Intertwined yet Ignored: Rethinking Environmental Law through Ecofeminism

Abstract:

“When pushed to the edge, both women and nature unleash a force so fierce, it reminds the world they were never meant to be tamed.”

This powerful truth resonates throughout ecological and feminist movements. For centuries, both women and nature have been treated as passive, submissive, and expendable—expected to serve quietly while systems built on domination flourished. This article explores the deep connection between women and the environment, highlighting how current environmental laws often neglect this critical relationship. Ultimately, it advocates for a comprehensive approach that recognises and honours the strength and resilience inherent in both women and nature.

ECOFEMINISM ORIGIN:

It was not until the 1974 publication of Le Féminisme ou la Mort by French feminist author and civil rights activist Françoise d´Eaubonne (1920-2005) that a term to describe feminist efforts and attitudes towards environmental practices was coined: Ecofeminism. In her book, d´Eaubonne argues that many parallels exist between the patriarchal suppression of women and the suppression of nature, and this suppression results in environmental destruction.1 This suppression not only marginalises women’s voices and rights but also leads to severe environmental degradation, highlighting the urgent need for a holistic approach to both gender equality and environmental justice

Let us examine the profound interconnectedness of women and nature:

Shared Oppression:

A key assertion of ecofeminism is that both women and nature experience systematic oppression—being objectified, commodified, and regarded as having value solely based on their ability to generate benefits for others.

As Maria Mies writes while discussing “the myth of catching-up development,” modern capitalist societies externalise social costs, particularly through a gendered division of labour. Women’s domestic work, despite being essential to sustaining life, is unpaid and uncounted in official measures like GDP. Mies calls this phenomenon the “internal colonization” of women, as their labour is invisible and exploited without recognition.2

This internal colonization of women mirrors the external colonization of nature, where natural resources are extracted, devalued, and destroyed in the name of economic growth. In both cases, life-sustaining systems are rendered invisible until they begin to break down. Only then do we recognize the fragility of these essential connections and the consequences of our exploitation.

Cultural Connection

Ecofeminism highlights the cultural connections between women and nature, characterised by shared attributes of nurturing, fertility, and unpredictability. In numerous traditional cultures, the Earth has been represented as a “Mother”—nurturing, sustaining, and cyclical. Likewise, women have traditionally been viewed as caregivers and bearers of life.

Carolyn Merchant, in her ground-breaking work The Death of Nature (1980)3, traces this cultural linkage to ancient Greco-European thought, where nature and women were both seen as dual figures: nurturing and fertile on the one hand, but wild, chaotic, and threatening on the other. Merchant argues that this dual image made both women and nature targets of subjugation during the Scientific Revolution. Moreover, nature was increasingly viewed as a machine to be controlled, and women were excluded from scientific knowledge and power. This relationship suggests that as environmental degradation intensifies, we will likely see a parallel rise in gender oppression.

SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

Ecofeminism often highlights the spiritual bond between women and nature, rooted not in superstition but in a deep understanding of interdependence, care, and creation. One of the most powerful ways to express this connection is through the analogy of mother and child. Just as a mother feels her child’s needs before they are spoken, nature responds to the needs of all living beings—giving air, water, food, and shelter without asking anything in return. This silent giving, this instinctive care, is not passive—it is powerful.

This perspective is reflected across indigenous cultures, ancient religions, and matriarchal traditions, where the Earth is not seen as a resource to be owned, but as “Mother Earth”, a sacred presence to be respected.

Ecofeminist thinkers argue that this bond is not merely symbolic—it represents an ethical model that prioritises compassion over control, and harmony over domination. It reminds us that life is nurtured, not manufactured, and that disrupting this balance—through environmental destruction or patriarchal control—harms not only the Earth but the future of all living beings. While some academics critique this connection as essentialist or mystical, others advocate for its recognition as an intuitive truth that contemporary science and legal frameworks have inadequately addressed.

GENDERED DIMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL HARM

Environmental degradation does not affect everyone equally. Women, especially those in rural, indigenous, and low-income communities, often bear the brunt of ecological destruction and climate change.

Below are certain confirmations from the UN Report--“How Gender Inequality and Climate Change Are Interconnected,” April 21, 20254-.

• Climate change amplifies existing gender inequalities, with women and girls — particularly from rural, indigenous, low-income, and conflict-affected communities — experiencing the harshest effects on their health, livelihoods, and safety.
• By 2050, climate change could push 158 million more women and girls into poverty — 16 million more than men. Currently, 47.8 million more women than men already face food insecurity globally.
• Scarcity of food, water, and fuel increases their daily burden and forces young girls to drop out of school to help with domestic responsibilities.
• In fragile regions, climate-related disasters like droughts and floods destabilise rural economies and heighten the risk of conflict-related gender-based violence, human trafficking, and child marriage.
• Due to systemic gender inequalities — limited mobility, lower access to information and training, exclusion from decision-making — women are more vulnerable during and after disasters. Their recovery is slower and more precarious.
• Climate change worsens maternal and neonatal health outcomes. Extreme heat raises the risk of stillbirths, and rising temperatures increase exposure to diseases such as malaria and Zika, particularly in under-resourced health systems.

A crucial question emerges: given the profound and intricate interconnectedness between women and nature, why do contemporary environmental laws often overlook this essential relationship? This oversight not only perpetuates gender inequality but also undermines efforts to create sustainable environmental policies that recognise the contributions and vulnerabilities of women. 

