The body, spirit, and beyond traditional intersectionality: an expanded lens on women’s environmental behavior and action

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Inequality, Gender, and Intersectionality

Abstract

This study compares how a traditional intersectionality framework and an extended intersectionality framework can explain variation in women’s environmental health concerns and actions. Research on the interconnections of environment, health, and gender has increasingly drawn on intersectionality to explain patterns in women’s vulnerability and environmental engagement. Most applications of intersectionality focus on traditional demographics like race, class, and gender, potentially overlooking dimensions of women’s identities and lived experiences that mobilize. This paper draws on environmental sociology, feminist theory, and ecofeminism to develop and test an expanded intersectional framework that considers life-course experiences, motherhood, spirituality, and embodied health experiences. This study investigates how both a traditional intersectionality framework and an expanded intersectionality framework can explain women’s environmental health concerns and actions. This study draws on survey data and semi-structured interviews and includes a mixed-methods approach. This project further forges a connection between environmental sociology and feminist sociology by incorporating ecofeminist, embodiment, and life-course perspectives into scholarship on environmental health.

Author

• Alina Caulfield, Vanderbilt University