Ecofeminist Perspective: The Struggle to Preserve the Environment in
Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive
Yamini Goyal
Ph.D. Scholar
IMS Unison University
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
Abstract: Ecofeminism theory investigates femininity,
ecology, patriarchy, colonization, and the interconnection between women and
the natural environment. This study articulates how rural Indian women played a
vital role in the past and their long struggle to conserve the natural
resources that catastrophes due to urbanization and development projects of
postcolonialism. This research further examines the overview of the ecofeminist
perspective and Western patriarchy that destroy the ecology and create
disbalance in nature. Renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva advocates agriculture
and environmental protection. She also supports fair trade, organic farming,
and women’s rights. The work of Vandana Shiva’s “Staying Alive” reflects the ecological crisis and the domination
of women and throws light on social justice, gender equality, and ethnicity.
She promotes the indigenous tradition system of environmental sustainability,
which started after the colonial period and continued post-independence, that
is empirically represented in literature. Women of the third world have the mastery
to conserve human and non-human life, and their actions make survival possible.
Women have ecological knowledge in forestry to save trees from government
loggers and create the link between forests and women, highlighting the deeper
meaning of femininity and prakriti. Women in India initiated the Chipko
movement to banish anthropocentrism and promote ecocentrism.
Keywords: Patriarchy, Colonization, Postcolonialism, Anthropocentrism,
Ecocentrism, Ecofeminism, Sustainability, Indigenous Tradition system
Introduction
French philosopher Françoise d'Eaubonne
coined the term "ecofeminism" in her influential book “Le
Féminismeou la Mort,” published in 1974. The work emphasizes the oppression
and domination of both women and nature by the Western patriarchal world for
the sake of the modern capitalist development model. There is a notable
equivalence of nurture and protection between women and the environment, as
highlighted by ecofeminists, and they identify a connection between these
issues of degradation, exploitation, fear, and violence stemming from
patriarchal thinking. The principles of Francois have already been stated in
1962 by Rachel Carson in “Silent Spring,” a masterpiece of the
ecocritical movement. In this work, she warns against the use of pesticides in
agriculture and challenges the industrial world. “If we are going to live so
intimately with these chemicals—eating and drinking them, taking them into the
very marrow of our bones—we had better know something about their nature and
their power” (Carson, 17)
The major impact of industrial technology and
capitalism is that several species were wiped out from the earth, and only the
needs and desires of a male-dominated society are virtually everywhere.
Violence against women has been noticed in militarism and the death-counter
weapon industry, which threaten women as well as nature. (Y. King, "The
ecology of feminism and the feminism of ecology.")
Women have participated in environmental
movements to preserve natural phenomena since the late nineteenth century. They
have incorporated local culture, embraced their role as Mother Nature, and
demonstrated their significance in the context of Western colonization beliefs.
Development for improved well-being by westernization of economic categories,
industrialization, and capitalism as patriarchal projects of men occurred in
Europe during the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. These projects brought
poverty and dispossession not only for local women but also for peasants and
tribals who were involved in this struggle as victims of modern technological
development and the scientific paradigm, and they fought for liberation from
colonization.
Development is the reason for inequality
between males and females, the domination of men over nature and women, and the
degrading of those who are life's support system. Women are central, admirable,
and nurturing to the feminine principles. They spend their energy and time
gathering water, food, and fuel, and similarly, nature’s power works as the
donor of all necessities; both entities are creator and preserver, but
patriarchal power uses women’s survival economy and nature’s economy. Indian
rural women demonstrated determination and dedication through numerous acts of
sacrifice. The Chipko movement, the greatest exemplar of humanity and deep
concern for the environment, was led by the legendary Gaura Devi alongside
indigenous people. Ramachandra Guha highlighted the peasants’ struggle against
government control over forests and focused on environmental history and the
Chipko movement in Uttarakhand. (“The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and
Peasant Resistance in Himalayas, 1989)
“Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (1988)’’
Vandana Shiva is strongly influenced by
Indian farmers and plays a major role in the global ecofeminist movement. She
was inspired by the Chipko Movement and dedicated this writing to her mother,
who was a farmer. She explores the interconnection between women's oppression,
ecological degradation, and Western models of development and highlights the
essential role of women in environmental protection and sustainable
development. According to her, men use modern science and treat women and
nature as slaves, which lead to social inequalities. She emphasizes her doubt
that, according to patriarchal projects, the forest is merely a source for
industries but not a part of an ecosystem for scientific Western models. ‘Feminism
as ecology and ecology as the revival of Prakriti, the source of all life,
become the decentred powers of political and economic transformation and
restructuring.’(Shiva, 6).
