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Women/nature or gender/
history? A critique of
ecofeminist ‘development’
a
Cecile Jackson
a
School of Development Studies , University
of East Anglia , Norwich, Norfolk, NR4 7TJ
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Women/Nature or Gender/History? A
Critique of Ecofeminist 'Development'
CECILE JACKSON
This article examines the women and environment linkage which

characterises not only ecofeminist thought but, increasingly, also

development discourse and practice -from NGOs to the World
Bank. It suggests that gender analysis of environmental relations
leads to very different conclusions, of potentially conflicting rather
than complementary agendas, for gender struggles and environ-
mental conservation.
The linkage of women and the environment is currently a major focus in

both development circles and feminist debates. The relationship
between, and recent convergence of, these two discourses raises interest-
ing issues for both. The increasingly common linkage of women with the
environment in development thinking and practice can be seen in a
plethora of publications and the reorganisation of development institu-
tions - including NGOs, state agencies and international organisations -
around this linkage.1 A notable feature of much of this discourse is that it
is largely separate from the analysis of gender in development, and this
article explores the implications of this separation. The second discourse
examined here, of ecofeminism, is of fairly recent origin, has pre-
dominantly western roots, an academic literature and an increasingly
vocal and influential international presence.2 The United Nations Con-
ference on Environment and Development of 1992 had a panel devoted
to ecofeminism.
Whilst there is much consideration of the inapplicability of western
technical models to understanding processes of degradation in Third
World societies, there is less discussion of western environmentalism as
deriving from a specific social, economic, political and intellectual his-
tory, an assumption of its universal relevance and meaning,3 and little
awareness of non-western environmentalisms [Guha, 1989b]. A critical
Cecile Jackson, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich,
Norfolk NR4 7TJ. The editorial advice of Henry Bernstein is gratefully acknowledged.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, April 1993, pp. 389-419
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
390 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES
examination of one element of environmentalism, ecofeminism, may

begin to contextualise western environmentalism and indicate the con-
sequences of universalising it.
LOCATING ECOFEMINISM
Two major strands in western environmentalism have been defined as the
ecocentric and the technocentric [O'Riordan, 1981: 1-19]. Within the

first, nature is respected for its own sake not only for its usefulness to
humanity. This has generated bioethics, that is the position that without
people there would still be a meaning and a purpose to life on earth. The
technocentric strand is characterised by 'science', belief in economic
rationality, and in the possibility of environmental management.
Technocentric approaches and the assertion of humanity's domination
of nature, have their origins in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth
century [Merchant, 1981: 2], which was both the source of both exploita-
tive attitudes to nature, and the scientific methodology which many
environmentalists continue to depend on. The scientific revolution is also
seen by many ecofeminists as heralding the era in which women as well as
nature came to be dominated, controlled and exploited, in contrast to
organic conceptions of nature and gender in earlier times. For example,
in sixteenth century Europe 'the root metaphor binding together the self,
society, and the cosmos was that of an organism' [ibid.: 1] and nature was
seen as a nurturing mother.
But 'the metaphor of the earth as a nurturing mother was gradually to
vanish as a dominant image as the Scientific Revolution proceeded to
mechanise and rationalise the world view. The second image, nature as
disorder, called forth an important modern idea, that of power over
nature' [ibid.: 2]. The images of women reflected this: 'The witch, symbol
of the violence of nature, raised storms, caused illness, destroyed crops,
obstructed generation, and killed infants. Disorderly woman, like chaotic
nature, needed to be controlled' [ibid.: 127] Critics [Plumwood, 1986:
126] point out that women were subordinated before the seventeenth
century, and some have suggested that it was the spread of Christianity
and the destruction of pagan animism in Europe that produced the idea of
a separate and dominant humanity apart from Nature, for 'Christianity is
the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen ... By destroying
pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood
of indifference to the feelings of natural objects' [White, 1967: 1205].
Whether this is so, or whether as some have argued, the biblical
account of Genesis commits humanity to a stewardship, rather than
WOMEN/NATURE OR GENDER/HISTORY? 391
dominion, over nature, the opposition between the transcendent and the
immanent has been constant in western European thought, with male
transcendentalism valued above female immanence. Simone de Beauvoir
expressed this in her analysis of the nature of women's subordination -
because men are unable to create through biological reproduction, theirs
is an artificial creation - human culture.
The female, to a greater extent than the male is the prey of the
species; and the human race has always sought to escape its specific
destiny. The support of life became for man an activity and a project
through the invention of the tool; but in maternity woman remained
closely bound to her body, like an animal It is male activity that
in creating values has made of existence itself a value; this activity
has prevailed over the confused forces of life; it has subdued Nature
and Woman [de Beauvoir, 1988: 97],
Some ecocentric perspectives blame the ideology of scientific and tech-
nologicalprogress for initiating the exploitation of women and nature,
while others posit deeper and more universal roots of such exploitation,
however, both turn upon the association of women with nature and tend
to deal with gender ideologies and metaphors in isolation from changing
material conditions of life.
Ecocentric environmentalism originates largely in American transcen-
dentalism and that European romanticism which revolted against
rationalism and science, and which valued instinctive, intuitional and
emotional forms of knowledge. 'Poets and artists like Wordsworth,
Shelley and Blake in England lambasted the 'dark satanic mills' of the
first Industrial Revolution and turned to a celebration of the countryside
and rural life which was qualitatively new in it's conscious rejection of
industry, the city and even of scientific rationality itself [Kitching, 1982:
2) Romanticism values nature above culture, and reappears in contem-
porary 'deep ecology' and bioethics as well as ecofacism and
ecofeminism. The current resurgence of ecocentric environmentalism
against the 'economic' and the instrumental represents an assertive
romanticism with a clear political agenda [Scarce, 1990].
Agrarian populists idealise peasants as self-reliant, independent,
cooperative, innovative and resistant to the inequalities of capitalism.
'The appeal of such virtuous constructions of peasant life is reinforced by
another pervasive motif of resistance to urban industrial civilisation and
its discontents, that of a direct relation with nature in securing a liveli-
hood from the land' [Bernstein, 1990: 70]. Ecofeminists conceive of the
virtuous woman in the same manner that agrarian populists conceive of
the virtuous peasant: they idealise women and obscure the divisions
amongst women and the exploitation of some women by others (see

below).
Environmentalism in current development thinking and practice ap-
pears to be strongly connected with the ascendancy of neo-populism. In
Britain, the green consciousness of the 1980s followed on the harsh
economic realities of the 1970s. The middle classes have created
a peaceful, if mythical, rural idyll out beyond the high rise flats and
the Chinese takeaways which, if notquite [sic] inhabited by merrie

rustics, is at least populated by a race which, it is supposed, is
attuned to verities more eternal than the floating pound and the
balance of payments crisis ... Somewhere ... at the far end of the
far end of the M4 or the A12 there are 'real' country folk, living in
the midst of 'real' English countryside in - that most elusive of all
rustic Utopias - 'real communities' [Newby, 1979: 13-14].
It is from this same social terrain that some development professionals

