When discussing ecological issues, we often focus on global crises like climate change, pollution, or deforestation. Environmental damage is more than a distant concern; it is a continuing threat to the survival of many women in the Global South. Women in many parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East are usually responsible for collecting water, firewood, and food for their families. Ecological destruction worsens; therefore, these resources become far harder to find, constantly forcing women and girls to travel greater distances. This consumes a meaningful amount of time. It also subjects them to several dangers like physical attacks and health risks. Getting water or collecting firewood often keeps young girls out of school while limiting how much women can earn, making economic differences even bigger. Good hygiene is quite important. A lack of clean water in many places seriously affects women’s health, especially during menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. Poor sanitation causes multiple active health problems. It also causes many infections. The option to turn on a faucet or the availability of proper sanitary facilities, viewed as completely normal by many people in the West, is a frequent, continuing difficulty for many women worldwide.
Ecofeminism is also not one monolithic movement—scholars handle it in various ways based on their cultural and economic viewpoints. Two of the foremost authorities on the subject are Bina Agarwal and Laura Hobgood-Oster. Though both concur on the connection between women’s subordination and environmental degradation, they vary in emphasis. Western eco-feminists such as Hobgood-Oster are preoccupied with structure and ideology. They contend that patriarchal systems regard women and nature as objects to be controlled and exploited. Western ecofeminism will also deconstruct industrialization, capitalism, and gender hierarchies and include spiritual and philosophical perspectives. In contrast, Bina Agarwal, writing about the Global South, has a more materialist orientation. She coined the term feminist environmentalism, and for women in developing countries, environmental concerns are not symbolic—environmental concerns have direct, practical implications. In contrast to the Western ecofeminists who make ideology the prime concern, Agarwal emphasizes economic and survival-oriented issues that face women, including land rights, deforestation, and access to clean water. Although both viewpoints recognize that the domination of nature and women is mutual, Western ecofeminism is theoretical, whereas immediate survival needs drive non-Western ecofeminism.
For me, Agarwal’s view is more persuasive because it deals with concrete issues that confront millions of women today. Western ecofeminism does raise some valid ideological issues, but sometimes it does come across as too esoteric. Agarwal’s research, supported by facts and practical examples, makes the environmental issue an urgent priority for women in the developing world. Having said this, there is much to be learned from both perspectives. Western ecofeminism, especially, aims at deep-seated societal structures, whereas non-Western ecofeminism is concerned with pragmatic solutions. To successfully combat environmental and gender injustice, we require both policy interventions that prioritize the voices of women in the most impacted areas and theoretical critique. The struggle for environmental justice is the struggle for gender equality—because when nature is harmed, women, particularly women in the Global South, are the first to suffer.