Ecofeminism is a branch of feminist theory that considers the relationship between women and nature. Ecofeminist theorists posit that societal patriarchal dominance is associated with gender inequality, social injustice, and environmental degradation.
French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term ‘ecofeminism’ in 1974. She linked the marginalization and oppression of women, people of color, and the poor to the degradation of the natural world. Both, she argued, come from the same patriarchal dominance.
Ecofeminism grew out of various social movements in the 1970s and early 1980s, including feminist, ecological, and peace movements.
The term became popular amid protests and activism against environmental destruction (Shiva & Mies, 2014).
Patriarchal structures create a societal imbalance that typically favors men. Ecofeminists argue this imbalance means environmental issues, including climate change, are more likely to harm women than men. As Karen Warren (2000) put it, ‘nature is a feminist issue.’
Key Takeaways
- Core Claim: Ecofeminism links the oppression of women to the exploitation of nature, arguing both stem from patriarchal dominance rather than being separate problems.
- Value Hierarchies: Ecofeminists argue society ranks humans above nature and men above women through the same value-hierarchical logic, making both seem justifiably exploitable.
- Gendered Vulnerability: Because of unequal power and resources, women, especially in developing countries, are argued to suffer disproportionately from droughts, floods, and other environmental harms.
- Two Main Strands: Radical ecofeminism wants to break the woman-nature link entirely, while cultural ecofeminism embraces it as a source of ecological insight.
- Modern Evidence: Recent experiments show that ‘green’ behavior really is coded as feminine, and that this coding measurably reduces men’s willingness to act sustainably.
- Key Criticism: Critics argue the theory can be essentialist, tying women’s value to biology in ways that risk reinforcing the very gender stereotypes it opposes.
Assumptions Of Ecofeminism
Value-hierarchical thinking
According to many ecofeminists, capitalist patriarchy is maintained through value-hierarchical thinking. This means that society is organised into a hierarchy that values some groups or traits above others.
Ecofeminists believe that value-hierarchical thinking puts humans above nature. Practices that damage the environment or harm animals are then treated as justified, since nature is not seen as valuable.
In the same hierarchical thinking, women are positioned below men as having less value, which is why any practices that harm or oppress women are equally justified.
Oppositional dualisms
Further to the value-hierarchical thinking, these are organized through oppositional value dualisms according to ecofeminists. These are pairs that are exclusive of one another. Oppositional, rather than complementary, value dualisms place greater value on one item over the other.
This is noticeable in a patriarchal society with oppositional dualisms of male versus female and culture versus nature. In society, greater value is given to that which is identified with males or culture than to that which is identified with females or nature.
Accordingly, a patriarchal society sees it better to be male or culture-identified than female or nature-identified.
Oppressions of women and nature are connected
Ecofeminists argue that women and nature are linked, both symbolically and structurally. The world is called ‘Mother Earth’; fertile soil is ‘tilled’ and virgin timber is ‘cut down.’ Unproductive land is even described as ‘barren,’ like a woman unable to conceive a child (Warren, 2000).
Both are treated in similar, instrumental terms. Traditional ideas about women’s and nature’s roles present them as valuable mainly for their usefulness to others (Plumwood, 1986).
Men of technology and science are thought to view nature as something to be conquered and exploited for resources. This exploitation is justified by feminising nature, not masculinising it; the exploitation of women is justified by naturising them in turn.
- Aim: Brough et al. (2016) tested whether green behaviour is linked to femininity, and whether this makes men avoid eco-friendly products to protect their image.
- Method: Across seven studies using surveys and experiments, the researchers tested whether green consumers are stereotyped as more feminine. They also tested whether affirming or threatening men’s masculinity changed their willingness to act sustainably.
- Results: Greenness and femininity were consistently linked in people’s judgments. Men whose masculinity was threatened or affirmed shifted their green preferences accordingly, while masculine-coded language reduced men’s avoidance of eco-friendly products.
- Conclusion: The gender gap in sustainable behaviour partly reflects a learned link between environmental care and femininity that men are motivated to avoid signalling.
The study combined correlational and experimental designs across seven studies, letting the researchers show that masculinity threat causally shifts green behaviour, not just correlates with it. Its main limitation is that the samples are mostly Western, using short-term intentions rather than long-run behaviour.
Capitalist patriarchy negatively impacts women and nature
Many ecofeminists believe that gender equality, climate change, and social justice are intrinsically related and all stem from masculine dominance in society.
Patriarchal dominance is thought to have degraded nature while oppressing women, children, and people of color. Capitalism compounds this. It ties into patriarchy and further drives the oppression by prioritising productivity and profit above all else.
Some of the fathers of modern science and technology saw dependence on ‘mother nature’ as an insult to man’s freedom. This could not be tolerated. They believed it needed to be forcefully, even violently, abolished (Shiva & Mies, 2014).