and academics are drawn, and it is unsurprising that an appeal is found in
both populist approaches to rural development and the linkage of women
and environment with its subtext of earth mothers and mother nature.
Thus ecofeminism would seem to derive from the ecocentric strand of
western environmentalism, sharing with populism certain common intel-
lectual roots, and ideological themes of the disaffected urban middle
classes, including a tendency to glorify a mythical organic past.
Defining Ecofeminism
Although ecofeminism is still taking shape it is possible to outline some
key positions shared by a range of ecofeminist literature - these can be
grouped around the woman-nature linkage, the opposition to domina-
tion of nature by culture and the belief in non-hierachical networks in
nature.4
Perhaps for most feminists the alleged women and nature connection
has been seen as an important underpinning of the subordination of
women [Brown and Jordanova, 1982], with the implication that by
challenging this connection with nature women will be liberated. This has
been called the masculinising wave of feminism: aiming at equality
through becoming like men. Ecofeminists argue against this 'resolution'
of the woman: nature question. Will separation from nature make
women fully human? If humanity has been defined in the absence of
women, and in opposition to nature, and we align ourselves with the
human, where does that leave the 'non-human'? Is it progressive for
women to be absorbed into a masculine defined relationship with the
non-human based on dominance, control, and exploitation? The eco-
feminist position suggests that
... we can nonetheless consciously choose not to sever the woman-

nature connection by joining male culture. Rather, we can use it as a
vantage point for creating a different kind of culture and politics
that would integrate intuitive, spiritual and rational forms of know-
ledge, embracing both science and magic insofar as they enable us

to transform the nature-culture distinction and to envision and
create a free, ecological society [King, 1987: 19].
Is there a woman-nature link? One approach to this question is found

in the idea of Levi Strauss [1969] that the nature-culture divide is a
universal cognitive structures and hence supra-historical. Human culture
is founded on the incest taboo, which necessitates the exchange of women
and allows human groups to form alliances. The subordination is the basis
of human culture, hence also the foundation for the subordination of
nature. In this account the subordination of women does not follow the
subordination of nature but vice versa. If culture is created in opposition
to nature though the objectification of women in marriage exchanges,
then women become 'non-human', and, given the binary nature of the
classification, aligned with nature.
There has been much criticism of both this concept of the nature-
culture dichotomy and its connection to woman: nature association. It
bears a 'fundamental paradox' described by MacCormack thus
Culture transcends nature, but is grounded in the human mind

(brain) which is nature ... Men and women transcend nature with
their mentality,but are in nature as procreated, procreators, nur-
turers and possessors of human minds. ... Might we conclude that
both men and women are nature and culture, and there is no logic
compelling us to believe that at an unconscious level women,
because of their naturalness, are opposed to and subordinate to
men? [MacCormack, 1980: 17].
Furthermore, it is uncertain that a distinction between nature and culture

is either universally recognised or considered important [MacCormack,
1980]. In western culture the natural is what survives from our primate
origins and the cultural is our escape from nature. The specifically
western character of such a view is pointed out in the remark made by
Sahlins 'So far as I know we are the only people who think themselves
risen from savages; everyone else believes they descended from the gods'
[Sahlins, 1976: 52-3].
A second type of explanation is offered by feminist anthropologist
Sherry Ortner [1974] who has suggested that women were subjected
because of their perceived 'naturalness'. Maternity is more obvious than
paternity and women's bodies and functions make them appear more like
animals.
(1) woman's body and its functions, more involved more of the time
with 'species life', seem to place her closer to nature... (2) woman's
body and its functions place her in social roles that in turn are
considered to be at a lower order of the cultural process than man's
... (3) woman's traditional social roles, imposed because of her
body and its functions, in turn give her a psychic structure, which...
is seen as being closer to nature [Ortner, 1974: 72-3]
Ortner, then, argues that the material reality of women's reproductive

work creates a perception (she is careful to deny biological determinism)
of an affinity between women and nature, which is different from Levi
Strauss's view that women are subordinated through their symbolic and
classificatory non-humanity. Maria Mies goes further than Ortner and
describes the different relation of women with nature as being
... a reciprocal process. They conceived of their own bodies as

being productive and creative in the same way as they conceived of
external nature as being productive and creative ... They are not
owners of their own bodies or of the earth, but they cooperate with
their bodies and with the earth in order to 'let grow and make grow'
... As the producers of new life they also become the first subsis-
tence producers and the inventors of the first productive economy'
[Mies, 1986: 56].
Despite this biologically determined characterisation Mies criticises

other such explanations of gender inequity. Indeed much of the literature
is marked by this familiar problem - the wish to avoid biological deter-
minism and yet the central significance of biological reproduction in
attempts to explain the subordination of women [Sayers, 1982].
The explanations of the woman-nature connection vary - some see it as
a biological given, and others argue that women are universally seen to be
closer to nature but as Brown and Jordanova point out, this merely adds
another link to the chain of causality - 'Biological differences provide a
universal basis for social definitions which place women closer to nature
than men, and this provides the basis for the universal subordination of
women' [Brown and Jordanova, 1982:392, original emphasis]. We might
also raise here the problem of the identity of the perceiver: who sees
women as closer to nature? Men, women or anthropologists? Ortner's
model assumes a common symbolic system, and therefore fails to inves-
tigate whether women see themselves as closer to nature. It seems a
strange irony that radical ecofeminists are likely, given the 'mutedness'
[Ardener, 1975] of dominated groups in expressing alternative world-
views, to be accepting the dominant male model.
Why do the kinds of explanations outlined explanations matter? If, as a

reading of Levi Strauss might suggest, culture was created - and 'nature'
too, since this is a product of culture - through denial of fully human
status to women (since women are objects to be exchanged rather than
acting, choosing persons), then acceptance of the dualism leads eco-
feminists to accept a representation of women as subhuman. Eco-
feminists, of course, maintain that, on the contrary, they invert the
valuation given to each side in the nature-culture dichotomy (see below),
but others argue that 'the celebration of a distinctive, supposedly biologi-
cally given femininity, and of women's "separate" sphere is reactionary'
[Sayers, 1982:190]; a position I share. A second objection to biologically
determinist explanations of the women-nature link is that they produce
an essentialism in which women constitute an undifferentiated category.
We consider these points further below.
I turn now to the second question: how the linkage is conceived.
Ruether [1978], among others, suggested that the woman: nature linkage
is one metaphor, but Plumwood [1986:122] legitimately queries why the
model in one sphere (biological reproduction) has been transferred to
another. In the passage quoted above Mies seems to suggest that the
metaphor of reproduction is the connection between women and nature,
as well as implying psychological and historical dimension of the connec-
tion. Both are problematic. Psychological accounts suffer fail to explain
precisely how perceptions of the women: nature linkage by men and
women are related to specific and variable material circumstances, for we
cannot assume uniform and ahistorical psychological processes.
Historical characterisations of the women-nature connection have
been based on views of a common domination of both. For Europe,
Merchant [1982] sees the Scientific Revolution as bringing about the
separation of nature from culture, the association of women with nature
and the domination of both by mankind, whilst for India Shiva [1989]
emphasises a specifically colonial, explanation for the connection
between women and nature. Although light on detail she asserts that
'maldevelopment... violates ... the harmony of man [sic] in nature ...
and the harmony between men and women. It ruptures the cooperative
unity of masculine and feminine and places man, shorn of the feminine
principle, above women and nature and separated from both [Shiva,
1989: 6].5
Shiva gives an account of the link as one of shared similarities: (i) both
women and nature are female, (ii) both create and sustain life, (iii) both
have suffered colonisation [Rao, 1991: 17]. But the circularity of the
argument fails to convince. Ecofeminist literature also relies heavily on
the concept of patriarchy, typically conceived in a monolithic, ahistorical

