological activism” used as a tool to bolster the idea of women being a woman is one specific thing excludes others and (Merchant, Radical Ecology 482). Many celebrate One way to comprehend the “special connection”

Photograph by Mulugeta Ayene/AP

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 of 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 interchanging 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.