Misreadings of Ecofeminist Thought and the Integration of Gender in Environmental Analyses

• In Event: Ecofeminism, Reproductive Labor, and Gender in the Human and non-Human World: Merchant's Enduring Legacy

Abstract

In this paper/ portion of the round table, I revisit Merchant’s ecofeminist scholarship and theory. This paper reviews the criticisms of essentialism and universalism leveled against socialist ecofeminism. Certainly, there was validity in claims that some ecofeminist work reduced women to the role of mother and caregiver. However, the almost total dismissal of ecofeminist lines of thought by scholars of gender was, I argue a misreading and a missed opportunity. While environmental historians may have been less inclined to flatly reject the ideas of ecofeminism, I suggest that one of the reasons our field has been slow to truly integrate gender into environmental analyses is the legacy of misreadings and simplification of ecofeminist thought. This paper presents suggestions for how environmental historians might at once avoid the traps of ethnocentrism, essentialism, and universalism while still finding use in ecofeminism, particularly in environmental histories that address technology, hybridity, and/or human bodies.

Author

• Sarah Payne, Colorado State University