and reductionist manner. Within gender and development discourse,
however, there has been much debate about the usefulness of concepts of
patriarchy [Whitehead, 1979] which fail to distinguish key variations in
the mechanisms and structures of gender inequality, their changing
character and reproduction.
If there are problems with its conceptualisation, what about evidence
for the nature-woman connection? Although for some societies there is
evidence that women are associated with nature, men are too, and men
are not exclusively associated with culture. In one Papua New Guinean
group the 'Gimi wilderness is an exalted domain where the male spirit
acts out its secret desires away from the inhibiting presence of women'
[Gillison, 1980]. In other cultures too, women are connected with the
domestic, the settled, with civilisation, whilst men are associated with
nature. In western culture for example, men are commonly seen (for
example, by judges in rape cases) as having legitimately uncontrolled
animal desires for sex, whilst women are seen as more thoroughly social.
There has also been an extended critique of ethnocentrism in many
interpretations of categories such as nature, culture, male and female.
Both the validity of the nature: culture dichotomy and the association of
women with nature are seen to be constructs of western culture with a
particular history. Ecofeminism has grown out of this same history - it
reflects an awareness of the problem of how we treat the non-human and
it reflects the struggles within feminisms generally of how to construct the
human in other than masculine characteristics. But if we understand why
women and nature are linked in western thought there remains the
problem of how this linkage is conceptualised and the implications of the
evidence that both terms, women and nature, are social constructs.
Ecofeminists do not see nature and environment as culturally con-
structed but as biological facts. Yet nature is a product of culture: 'Nature
must be expressed in symbols; nature is known through symbols which
are themselves a construction of experience, a product of mind, an
artifice or conventional product, therefore the reverse of natural'
[Douglas, 1973: 11] The central recognition of this in Marxist thought is
perhaps what distinguishes Marxist environmentalism. In a letter to

Engels Marx commented that 'It is remarkable how Darwin recognises
among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labour,
competition, opening of new markets, "inventions" and the Malthusian
"struggle for existence'". [Schmidt, 1971: 46]. The meaning of nature is
dependent on historically and culturally specific understandings, which
reflect gender differences as well as other social divisions.
The superiority of the feminine is an explicit theme in ecofeminist
literature, with women seen as spiritual and intuitive in opposition to

patriarchal and rational men. For example, Shiva [1989] suggests that
women are custodians of a feminine principle which represents an organic
unity with nature, from which men and developed industrial cultures are
alienated and which must be recovered. The view that a superior
feminine 'essence' exists is shared with those versions of feminism which
advocate the adoption by both men andwomen of the superior female
character. As put by de Beauvoir [1988:27] 'Adam was only a rough draft
and... God succeeded in producing the human being in perfection when
He created Eve'. This presents a major theoretical problem in attempts to
define 'the feminine' when female character has developed under male
domination. The search for the female 'essence' and the task of remaking
humanity in a female form, which cannot be known, poses serious
obstacles to the ecofeminist project. The abstraction of such a universal a
feminine principle leads Shiva into difficulties. Although she distin-
guishes the principle from actually existing women she then constantly
elides the two, for example, quoting Saradamoni's observation that
women 'have shown a tenderness to paddy crop and fields almost similar
to what they would show to their own children' [Shiva, 1989: 109].
Although I have focused on the women-nature perspective, this is not
the only distinguishing feature of ecofeminism. In at least two other areas
ecofeminism is distinctive. First, for ecofeminists, life is an intercon-
nected web not a hierarchy. Thus human life has no greater value than
non-human life and forms of nature are not of differential value. This
concern is shared with some animal rights theorists, although feminists
tend to emphasise the emotional rather than philosophical justifications
for animal rights [Donovan, 1990]. Feminist animal rights theorists have
objected to the rationalism of contemporary animal rights theory and
emphasise 'emotional fellowship' and 'deep, subtle and lasting relation-
ships' of animals.6 The anthropomorphism of these writers stands in
contradiction to the idea that all life is of equal value - for it is certain
animals (physically or behaviourally appealing to humans) which are the
focus of animal rights activism. This stance is weakly developed in
women, environment and development discourse, although traces of it
are seen in for example the assumed bioethical motivations of Chipko

women. Second, the opposition to the domination of nature by culture
leads ecofeminists to ' . . . take on the life struggles of all of nature as our
own' [King, 1989:17]. Whilst taking on the life struggles of humanity may
be a strong theme in western women's political actions, for example in the
peace movement, the extension of this to nature is distinctive to eco-
feminists within feminisms.7 The ecofeminist belief that women's affinity
with nature leads them to defend and protect it is examined below.
Before examining the implications of ecofeminist views in the Third

World it is worth summarising the problems with ecofeminism; it is
ethnocentric, essentialist, blind to class, ethnicity and other differentiat-
ing cleavages, ahistorical and neglects the material sphere.
What significance does this have for attempts to understand gendered
environmental relations in the Third World or for development interven-
tions? Western feminism has been criticised for conceiving of Third
World women as victims [Mohanty, 1988: 61-86], and its writing on
women and environment tend to stress the negative impact of environ-
mental degradation on women. However, ecofeminists believe that
women will mobilise in defense of the environment, and that theirs is
therefore a post-victimology stance [Shiva, 1989]. Their view of women
as agents is confined to environmental friendliness, and it is assumed that
women relate to the environment positively except when forced by
poverty to do otherwise. Thus interventions to support the environment
will benefit women, and development agencies are urged to involve
women in conservation as fully as possible.
Ecofeminist approaches have colonised the views of development
agencies which see the interests of women and the environment as
coterminous. The British Overseas Development Administration
(ODA) presented a paper to the UNCED which claimed that 'synergistic
interventions' exist which can effectively tackle poverty alleviation,
women and development, and environmental conservation goals simul-
taneously. '[The] identification of synergistic interventions which will act
simultaneously on population-environment-poverty problems presents
an obvious way forward. Improving the rights and livelihoods of women,
or the wider notion of Primary Environmental Care, may be promising
approaches' [ODA, 1991: i, original emphasis]. The World Bank World
Development Report of 1992 on the environment similarly asserts com-
plementarity - what have been called 'win-win' policies [World Bank,
1992: 1]. Whilst women's education may indeed constitute an important
intervention, it cannot be assumed that there are no policy trade-offs in
these areas. I hope the discussion which follows demonstrates both a
more effective form of analysis and the policy clashes which need to be
confronted. The application of gender analysis to environmental rela-
tions involves seeing women in relation to men; the disaggregation of the
category of 'women', and an understanding of gender roles as socially and
historically constructed. The view that there is an 'underlying com-
monality between the premises and goals of the women's movement and
the environmental movement; and ... an alternative vision of a more
egalitarian and harmonious future society' [Agarwal, 1991: 5] is widely
held, even by critics of ecofeminism, yet it requires interrogation.
WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT IN DEVELOPMENT:

COMPLEMENTARITY OR CONFLICT?
How are ecofeminist ideas reflected in development literature and
practice? The exploitation of women and the environment are now
commonly portrayed now as having gone hand in hand, and both women
and the environment are seen as victims of development. As suggested
above, it is taken as self-evident that harm to nature equals harm to
women because of the pervasive perception that women are closer to
nature. One might ask whether the new convention that the burden of
degradation falls disproportionately upon women derives from the
feminist attention to reproduction, for example the growing awareness of
wood and water collecting in development discourse? However, this does
not seem to be the case. Much of the literature does not use concepts of
material or social reproduction8 nor gender analysis either, preferring to
deal with 'women'. The linkage of 'women' and environment is either
simply assumed or asserted and used to prescribe actions to mobilised
women for conservation.
Recent years have seen a rapid rise in books, reports, conferences and
activity related to women and environment and both international
organisations and NGOs have adopted the linkage.9 Western ecofeminist
theorists do not see any problems in embracing the Third World within
their concerns: 'Ecological feminism .. has grown up especially in the
women's, peace and ecology movements ... In the Third World ... the
connection between women's interests and the health of nature is
especially apparent' [Plumwood, 1992:10]. The nature of the literature in
this field is noticeably different from earlier work on women in develop-
ment (WID); it is not led by academics, it is very anecdotal10 and little
concerned to establish clear evidence or strong argument. It takes its
position as self-evident. For example, a report which found that people
working on anti-desertification projects were usually only rewarded with
food and that most such workers were women, implies that women are
committed to the environment, not that it is the poverty of women in
relation to men that accounts for their participation in work for food
alone [Monimart, 1989]. Another example is an article which remarks
that women collect only dry wood for fuel... 'women have rules about
fuel collection that expressly prohibit the cutting down of living trees.
Dead and downed wood is preferred. In addition, certain species may be
protected by custom or religious sanction. In parts of India women water
the peepul tree as an act of piety' [Fortmann, 1986: 40]. What is not said
here is that dead wood is lighter and easier to carry. Environment friendly
management practices by women can often be explained in terms of

rational short-term interests but are too often interpreted on the assump-
tion that women are 'naturally' caring, nurturing and selfless beings
committed to both future generations and the environment for its own
sake.
A partial investigation of the validity of the claim that Third World
women have an affinity with the environment can start by asking how,
'women and environment' activists see the relationship of Third World
women and the environment.
The Special Relationship