Shiva and Mies (2014) also claimed that patriarchal science and technology serve patriarchal capitalism.
The result: nature’s regeneration cycles are torn apart. Raw materials and goods now flow in a straight line, not a cycle.
Women suffer most from environmental issues
Ecofeminists argue that, because of patriarchal structures in society, the effects of environmental issues are more likely to have a detrimental impact on women.
Women are more likely to be affected by the ‘poverty trap’ than men. The poverty trap was created through the vicious cycle of ‘development’ debt, environmental destruction, and structural adjustment (Mies & Shiva, 1996).
The reasons are structural. In some developing countries, women are also less likely to have fundamental human rights and the right to move freely across land in times of crisis.
Women play a predominant role in agricultural production, especially in developing countries. Consequently, women are most vulnerable to drought, floods, and storms (Shiva & Mies, 2014).
The harm compounds. Likewise, poorer women in rural areas are thought to suffer disproportionate harm from other environmental problems such as deforestation, water pollution, and environmental toxins.
Goals of Ecofeminism?
Some ecofeminists argue that because women have a more intimate relationship with nature, more women should hold positions of environmental decision-making.
Research has found that women assess risk differently from men. They prioritise the welfare of their families and communities in resource-management decisions (Global Gender and Climate Alliance, 2016; UN Women, 2016).
A 2019 study found that national parliaments with more women pass stricter climate policies (Mavisakalyan & Tarverdi, 2019). This suggests that real progress on environmental issues may come from having more women in these roles.
The evidence lines up.
In their book, Shiva and Mies (2014) argue that mother nature needs to be ‘healed.’ They say this requires an alternative to the ‘prevailing model of capitalist-patriarchal development.’
The claim goes further. The authors say many women in developing countries regard the earth as a living being that guarantees their own and other creatures’ survival. These women are said to respect and celebrate Earth’s sacredness, not treat its raw material as dead matter for production.
They recognise the limits of nature. Survival means not violating them (Shiva & Mies, 2014).
Thus, it is suggested that this survival perspective should be taught and incorporated worldwide – the Earth should be treated with respect and admiration. Therefore, women, who are similar to nature, are equally respected.
Types of Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism eventually branched into two distinct categories: radical ecofeminism and cultural ecofeminism.
Radical ecofeminism
Radical ecofeminists assert that patriarchal dominance in society equates nature and women as a way to degrade both. Particularly, radical ecofeminists pay interest to how both women and nature have been associated with negative or demeaning attributes. At the same time, men are seen to be dominant in both.
Moreover, radical ecofeminists build on early ecofeminists’ ideas that patriarchal domination should be studied, with the primary goal of ending the associations between women and nature.
Cultural ecofeminism
In contrast to radical ecofeminists, cultural ecofeminists encourage the association between women and nature. They claim women have a more intimate relationship with nature because of their gender roles and biology.
Many cultural ecofeminists see the women-nature connections as liberating and empowering expressions of women’s capabilities to care for nature. They argue that women’s ability to reproduce provides a closeness with nature.
Not everyone agrees. Other cultural ecofeminists assert that this closeness to nature is embedded in social and psychological structures. On this view, women’s ways of knowing and moral reasoning are better suited to solving environmental problems (Warren, 2001).
Critical and materialist ecofeminism
Critical and materialist ecofeminism developed partly in response to essentialism criticism of the cultural strand. The critique stuck.
This strand treats the connection as historically and materially produced, not grounded in shared biology.
Women are often assigned caregiving and subsistence labour that puts them in closer daily contact with land, water, and food production. Closeness to nature, on this view, reflects a gendered division of labour, not an innate female trait (Puleo, 2017).
Critical Evaluation
Strengths
Ecofeminism has made several distinct contributions to environmental and feminist thought.
- Broad influence: it has grown into a diverse intellectual discourse and political movement that has reinforced environmental and women’s rights, green consciousness, and activism in the West and in some developing countries (Aziz, 2021).
- Feminist agenda-setting: it helped bring the environment into feminist discussion, seen by proponents as necessary given the continuing degradation of the Earth.
- Global inequality lens: it highlights how environmental harms caused by developed countries disproportionately affect developing ones.
- Growing evidence base: its central claims, that green behaviour is culturally feminised and women bear disproportionate environmental harm, now have direct support from recent empirical studies (see Contemporary Research, below).
Together, these strengths span both academic theory and grassroots activism worldwide.
Criticisms
Ecofeminism also faces several recurring criticisms, summarised below and explained in full further down.
- Essentialism: grounding women’s closeness to nature in shared biology risks fixed, stereotyped assumptions about gender.
- Overlooking women’s own agency: framing women as nature’s universal allies can understate the role many women play, for good or ill, in economic and environmental decisions.
- Cultural and Western bias: much of ecofeminism’s philosophical framework was built by Western academics, even though some of its clearest real-world examples come from the Global South.