Shiva explains that Indian women,
particularly in rural communities, have high knowledge of the environment and
make efforts for sustainability, such as gathering food as farmers and
considering the forest as their mother because forests feed them, help them to
maintain livestock, provide wood for burning, and provide many herbs for medicine,
whereas patriarchy practiced mal-development in which they didn't respect
diversity. They started exploiting and neglecting Indigenous knowledge and the
importance of women and tribal communities. They came with scientific forestry
based on profit maximization and degradation of natural resources. Ecological
crises can be resolved by using traditional sustainable methods that are
practiced by third-world women. She supports and respects the traditions and
practices of the indigenous community. She also indicates the danger of our
highly conceptual and transaction-focused society and says that the entire
environmental crisis has its roots in modern science and the reductionist
thinking of a patriarchal society. The key theme of this work is “maldevelopment,”
which she throws light on as a development that is ruinous, unsustainable, and
disconnected from the needs of local people. ‘Maldevelopment is the violation
of the integrity of organic, interconnected, and interdependent systems that
set in motion a process of exploitation, inequality, injustice, and violence.’
(Shiva, 5)
In this book, she argues that patriarchal
projects of plantation, dam, and mining are related to violence and profit at
the cost of degrading the natural environment, where local communities are
facing problems of water and food scarcity forests are disappearing and
wildlife is wiped out because of lots of construction, and they are losing
their life support system. Shiva traces the myths of modern science, which
began the scientific and industrial revolution and laid the foundations of a
patriarchal mode of economic development in industrial capitalism. ‘The myth
that the 'scientific revolution' was a universal process of intellectual
progress is being steadily undermined by feminist scholarship and the histories
of science of non-western cultures.’ (Shiva, 20)
Shiva mentions several ecologists in her
work; one of the major ones is Chief Seattle’s letter, where he focused on the
protection of wilderness and claimed nineteenth-century invasion and
development and inspired other ecologists. ‘This we know - the earth does not
belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the
blood that unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of
the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.' (Shiva, 18)
It was not only a matter of India; the
subjugation of women and nature began in the sixteenth century in Europe, the
destruction of Africa, and the exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest, or we
can say the lifeline of Brazil, by western development projects. Women of
Uttarakhand stood in the front line to conserve the environment from
exploitation and challenge Western projects of maldevelopment. It was the
struggle of women, nature, and development. Shiva describes how Indian women
struggled with ecological crises and protected nature as living Prakriti. She
beautifully portrays the relationship between humans and nature as “Purusha and
Prakriti.” According to Kalika Purana, prakriti is worshiped as Adi Shakti, a
cosmic energy and creator of the world in combination with purusha, symbolic of
the masculine principle.