'... women have a special relationship with the environment and
retain close links with the natural resource base' [Women and
Environment Network (WEN), 1989].
'... [The] organic process of growth in which women and nature

work in partnership with each other has created a special relation-
ship of women with nature ...' [Shiva. 1989: 43].
We have suggested that the essentialism and romanticism of eco-

feminist thought informs women and environment development in the
Third World. But because women have not been at the forefront of tree
logging or mining or rainforest burning does not mean that they are
naturally more caring about the environment, it is more likely to express
gender divisions of labour and distribution of opportunity. Essentialism is
also manifest in the very general level at which information is presented:
women are presented as an homogenous category, not only within
countries but across nations too [e.g. Dankelman and Davidson, 1989].
The absence of gender terminology is significant, for gender affirms the
socially grounded nature of identities as women and men, and eschews
essentialism.
Ecofeminist essentialism offers no account of historical change. Shiva
[1989] visualises only a mythical past in which harmony with nature

prevailed, until ruptures by colonialism. Historians have taken issue with
this representation, as have feminists who point out that the sacred and
secular texts used to sustain these arguments are themselves Sanskrit
texts which represent the views of rich, high caste men [Rao, 1991: 19].
Indian scholars have objected to Shiva's acceptance of the 'original
affluent society' model, and have countered such statements as 'forests
have always been central to Indian civilisation' with the observation that
Indian civilisation is built on the exploitation of hill peoples, the destruc-

tion of sacred groves and their replacement by temples [DN, 1990:796].
In tribal communities and amongst hill peoples women are relatively free,
divorce and widow remarriage are more common, there is an absence of
wife seclusion practices; it is the spread of mainstream Indian civilisation
which has imposed the constraints of caste society onto women. Finally,
Shiva conflates the Indian with the Hindu [Agarwal, 1991: 9] in her
assertion of the feminine principle and thereby glosses over the plurality
of ideologies and interests in pre-colonial India.
Class has a central significance for environmental relations. As Agar-
wal documents for south Asia [1991: 38-44] the adverse effects of
environmental degradation fall particularly upon poor women, not
women in general. In addition to class-gender effects, other distinctions
between women are significant. Inequalities amongst women exist even
at the household level where age frequently patterns divisions of labour,
access to and control of resources, and decision making powers. For
example, in Zimbabwe, older women within households can, and do,
send junior wives, sons' wives or daughters to collect fuel wood
[McGregor, 1991:206]. Generation is significant not only in that women
of different ages have differently structured constraints and oppor-
tunities. Societies are not reproduced without change and younger
women's experiences and histories are different to those of older women,
and their attitudes and expectations differ as a result. Oral histories from
the Sahel show that changing generational relations and attitudes are a
maj or preoccupation of both men and women interviewed about environ-
mental change [Cross and Barker, 1991]. To posit a special relationship
between women and their environments which ignores such multiple
sources of difference is problematic, because women bear socially
formed, and changing gender, as well as class and generational, iden-
tities.
A further problem with the 'special relationship' is that it ignores the
specific contexts of environmental practices. Women manage natural
resources as part of their livelihood strategies, which reflect varying
objectives, powerful wider political forces and gender relations. Micro-
studies of gendered resource use reveal that the relations of women to

environments 'cannot be understood outside the context of gender
relations in resource management and use' [Leach, 1991: 14].
Altruism and Community Welfare

'Women's priorities are usually oriented towards the good of the
community thus placing more emphasis on the protection of the
environment and the resources within it' [WEN, 1989].
And furthermore -
'... women, as victims of the violence of patriarchal forms of

development have risen against it to protect nature and preserve
their survival and sustenance' [Shiva, 1989: xvii].
The instance always cited to support these two points is the Chipko
movement, which developed out of a Gandhian social development
movement, in mid-late 1970s in Garhwal division of Uttar Pradesh. The
context was one of local anger over government forest policy which
denied local use of trees whilst giving logging rights to large companies.
Floods during the 1970s and land slips were perceived by the social
workers as caused by deforestation [Jain, 1984:1788]. The initial involve-
ment of women in the demonstrations occurred when village men were
lured away and the logging company arrived unexpectedly, but women
then became the mainstay of a movement which spread widely and
focused on demonstrations, in which trees were hugged, to prevent
logging.
Chipko is usually represented as demonstrating women's concern for
conservation, disembodied from material or ideological considerations,
and it has been very widely used as an example of spontaneous environ-
mental and community commitment by women. In addition, it is also
suggested, with reference to the Chipko slogan 'what do the forests bear?
Soil, water and pure air', that the Chipko women have 'a holistic
understanding of the environment in general and forests in particular'
[Agarwal, 1991: 53-4]. It is not clear, however, that an understanding of
hydrological cycles can be neatly read off from such a slogan given the
established influence in the area of the Gandhian social development
activists responsible for the mobilisation around their perception of
deforestation as causing landslides and floods. The verities of women's
environmental knowledge has to be assessed in the light of analysis which
suggests that geological forces rather than deforestation are the likely
cause of landslides and flooding downstream [Thompson and Warburton,

1985].
Recently, questions have been raised as to how to understand Chipko:
'Locating Chipko culturally and historically provides a long overdue
corrective to the popular conception of Chipko, which, is that of a
romantic reunion of humans, especially women, with nature' [Guha,
1989a: 173]. Ramachandra Guha sees Chipko as essentially conservative
and anti-change, and locates it within a local history of peasant protest
based on charismatic, populist leadership, asceticism and religious im-

agery, and the charismatic Chipko leader Sunderlal Bahuguna's fol-
lowers 'look to him to restore a pristine state of harmony' [ibid.: 171].
Both Guha and Shobita Jain [1984: 1789] deny, contrary to popular
representations, that Chipko is a feminist movement. Women of the
region supported the campaign for alcohol prohibition, organised by the
Gandhian social development organisation that spawned Chipko, during
the 1960s. Later women became involved in large numbers in tree
hugging, but the leadership has been predominantly male. It has been
claimed that as the Chipko movement developed it took on more of a
feminist quality as women came to oppose, for the first time, not only
men from beyond their community but also local men, including their
husbands. Guha points out, however, that this is not new, it was pre-
figured by the anti-alcohol demonstrations. The shortcomings of essen-
tialist interpretations of Chipko which ignore history become apparent,
for the meaning of the image of a woman hugging a tree in front of a
bulldozer derives from its context rather than any universal condition.
For Guha Chipko is
only one in a series of protest movements against commercial
forestry dating from the earliest days of state intervention. ... the
peasantry was protesting against the denial of subsistence rights
which state policy has wrought. Essentially the movement was a
response to a perceived breach of the informal code between the
ruler and the ruled known as the 'moral economy' of the peasant
[ibid.: 174].
In this light the Chipko movement appears more as a conservative
affirmation of a particular moral economy, constituted by certain power
structures, including those that subordinate women.' Women may be
more susceptible to mobilisation on the basis of breaches in the moral
economy, since the weight of subsistence work has fallen on them
following male outmigration in the region; also hill women are also
culturally and historically less subordinated than plains women. In short,
Chipko women should not be taken out of their context and projected as
once submissive and obedient wives who, through their great love for
trees, veneration of nature and instinctive understanding of ecological
principles, rose up spontaneously and risked life and limb for their
forests.
Gail Omvedt has commented that ecofeminists would argue that 'it is
precisely because women do tend to be bearers of continuity with the past
or of traditions in harmony with nature that they can stand in the
forefront of movements like Chipko and that such movements can come
to represent "feminine modes" of action and assertion' [Omvedt, 1990:

