Ecofeminism, Then to Now

 

“Yes, change is slow. Yes, it may take 20 years. But we have to start. We have to do something.”

— Greta Gaard, quoted in April 1992 Minnesota Women’s Press

With its roots in activism, ecofeminism emerged in the 1980s through a nexus of women-led movements fighting against eco-destruction:

• Logging old-growth forests in Canada’s Clayoquot Sound (Valerie Langer) and California’s redwoods (Judi Bari)
• Embracing trees to protect women’s livelihood (India’s Chipko movement)
• Planting trees to halt erosion and provide food (Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement)
• Opposing cruise missiles at Greenham Common (Women’s Peace Camp)
• Surrounding the Pentagon for a two-day nonviolent action against military, sexual, and economic violence (Women’s Pentagon Action)

Movements related to women’s health, spirituality, animal rights, vegetarian food, and nuclear disarmament converged in providing initial groundwork for an explicitly ecological and feminist perspective. At the same time, the anti-toxics and environmental justice movements coalesced.

Lois Gibbs fought for health and justice for working-class families above Love Canal’s toxic waste dump. Black activists blockaded the roads of Warren County, North Carolina, to halt toxic waste dumps. Mestizo women formed the Mothers of East Los Angeles to protest a garbage incinerator planned for their neighborhood. Indigenous communities have stood up to defend their traditional lands, waterways, and wild rice waterbodies.

These actions launched the environmental justice movement. In 1992, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization formed to bring an explicitly environmental, multiracial, and feminist voice to decisions of global politics and economics.

By 2025, in place of ecofeminism’s initial tide, numerous young women’s voices have taken up the message. Consider Greta Thunberg’s litany of ecological injustices (“How dare you!”) and her ardent veganism. Listen to Emma Gonzalez’s speech to the National Rifle Association after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, punctuated with “We call BS!” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls out the climate of sexism and racism: “This issue is not about one incident. … It is a culture of lack of impunity, of accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that.”

Feminists today understand that climate is more than weather. It is the violent context of toxicity, entitlement, and appropriation, whether targeting women’s bodies, Black lives, Indigenous lands, migrant workers fleeing ICE raids, or garment workers in unstable buildings. It is about chickens confined for slaughter, forests mowed down for hamburger, and cows separated from their newborn calves so that humans can sell and profit from their milk.

Ideas rooted in ecofeminism’s intersectional perspectives have entered conversations across diverse communities, becoming shared and co-created insights into the interlinked structures of oppression. It gives rise to visions of a way of life in which all beings flourish, because flourishing arises from the nexus of ecology and feminisms.

“There exists a culture that is not alienated from Nature but expresses Nature,” writes Susan Griffin. “We are connected, not only by the fact of our dependency on this biosphere and our participation in one field of matter and energy — in which no boundary exists between my skin and the air and you — but also by what we know and what we feel. Our own knowledge, if we can once again possess it, is as vast as existence.”

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Greta Gaard is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker who teaches at the University of Wisconsin–River Falls. In 1993, she was among the founders of the Minnesota Green Party. She is author of Critical Ecofeminism, a book about contemporary issues from animal and plant studies to sustainability and climate justice.