In his 1998 paper regarding women and law, Ritter explores the language used in Western legal texts, which are largely written by men. He raises questions about how this male dominance influences the nature of the law and perpetuates men’s sexual authority over women. Written by men, legal language ostensibly serves characteristically masculine interests of ‘universally abstract autonomous individuality,’ while categorically disserving characteristically feminine interests such as care, connectedness, context, and community (Ritter, 1998)5

The Convention on Biological Diversity, established in 1992, recognizes the essential role that women play in the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. It reaffirms the necessity of full involvement of women in all levels of policy formulation and implementation related to biological diversity.6 However, despite the passage of many years, this principle is not yet fully realized in practice.

According to the Indian environmentalist Bina Agarwal, “to transform gender relations, and relations between people and nature, will need enhancing the bargaining power of women vis-a-vis men and of those seeking to conserve the environment vis-a-vis those causing its degradation.” Women’s participation in decision-making is essential in environmental governance. The fourth UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-4) recognised the importance of promoting gender equality and the human rights and empowerment of women and girls in environmental governance.7

According to Bina Agarwal, women’s social networks have historically shown successful cooperation, and women generally tend to depend heavily on their networks and on the commons in general. She also argues that women possess potentially greater group homogeneity relative to men and could use that to provide an important and often overlooked basis for organising sustainable environmental collective action.8

Environmental protection is a hollow aspiration if it does not consider how environmental services are delivered or withheld in context. One important way to understand these distributional effects is gender, because women, depending on the cultural and societal context, are differently exposed to certain risks relative to men or simply experience environmental harms differently due to biology. Without considering women’s unique social and biological circumstances, policy solutions addressing environmental harm and public health will be ineffective.9 An ecofeminist way forward calls for embracing distributional analysis that doesn’t merely ask what works, but who it works for.

“Ecofeminism broadens the lens of distributional analysis by identifying systemic biases in law, the stakeholders affected, and the groups who benefit or suffer from policy decisions” (- Joshua Lee 2018). Ecofeminism not only properly identifies the background law that induces players to act in certain ways, but also can supplement the search by questioning certain standards and assumptions behind the law. Ecofeminism helps identify the stakeholders and their underlying interests by presenting a variety of women’s interests. Finally, ecofeminism effectively identifies the surplus value of a given policy and its distribution by asking which interest group or demography gains from the governmental action.10

CONCLUSION

Ecofeminism uncovers the essential relationships between the degradation of the environment and the oppression of women. Failing to acknowledge this link makes laws unaware of the very influences they aim to control. “Transitioning to care-centred, inclusive environmental policies is not a choice, it is essential.”

Reference(S):

1. Environment & Society “Françoise d´Eaubonne’s Le Féminisme Ou La Mort.”Accessed June 28, 2025.https://www.environmentandsociety.org/tools/keywords/francoise-deaubonnes-le- feminisme-ou-la-mort.
2. Ragnhild (2015). [Review of Ecofeminism, by M. Mies and V. Shiva]. State Crime Journal, 4(1), 99–
3. 103. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.4.1.0099
4. Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. HarperOne, 1980.
5. UN Women – “How Gender Inequality and Climate Change Are Interconnected,” April 21, 2025. https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/how-gender-inequality-and-climate- change-are-interconnected
6. Ritter, Matthew “The Penile Code: The Gendered Nature of the Language of Law.” CUNY Law Review 2, no. 1 (April 1, 1998): 1. https://doi.org/10.31641/clr020101.
7. United Nations, Preamble, UN Convention on Biological Diversity 1992, CBD (JAN. 15, 2022, 10:30 AM) https://cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf
8. Promote Gender Equality, and the Human Rights and Empowerment of Women and Girls in Environmental Governance | Infor MEA.” Accessed June 29, 2025. https://informea.org/en/decision/promote-gender- equality-and-human-rights-and-empowerment-women-and-girls-environmental.
9. Agarwal, (2000). Conceptualizing Environmental Collective Action: Why Gender Matters. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24(3), 283-310. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/24.3.283
10. Lee, “ECOFEMINISM AS RESPONSIBLE GOVERNANCE: ANALYZING THE MERCURY REGULATIONS AS
11. A CASE STUDY.” https://journals.law.harvard.edu/elr/wp- content/uploads/sites/79/2018/08/HLE201_crop.pdf

¹ Environment & Society Portal. “Françoise d´Eaubonne’s Le Féminisme Ou La Mort.” Accessed June 28, 2025.https://www.environmentandsociety.org/tools/keywords/francoise-deaubonnes-le-feminisme-ou-la-mort.

2 Ragnhild Sollund. (2015). [Review of Ecofeminism, by M. Mies and V. Shiva]. State Crime Journal, 4(1), 99–

103. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.4.1.0099

³ Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. HarperOne, 1980.

⁴ UN Women – Headquarters. “How Gender Inequality and Climate Change Are Interconnected,” April 21, 2025. https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/how-gender-inequality-and- climate-change-are-interconnected

⁵ Ritter, Matthew A. “The Penile Code: The Gendered Nature of the Language of Law.” CUNY Law Review 2, no. 1 (April 1, 1998): 1. https://doi.org/10.31641/clr020101.

⁶ United Nations, Preamble, UN Convention on Biological Diversity 1992, CBD (JAN. 15, 2022, 10:30 AM) https://www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf

⁷ “Promote Gender Equality, and the Human Rights and Empowerment of Women and Girls in Environmental Governance | Infor MEA.” Accessed June 29, 2025. https://www.informea.org/en/decision/promote-gender- equality-and-human-rights-and-empowerment-women-and-girls-environmental.

⁸ Agarwal, B. (2000). Conceptualizing Environmental Collective Action: Why Gender Matters. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 24, 283-310.https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/24.3.283

⁹ Lee, “ECOFEMINISM AS RESPONSIBLE GOVERNANCE: ANALYZING THE MERCURY REGULATIONS AS A CASE

STUDY.”https://journals.law.harvard.edu/elr/wp-content/uploads/sites/79/2018/08/HLE201_crop.pdf

¹⁰ ibid.