323].
Whilst this may be the case, let us not imagine that such movements
have much to do with feminism. The readiness acceptance of ecofeminists
to embrace the conservative traits displayed by Chipko women without
questioning whether this is really liberating for women, suggests that
certain uncomfortable issues are ignored in the interests of the environ-
ment. The much vaunted complementarity between the interests of
women and those of the environment may not be quite all it seems - even
in the case invariably chosen to make this point.
The manner in which Chipko has been represented is revealing. It has
been portrayed as a case of spontaneous, 'natural' environmental con-
servation by women, with little attempt to look for other explanations; it
has been categorised as a women's movement - simply because of the
presence of women, despite male leadership; the style of the accounts
given of Chipko activities is emotional and dwells on the images of
defenceless women hugging trees and singing songs. During the 1980s
two strands developed within the Chipko movement - that led by Chandi
Prasad Bhatt who believes in conserving and developing resources to
benefit the local community whilst preserving ecological balance, and
that led by Sunderlal Bahuguna, politician, journalist and ecologist who
does not support agroforestry or local industries using the forest in any
way. Women and environment writers have identified not with the
technocentric Bhatt but with the ecocentric Sunderlal Bahuguna.
The focus of attention on Chipko tends to obscure the fact that in many
areas environmental degradation has not led to women's protest move-
ments. A legitimate counter argument may be made that the documenta-
tion of women's protest is lacking both because of gender blindness in
historical records and because the 'everyday forms of resistance' are
'invisible'. It seems inappropriate, at this stage, to make any generalisa-
tions about the likelihood of political action by women in defense of the
environment.
The view of Vandana Shiva that women are responsible for community
and forest management is also questionable - for most forests in India are
managed not by women but by panchayats which notably lack women

members [DN, 1990:795]. Here, women and environment writers fail to
distinguish clearly between working and managing, and employ a crude
and simplistic understanding of gender divisions of labour. In India, as
elsewhere in the Third World, many women do indeed cut wood for sale,
partly because they are obliged to by poverty and partly because of
gender inequality in access to resources. Acceptance of the reality that
women are agents of environmental degradation is not to lay blame, but
refusal to accept this and determined attempts to construct positive

images of women as custodians of, and carers for, the environment act to
obscure and prevent a more useful analysis that confronts material and
social contradictions. In addition, incorporating the 'community manage-
ment' role of women in development projects often means extending the
unpaid work done by women.
Gendered Analysis of Environmental Issues

The impact of environmental degradation is often greater on women
because of the over-representation of female headed households
amongst the poor, and because of gender divisions of labour within
households which allocate work such as firewood and water collection to
women, precisely tasks which become much more difficult with defores-
tation and falling water tables. However from a gender analysis stand-
point the costs of degradation cannot be assumed to fall predominantly
on women without investigating how gender divisions of labour are
contested and change under environmental stress, the significance of
women's and men's failures to meet reproductive responsibilities, and the
benefits to women which may be tied to degradation processes.
It is frequently assumed that because women are more severely
affected by environmental degradation they will be the 'natural' constitu-
ency for conservation activities. In examining how women may be
mobilised for environmental conservation I consider, with African
examples,12 connections between gender relations (rather than women)
and environmental degradation. It will be argued, against ecofeminism,
that women have no inherent or definitive closeness to nature, but
socially constructed relations to natural resources which vary for different
groups of women, and for individual women during the course of a
lifetime. There is a need to recognise that many women are frequently
agents of environmental degradation because of the pressures gender and
class relations, and that the alleviation of poverty will not necessarily
change this. It is suggested that a gender analysis leads to a very different
perspective to that of synergism or win-win policies which the World
Bank defines as 'actions which promote income growth, poverty allevia-

tion, and environmental improvement' [1992: 2]. The discussion focuses
upon environmental knowledges, property relations, marriage and life-
cycle patterning of resource relations, gender relations and livelihood
strategies as significant influences upon particular complementarities and
conflicts in gender and environmental interests.
Before looking at property relations we could consider the distribution
of environmental knowledges. It is often held that women know more
about the environment because of gender divisions of labour which assign

women to many reproductive tasks which bring them into daily contact
with fields, forests and rivers. '[Women] have a profound knowledge of
the plants, animals and ecological processes around them' [Dankelman
and Davidson, 1989: xi]. This assumption fails to ask who acquires what
knowledge. Research in Chivi Communal Area in Zimbabwe found that
women knew (ie could articulate) more than men about some crop
varieties, and men knew more about local soil classification. More
significantly, the problems of accessing women's knowledge is un-
recognised. The politics of articulating knowledge and of 'mutedness' are
not seen as problematic by ecofeminists or women and environment
writers who seem to have no model of ideological domination [Ardener,
1975]. What Kandiyoti terms 'patriarchal bargains' [1988]13 may include
suppressing environmental knowledge, because displayed knowledge
can be construed as a property claim.
Property relations mediate the ways in which women and men relate to
their environments. If we begin with individualised property relations,14
such as are found on arable land in Zimbabwe, these are not private in the
sense of being bought, sold and rented, but are allocated to individual
males and inherited by their eldest sons. Patrilineal inheritance of land
means that women do not usually have primary rights to land. Land which
women farm on their own account is obtained through allocation by a
husband or male relative, and these secondary rights are conditional,
most commonly, upon marriage. Clearly, for women in these circum-
stances commitment to improving land, such as building contour ridges,
will be filtered through perceptions of security of tenure radically
different from those of men with primary land rights. They are likely to
have much shorter time preferences than men, and given the nature of
many conservation practices such as tree planting in which the returns are
slow, we should rather expect that women will be less inclined than men
to adopt conservation practices.
There is also a need to distinguish between land farmed by a woman on
her own account and that farmed as part of household responsibilities. In
the latter case, the adoption of recommended conservation practices
cannot be taken as evidence of enthusiasm by women for environmental

conservation since this may have been decided by men. Within gender
divisions of labour, including authority, one cannot assume that women's
practices reflect their choices or priorities. There are limits to what can be
read off from gender divisions of tasks, for example, in Kenya, providing
firewood is a woman's task but tree growing is not, and women were
found to have minimal involvement in tree regenerative activities [Brad-
ley, 1991: 149]. In this instance tree planting by women is a subversive
activity since adjudication in land disputes is done on the basis of tree

