Fossil Fuels and the Appropriation of Women’s Activist Identities

• In Event: 227 - Regular Session. Environmental Movements, Inaction, and Inertia

Abstract

It has long been recognized that environmental justice activism is a gendered phenomenon. Women have, time and again, taken on leadership roles to fight against polluting industries for the health and safety of their families and communities. Since the rise of environmental justice struggles in the early 1980s, polluting industries have recognized the power of these locally-based movements and have taken great efforts to diminish their influence. One of the most sinister of these is the creation of fake grassroots, or “astroturf” organizations. While past research has focused on the emergence and reach of these campaigns, the gendered nature of the tactics they employ and messages they promulgate has not been sufficiently acknowledged or examined. Drawing on examples from the coal, natural gas, and oil industries, we investigate the ways in which fossil fuel industries appropriate and organize women’s voices in ways that mirror the rhetoric of grassroots women environmental justice activists who are fighting against polluting industries. Ultimately, we find that these industries exploit women’s authenticity as protectors of their families and communities in three major ways: (1) by associating women with the production of fossil fuels; (2) through organizing women to do philanthropic work in the name of industry, and (3) by mobilizing non-employee women to act as pro-industry activists. We argue that by appropriating women’s social justice activist identities, fossil fuel industries attempt to counter the powerful work done by women environmental justice activists and to ultimately render it less threatening.

Authors

• Shannon Elizabeth Bell, University of Kentucky

• Jenrose Fitzgerald, University of Kentucky