- Is patriarchy really the master cause?: rival feminist and environmental theories argue that capitalism, or hierarchy in general, better explains the same harms than patriarchy alone.
The rest of this section takes each argument in turn, along with how ecofeminist writers have responded.
Essentialism
Critics of this connection target cultural ecofeminism specifically, the strand that grounds women’s closeness to nature in shared biology such as menstruation and childbirth.
This raises an awkward question. If a woman cannot bear children, is she less connected to nature?
Some critics go further. They argue the biological claim even implies women are superior to men, reversing the hierarchy ecofeminists say they oppose (Eckersley, 1992; Archambault, 1993).
This is why the critical and materialist strand (see Types of ecofeminism, above) moved away from biology. It explains women’s closeness to nature as a product of unequal labour, not innate biology, which sidesteps the essentialism charge.
The consequence is real. Cultural ecofeminism’s biological argument is now seen as the field’s weakest flank, while materialist ecofeminism is viewed as the more defensible response.
Overlooking Women’s Own Agency
Critics argue that ecofeminism can flatten all women into a single victim role.
Many women, particularly in developed countries, have themselves contributed to ecological destruction as consumers, investors, or corporate decision-makers (Eckersley, 1992).
It is not solely men who have caused these problems. Treating women collectively as nature’s natural defenders can also understate real differences of class, nationality, and behaviour among women themselves.
Ecofeminist writers have generally accepted this as a genuine limitation of the theory’s early framing rather than disputing it outright. Views have shifted.
Later work has tried to credit women’s agency as economic and political actors in their own right.
The result is a more cautious version of the theory, one that credits women’s stake in environmental harm without assuming every woman stands outside the system causing it.
Cultural and Western Bias
This criticism concerns how universal ecofeminism’s claims really are.
Much of its foundational philosophical apparatus, value-hierarchical thinking, oppositional dualism, the logic of domination, was developed by Western-trained academic philosophers such as Plumwood and Warren.
Yet some of the movement’s most concrete real-world examples, such as the Chipko movement’s tree-hugging protests in northern India, come from the Global South rather than from the West. The contrast is telling.
This creates a tension: ecofeminism aims to describe a near-universal pattern in how patriarchal societies treat women and nature, but its theoretical toolkit is not evenly drawn from across cultures.
A framework built substantially from one cultural tradition risks imposing its categories onto very different social and economic contexts, rather than describing them on their own terms.
Is Patriarchy Really the Master Cause?
Marxist feminists and socialist feminists dispute ecofeminism’s tendency to treat patriarchy as the primary driver of both women’s oppression and environmental destruction. Gender comes second, on this view. They argue instead that capitalism’s profit motive does most of the causal work (Hartmann, 1976).
Gender inequality is one of several mechanisms capitalism exploits rather than the root cause. Social ecologists make a related argument: that hierarchy in general, not gender specifically, is the more fundamental target (Bookchin, 1982).
Not everyone agrees. Shiva and Mies’s influential “capitalist patriarchy” formulation already treats capitalism and patriarchy as inseparable rather than competing explanations, so the disagreement is partly one of emphasis.
It nonetheless remains a genuine, unresolved fault line within the broader ecofeminist and feminist literature, one the theory has not fully closed.
Contemporary Research
Are Women Disproportionately Harmed by Climate Change?
Anjum and Aziz (2025) searched the Web of Science and Scopus databases, screening 2,163 initial citations down to 61 eligible studies published between 2011 and 2024.
The review examined how climate change and gendered health outcomes intersect, with an emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. The findings are stark.
It found that climate change disproportionately affects women through worse mental health, poorer maternal and newborn outcomes, greater water insecurity, and heavier unpaid caregiving burdens. The pattern held.
Women in these countries also had reduced adaptive capacity, driven by limited access to resources and exclusion from household and community decisions.
As a systematic review synthesising 61 studies, this is comparatively strong evidence for the pattern of gendered vulnerability. Its main limitation: the underlying studies vary in design and are concentrated in poorer countries.
Is ‘Green’ Behaviour Really Coded as Feminine?
The key study above already found that green behaviour is stereotyped as feminine, and that threatening men’s masculinity shifts their environmental choices (Brough et al., 2016).
Two more recent studies extend this picture. Phillips and Englis (2022), surveying 4,077 consumers, found that androgynous gender identity, scoring highly on both masculine and feminine traits, predicted strong pro-environmental attitudes better than biological sex alone.
Avery et al. (2025), studying UK and Swiss samples, found that men’s rejection of pro-environmental policy was best explained by hegemonic masculinity and dominance orientation. General masculinity concerns alone did not account for it.
Together, these three studies show that the link between environmentalism and femininity is a measurable feature of gender identity and ideology, not just an abstract theoretical claim.
References
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