ownership [1991: 283].
In patrilineal societies the parties to the inheritance of land are fathers
and sons. Mothers and daughters are excluded from this implicit contract,
and they are not expected to have the same concern for the long-term
condition of the land. Women also experience differently aspects of belief
systems relating to land; for the Shona of Zimbabwe the ancestral spirits
of chiefs govern particular territories and
... a strong emotional bond exists between individuals and the
territory of their ancestors. The desire to live there is equalled only
by the desire to be buried there. An important notion in the
organising of political and moral experience is the idea of living 'at
home'. Home is essentially the home of the dead. Life is good if you
live where your ancestors lived before you [Lan, 1985: 20].
Yet women are seldom 'at home', and even when they are, they are
excluded from real membership of the patrilineage. In human reproduc-
tion the woman contributes only the blood; very few women become
mhondoro mediums and in general women play 'a very insignificant part
... in everything to do with the ancestors, the past or the authority of the
lineage' [Lan, 1985:94-5]. Women would seem to be both materially and
ideologically alienated from the land.
For access to common property resources (CPRs) there is a superficial
similarity between the position of men and women - both may enjoy
rights based on residence to grazing, fuel and timber, food and other
goods derived from common property. This does not mean, however,
that men and women are equally committed to the maintenance and
regeneration of common property resources. Although gender divisions
of labour often assign women responsibility for collecting fuel wood and
water there are other uses made of CPRs which are gendered differently.
For example, in Zimbabwe, the rights to grazing resources are exercised
predominantly by prosperous men with large cattle herds, and the small
stock, of mixed gender and class ownership, account for a small pro-
portion of the grazing resources used by all livestock.
Similarly, men use CPRs for construction timber, to build houses,

granaries and cattle kraals, to a much greater extent than women, and
children of both genders are probably the major food collectors from
CPRs in non-famine times. In times of famine women certainly depend
on CPRs for famine foods [Uiffe, 1990:15], but the significance of this has
to be seen in the context of other shifts in the conjugal contract at such
times. For Zimbabwe it would be difficult to contend, on the basis of
prevailing gender divisions of labour, that women have greater interest in
CPR reproduction. One of the shortcomings of the ecofeminist approach

is that it does not allow the analysis of changes in the relationship between
women and their environments in either the short or long term. When
common property fuelwood becomes scarce, there may be an increase in
on-farm woody biomass [Bradley, 1991: 274],15 there may be an increase
in purchasing of firewood, or there may be technical changes such as the
use of carts for wood collection. Property relations, gender relations and
divisions of labour are all mutable. A meticulous study of the 'fuelwood
crisis' in southern Zimbabwe concludes that men have become increas-
ingly involved in fuelwood collection in the past 30 years, in particular in
cutting larger trees and using carts for transport [McGregor, 1991: 295].
The portrayal of women's relation to the environment for the purpose
of 'sustenance' whilst men exploit it for cash is a common assertion in the
women and environment literature [Shiva, 1989: 96-7], as indeed it has
been in much WID literature [Whitehead, 1990: 54-68]. This is ques-
tionable for Zimbabwe where women collect fuel wood not only for food
cooking but also for income earning activities such as brewing beer and
firing pots.16 Other market oriented use of CPRs by women include
collecting insects and fruits as well as clay for pottery. And since women's
goat rearing is often more market oriented than men's cattle keeping, it
could be argued that men use CPRs in a more subsistence oriented way as
cattle are seldom sold and are primarily inputs to arable farming, from
which only small surpluses are generated for sale by the majority of
farmers; and men's use of timber is largely subsistence-oriented. Also
relevant is that whilst men often have a continuing relationship with the
same territory during their lifetimes, women frequently do not. If mar-
riage relocates the great majority of women, divorce also frequently leads
to further mobility. Divorce rates in many rural African communities are
high and rising. The marital careers of Hausa women in northern Nigeria
show an average of 2.3 marriages during a lifetime - punctuated by
periods of courtesanship for many women [Jackson, 1981: 227]. Long-
term rural-rural male migration changes men's relationships with
particular CPRs, but much rural-urban male migration does not have this
effect, since migrants return to their areas of origin. For women, how-
ever, who in some parts of Africa such as Nigeria constitute the majority
of rural-rural migrants [Mortimore and Wilson, 1965:35], the movements
consequent on marriage, divorce and widowhood mean that they may
well have a shorter term knowledge of, and commitment to, any
particular set of CPRs. Clearly, the degree to which this happens depends
on the extent of patrilocality, the degree of exogamy, the divorce rate, the
age gap between spouses, as well as the perceptions by women of the long
term security of their usage of particular CPRs. It is worth reiterating the
Marxist truism that property relations exist not between people and
things but between people and people.
There is another sense in which life cycles mediate women's experience
of environmental incentives. There are power relations between women
within households; a woman may be dominated by her husband's mother,
or an elder wife in polygamous households, and carry a disproportionate
burden of wood and water collection as a young wife but come, with age,
to make use of junior women too. Thus the division of labour may
allocate wood collection to wives but if a wife can delegate the means by
which she meets that responsibility then the incentive (increased time in
collection) towards tree replanting may not be felt equally by all wives.
Life cycle processes intervene in various ways to pattern both environ-
mental knowledges and incentives to positive environmental manage-
ment.
The importance of residence patterns in forming environmental at-
titudes has been hinted at above. Patrilocal marriage is the dominant
form in Zimbabwe, (although in some areas brideservice practices lead to
at least temporary uxorilocal marriage), which means that women are
outsiders in the place they come to live. The importance of patrilocality in
influencing environmental relationships depends on the distances
between the natal homes of spouses, which reflect not only degrees of
exogamy but also settlement patterns and population densities. High
population densities, evenly distributed and stable settlements may
mitigate the impact of patrilocality whilst aspects of livelihood strategies
such as risk avoidance may exacerbate it. It has been suggested that
households make marriage alliances across wide distances as a strategy
for risk management in precarious environments. For example, given the
great local variation in rainfall in semi-arid zones the probability of
drought striking neighbours at the same time is greater than that of it
occurring simultaneously in two widely separated areas, and therefore in-
laws may be more useful in times of drought if they are not close
neighbours [Rosenzweig 1988:249]. If this is the case then women in more
risky agro-ecosystems may tend to marry over wider distances, be more
alienated from natal environments and experience variable relations with
their conjugal environments depending on some of the factors we discuss

below.
Finally, class related variations in marriage residence are also likely to
pattern the significance of patrilocality. Where class differentials are
reproduced through marriage alliances the restricted range of potential
marriage partners may lead to a greater physical distance between the
natal homes of spouses, and thus environmental dislocation for women,
particularly of higher classes. For example, in the dry Indian state of
Rajasthan where status hypergamy requires women to marry men of

higher status the Rajputs have the longest average distance of marriage
migration [Billig, 1991: 344-6].17 Models of marriage alliances which fail
to allow for the agency of women, their choices, preferences and
decisions as individuals, and the impact of these on outcomes, are
unsatisfactory of course, but the point here is simply that women's
environmental relations are influenced by the others to varying degrees,
depending on the class positions of their households as well as constella-
tions of power relations at household level.
The significance of patrilocality applies not only to CPRs but to
privately owned land too. Where women do inherit and hold land in their
own right patrilocality combines with religious and gender ideology to
mediate the relations between women and land. For example, in Islamic,
patrilineal northern Nigeria, muslim women have gained the right to
inherit a half share of land upon the death of their fathers, but given
patrilocality of marriage and wife seclusion norms it is difficult for
married women to make use of such land directly. This is not to deny the
importance of latent land rights in intra-family bargaining, but the
limitations of conceiving the problem as one of jurally defined land rights,
as do most women and environment writers [e.g. Dankelman and David-
son, 1991] are clear. Land rights have significance for environmental
relations as part of a wider set of social relations of production and
reproduction, yet the gendered analysis of this by scholars such as
Whitehead [1984] is absent from the women and environment discourse.
In circumstances where women rarely have individual private property
rights in land, such as Zimbabwe, any land which may be aquired by a
woman usually has a very temporary nature. Both allocations from
husbands, and borrowings from friends or neighbours, are usually subject
to periodic changes in location since land givers become nervous about
claims made after continuous use. Women who borrow land in this way
are aware of the insecurity of tenure and reluctant to invest in land
improvements which benefit the land owner rather than themselves.
Amongst other implications, this lived experience of land relations
characterised by mobility and insecurity may mean that women have
differently constituted environmental knowledges (possibly a greater

understanding of spatial variations and lesser understanding of temporal
variations) rather than simply knowing more or less than men.
Resource alienation for southern African women has been an element
in their historic struggles for freedom of movement. Early colonial laws
which introduced western notions of marriage were utilised by women to
challenge their control by male elders, which had operated through
bridewealth [Lovett, 1989:47-69]. In Zimbabwe colonial socio-economic
change opened up opportunities for women to support themselves out-

side the kinship based production systems eg by beer brewing for mining
compounds.
Those women who were attempting to evade lineage control grew
ever more imaginative in the 1920's, as the infrastructure brought in
by the Occupiers provided new openings. The trains were used by
groups of 'roving prostitutes' to move from one location to the next
following the rail workers' pay days. Other women used the trains
to run away \Jeater, 1989: 3].
The increasing mobility of women induced an alliance of colonial officials
and male elders to prevent the movement of women to towns and buttress
bridewealth. Changes in the practices and meanings of bridewealth
continued, however, and currently there is a tendency in Chivi Com-
munal Area towards alternative forms of marriage (still patrilocal) with
little or no bridewealth payment and distinct marital instability. The
improved position of women, indicated by greater personal freedom and
autonomy, may not coincide with environmental reproduction. On the
contrary, because the pay-off to conservation work depends on long term
residence, the increased mobility of women is likely to lead to shorter
time preferences, hence both shorter term management and less interest
in conservation. The assumption that there are necessarily and always
'synergistic interventions' which simultaneously improve the position of
women and protect and conserve the environment has to be reexamined.
It may be argued that women, as mothers, are concerned to conserve
environments in order to secure future benefits for children. This argu-
ment would only apply to sons, as daughters, like their mothers, would
find that patriliny and patrilocality intervene between them and their
environmental relations. But for a number of reasons this may not be a
significant factor for mothers - partly because the implicit contract of
trusteeship and inheritance excludes them, and partly because of wider
economic and political changes. In Chivi, the majority of rural women
desire a future in which their sons obtain formal sector jobs, and thus the
rational investment for mothers is in the education of sons rather than the
fertility of the farm. Rights in children are of course gender differentiated

in a number of ways - on divorce women may be allowed to keep a child
whilst they are very young (but relinquish it at a certain age), but
eventually divorced women are alienated from their children and the
probability of this also colours the responsibility felt by individual women
for the futures of their children.
The conjugal contract is invoked by women and environment writers as
an explanation for why women are supposedly more aware of the costs of
environmental degradation, since gender divisions of labour commonly

assign reproductive tasks such as wood and water collection and food
provisioning to women [Sontheimer, 1991; Shiva, 1989; Dankelman and
Davidson, 1989; Rodda, 1991]. However, we need a more detailed
understanding of conjugal contracts, how they are contested and how
they change. One element of this is changes that occur under stress.
Whilst there are stages in the strategies of households and individuals for
coping with food shortages of differing levels of severity, in Zimbabwe,
food provisioning in early stages of crisis falls on men. When rains and
crops fail, responsibility for food provision shifts from women to men:
where a household male has a job, wages are expected to be used for food
purchases, or failing this livestock owned by men are expected to be sold.
Thus women may be less concerned than men about food security and be
less risk averse in crop choice preferences, where they perceive a partners
capacity to provide insurance. Where such preferences are combined
with increasing decision making powers of women in agriculture, in this
example because of husbands' absence as labour migrants, the un-
palatable truth may be that what is progressive for women has negative
impacts for food security and sustainability.
There is a need, then, to unpack the idea that women's 'respon-
sibilities' make them environment friendly. The responsibility to provide
firewood for cooking a meal may lead a woman, when faced with a
firewood shortage, to plant a tree but it may also lead her to pull up a
wooden fence and burn it, to argue for the purchase of a fuel efficient
stove, to insist on the purchase of charcoal, to delegate fuelwood collec-
tion to a younger woman in the household or any number of alternative
responses. As well as the issues of time preferences and livelihood
strategies, these responses depend on the bargaining position, of
individual women, within their households. In this sense we can suggest
that the rules of kinship, marriage, and conjugal contracts, are major
elements in the continuing subordination of women and also help explain
why women are inhibited from taking more positive attitudes to environ-
mental conservation. We do not wish to imply that the social insitutions of
kinship and marriage determine an inevitable exploitation of the environ-
ment by women. Clearly there is wide variation in the extent to which

norms are adhered to, women make choices within a range of pos-
sibilities, and change occurs in more than one direction.
CONCLUSION
The association of women and nature has a place in the history of western
thought but it does not yield a universal truth, and has little value in
understanding women's environmental relations. This association con-
tinues to influence the ways in which development practitioners under-

stand the problems of environmental degradation and their solution
through conservation solutions. Some feminists see escape from the
women: nature association as a precondition of emancipation and eco-
feminists have yet to demonstrate a viable alternative. Ecofeminism
which accepts and celebrates the woman: nature association suffers from
essentialism, and fails to specify the nature of the association. It diverts
attention from the analysis of women's alienation from the environment
and leads to policy prescriptions that add more unrewarded work to
women. Feminist environmentalists [Agarwal, 1991] deny that women
are subordinated as part of the subordination of nature and rather see
environmental relations as socially and historically variable. They
address the need for incentives for women to engage in conservation, and
face the likelihood of tradeoffs between the objectives of progressive
change for women and environmental conservation. Women act as
agents in both environmentally positive and negative ways. Until we
begin to approach such agency free of assumptions about women's
predisposition to conservation, and with adequate gender analytical
frameworks, we have little prospect of understanding where points of
synergistic leverage exist and where gender equity conflicts with environ-
mental conservation. The reactionary consequences of an uncritical
acceptance of the women: nature link, and the assumption that women
have unfailingly positive attitudes towards environmental conservation,
include the widespread implicit view that women should be encouraged
to remain in degraded rural environments, 'participating' in conservation
projects for the benefit of the community, posterity and nature.
NOTES
1. See, inter alia, Sontheimer (ed.) [1991]; Dankelman and Davison (eds.) [1989]; Rodda
(ed.) [1991]; and Munyakho (ed.) [1985].
2. The literature on ecofeminism includes King [1989], Biehl [1988], Rao [1991]; Warren
[1987]; Plumwood [1986; 1988], Cheney [1987], Zimmerman [1987], Ruether [1979],
Salleh [1989] and Fox [1989].
3. An exception to this is the work by historians of southern Africa, for example; Beinart
[1984]. A useful account of western environmentalism is given in Pepper, [1986].
4. 'Part of the problem of characterising eco-feminist practice and thought is that both
seem to be different in different regions or countries' [Faber and O'Connor, 1991].
There seems to be a dominant element of radical ecofeminism in US environmental
groups, and the west coast in particular, with a strong spiritual perspective. The socialist
ecofeminists are more characteristic of Europe and Australia. Both exhibit the elements
we discuss here to differing extents.
5. Shiva argues that 'The everyday struggles for the protection of nature take place in the
cognitive and ethical context of the categories of the ancient Indian world-view in which
nature is Prakriti, a living and creative process, the feminine principle from which all
life arises.' [Shiva, 1989; xviii].

Thus at some points she separates actually existing women from the 'feminine principle'
and thereby claims to eschew biological determinism [1989: 53] in 'gender-based
ideologies' and asserts that
All ecological societies of forest dwellers and peasants, whose life is organised
on the principle of sustainability and the reproduction of life in all its richness,
also embody the feminine principle. Historically however when such societies
have been colonised and broken up the men have usually started to participate in
life-destroying activities or have had to migrate; the women meanwhile, usually
continue to be linked to life and nature through their role as providers of
sustenance, food and water. The privileged access of women to the sustaining
principle thus has a historical and cultural, and not merely biological basis
[Shiva, 1989: 43].
Thus 'Third World women, and those tribals and peasants who have been left out of the
processes of maldevelopment, are today acting as the intellectual gene pools of
ecological categories of thought and action [Shiva, 1989: 46]. This, however, simply
extends the causal chain - for the reason why women were 'left out' is implicitly
biologically determined. And the charge of essentialism remains valid - Shiva may see
development as the reason for the alienation of men from the feminine principle, but
the view that women were uniformly and categorically left out of development and
thereby retained their unity with nature leaves her with an essentialist position that all
Third World women share an understanding of nature.
6. In this article Donovan, dedicates it to 'my great dog Rooney (1974-87), who died as it
was being completed but whose life led me to appreciate the nobility and dignity of
animals' and later 'acknowledge(s) the contribution of ... my dog Jessie' [Donovan,
1990: 350].
7. This concern is shared by deep ecologists, many of whom claim affinity with eco-
feminists - a feeling not, however, reciprocated. Ecofeminists have drawn the line at the
selflessness prescribed by deep ecologists. The prominent deep ecologist who has told
us to 'think like a mountain' [Devall, 1980:309], provokes the response from one Janet
Biehl that 'The strange mixture of macho John Wayne confrontations with wilderness
and Taoist platitudes about self-effacement are suited more to privileged white men
with a taste for outdoor life than to feminists and the struggle for selfhood... and a truly
human status' [1988: 31]. Ecofeminists have also taken issue with the Malthusianist
views on population control advocated by deep ecologists.
8. In gender analysis, reproduction is taken to have several levels biological reproduction,
daily and generational reproduction as well as social reproduction. The women and
environment literature [Dankelman and Davidson, 1989; Sontheimer, 1991; Rodda,
1991] does not use this framework and simply describes the gender division of labour -
and that narrowly in terms of tasks.
9. For example, in Britain there is the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) which
began in 1988 and which campaigns on environmental issues, both national and
international. 'WEN's ecofeminist philosophy elevates the feminine aspect of intuition
as a leading mechanism for the preservation of life' [Cox, 1992: 290]. In the inter-
national political arena, women environmentalists, dominated by ecofeminists such as
Vandana Shiva have been meeting as the International Policy Action Committee since
1990 to influence the 1992 UNCED. The Women for Life on Earth emerged out of the
peace movement. 'In making the connection between women and the fate of the Earth,
they explored issues of chemical and radioactive pollution, alternative technology,
alternative healing and women's spirituality' [Cox, 1992: 289].
10. One example of poor scholarship is seen in the following extract: 'In Zimbabwe, a
woman too poor to purchase new millet seeds used traditional ones. Later droughts
caused others' harvests to fail, but her crop survived. A women's organisation
purchased 25 bags of her traditional seeds and distributed them to other women
throughout many villages [van Brakel, 1986] [Dankelman and Davidson, 1989: 18].
New presumably means hybrid seed, yet this is extremely uncommon in Zimbabwe.
Hybrid maize is widely used but hybrid millet is not and one wonders whether the
correct crop is named. When one seeks to check the source one finds it is not given in the
bibliography. Hence the making of a myth.
11. The populist character of Chipko is apparent in Guha's analysis - in addition to its
moralism it is anti-state, and its leadership influenced by traditions of peasant martyrs
[Guha, 1989a: 170-77].
12. This draws on field-work experience in Chivi Communal Area of Zimbabwe in 1988-9
during which time data were collected for a study of environmental degradation, gender
and rural livelihoods. The support of OD A for this research is gratefully acknowledged.
13. Kandiyoti uses the term 'patriarchal bargains' to cover the ways in which, women,
within particular sets of gender relations, and from a position of relative but variable
weakness, negotiate the best terms possible for themselves. This involves both com-
promise and struggle.
14. Space does not permit an adequate treatment of land tenure, or indeed many of the
social relations which are used here to raise questions - they are invoked in a stylised
manner for the purpose of argument.
15. This may or may not be available to women to use for firewood.
16. Beer brewing has been shown to demand substantial amounts of wood which is live and
of large dimensions since this gives the required slow burn. This distinguishes such
usage from fuel for domestic cooking [McGregor, 1991: 208].
17. Billig's analysis shows that the potentially positive effect of high sex ratios on the
position of women in the marriage market is countered by status hypergamy of several
types, as well as factors such as population growth which leads to larger availability of
women in the younger age cohorts [Billig, 1991: 356].
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This article examines the women and environment linkage which

characterises not only ecofeminist thought but, increasingly, also

The linkage of women and the environment is currently a major focus in

examination of one element of environmentalism, ecofeminism, may

ecocentric and the technocentric [O'Riordan, 1981: 1-19]. Within the

amongst women and the exploitation of some women by others (see

the Chinese takeaways which, if notquite [sic] inhabited by merrie

It is from this same social terrain that some development professionals

... we can nonetheless consciously choose not to sever the woman-

ledge, embracing both science and magic insofar as they enable us

Is there a woman-nature link? One approach to this question is found

Culture transcends nature, but is grounded in the human mind

Furthermore, it is uncertain that a distinction between nature and culture

Ortner, then, argues that the material reality of women's reproductive

... a reciprocal process. They conceived of their own bodies as

Despite this biologically determined characterisation Mies criticises

Why do the kinds of explanations outlined explanations matter? If, as a

the concept of patriarchy, typically conceived in a monolithic, ahistorical

perhaps what distinguishes Marxist environmentalism. In a letter to

literature, with women seen as spiritual and intuitive in opposition to

are seen in for example the assumed bioethical motivations of Chipko

Before examining the implications of ecofeminist views in the Third

WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT IN DEVELOPMENT:

management practices by women can often be explained in terms of

The Special Relationship

'... [The] organic process of growth in which women and nature

We have suggested that the essentialism and romanticism of eco-

[1989] visualises only a mythical past in which harmony with nature

Indian civilisation is built on the exploitation of hill peoples, the destruc-

studies of gendered resource use reveal that the relations of women to

Altruism and Community Welfare

environment and the resources within it' [WEN, 1989].

'... women, as victims of the violence of patriarchal forms of

cause of landslides and flooding downstream [Thompson and Warburton,

based on charismatic, populist leadership, asceticism and religious im-

to represent "feminine modes" of action and assertion' [Omvedt, 1990:

managed not by women but by panchayats which notably lack women

refusal to accept this and determined attempts to construct positive

Gendered Analysis of Environmental Issues

Bank defines as 'actions which promote income growth, poverty allevia-

about the environment because of gender divisions of labour which assign

cannot be taken as evidence of enthusiasm by women for environmental

activity since adjudication in land disputes is done on the basis of tree

Similarly, men use CPRs for construction timber, to build houses,

CPR reproduction. One of the shortcomings of the ecofeminist approach

their conjugal environments depending on some of the factors we discuss

Rajasthan where status hypergamy requires women to marry men of

differently constituted environmental knowledges (possibly a greater

change opened up opportunities for women to support themselves out-

fertility of the farm. Rights in children are of course gender differentiated

environmental degradation, since gender divisions of labour commonly

ment by women. Clearly there is wide variation in the extent to which

tinues to influence the ways in which development practitioners under-

life arises.' [Shiva, 1989; xviii].

London: Panos Publications.

Division of Labour, London: Zed Books.

Ethics Vol.9, No.l, pp.3-20.

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