Shiva traces 'scientific forestry' as a
reductionist view of forestry that has emerged from the Western bias for
profits, and the Chipko Movement deal by women of Uttarakhand, women who have
expertise in forestry, responds against this paradigm to save trees of the
Garhwal region. The Chipko Movement was a non-violent ecological campaign and
pioneering practice, particularly by rural women along with local people in the
Reni village of the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand in 1973, where they hugged
trees and wrapped holy thread, and all females stayed up the whole night and
challenged industrial society to protect forests from deforestation. The
10-year ban on commercial logging in the Alaknanda Valley was ultimately the
consequence of the state government establishing a commission to investigate
deforestation in the area as a result of the Reni case. Thinkers draw attention
to the alliance of human nature and the natural environment and create links
between scientific knowledge of man and the ecological knowledge of women,
where women are experts in nature’s processes. ‘In the mountain regions of the
Himalayas, the women of Garhwal ……to the Central Indian highlands. The women's
contribution has been neglected and remains invisible, even though the history
of Chipko is a history of the visions and actions of exceptionally courageous
women.’ (Shiva, p.64)
The first documentation, used as the slogan
of the Chipko Movement in 1973, marked this famous poem by Chipko poet
Ghanshyam Raturi.
‘Embrace our trees
Save them from being felled.
The property of our hills
Save it from being looted.’
(Raturi, Ghanshyam, Chipko Song, 1970s) (Shiva, 69)
‘Who will save the environment?
If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?’
(Raturi, Ghanshyam, Chipko Song, 1970s)
She talks about the food crisis, which has
destroyed nature's capital by masculinist agricultural science and development,
and defines women who are experts and producers of food. The green revolution,
scientific agriculture, and the white revolution come under the masculinist
paradigm as a commodity, produced and exchanged for profit. The Green
Revolution introduced chemicals to the soil, which threatened agriculture as
well as the lives of humans and animals. Similarly, the white revolution
reduced the production of milk, so she argues that the masculinist equation and
feminist equation are different because the capitalist economy is controlled by
men and the survival economy by women.
Water is
the lifeline for survival on earth, but now there are water crises in which
plant, animal and human life struggle for survival. Water resources are
overexploited, such as the diversion of natural water to engineered command,
which reduced the flow of fresh water for profit maximization by the
masculinist paradigm of water management. ‘As the women of Tehri state on the
site where they have been protesting daily for nearly two decades, Tehri Dam is
a symbol of destruction.’ (Tehri dam sampurnavinash ka pratikhai) (Shiva, p.
179)
Shiva
advocates for women in the Third World who have confirmed that they have
relevant expertise in survival. Today, new ecological awareness understands
that the indigenous community has a special, sourceful insight into living in
harmony with nature. She concludes that the Third World women have
comprehensive knowledge of living and survival, yet their work is
unacknowledged and unreported. They provide food to their families, cattle, and
soil, and their struggle relates to economic and intellectual worth.
Conclusion
Ecofeminism
is an ethical movement interconnected with women and ecological thought. Shiva
analysed the historical and conceptual roots of Western patriarchy's
development for profit, which caused environmental devastation and subjugation
of women, and people were victims of hunger and famine. Chipko women and
tribals had a deep knowledge of nature’s processes, but unfortunately,
exploitation of nature and women by Western industrial culture is part of the
destruction that has had a great impact not only in India but also on the
globe. The technology and development paradigm is responsible for the current
economic and ecological crises. The
consequence of excessive industrialization is human greed, which is leading to
environmental damage for future generations. Both entities must be respected
and protected in the world. Humans must fulfill their duties towards the
environment and women and promote sustainable ecological practices.
Works
Cited
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Rachel. "Silent spring." Thinking
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King,
Ynestra. "The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology." Healing the Wounds: The Promise of
Ecofeminism. 19 (1989).
Guha,
Ramachandra. The Unquiet Woods:
Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya. University of
California Press, 2000.
Shiva,
Vandana. Staying Alive: Women,
Ecology, and Survival in India. vol. 84. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1988.
Furtwangler,
Albert. Answering Chief Seattle.
University of Washington Press, 1997.
Kalika Purana, 22-10-13, Bombay: Venkateshwara Press, 1927
Puleo,
Alicia H. "What is ecofeminism." Quaderns de la
Mediterrània 25 (2017): 27-34.
Shiva,
Vandana, and Maria Mies. Ecofeminism.
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.
Salleh,
Ariel. Ecofeminism as Politics:
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/ecofeminism/Ecofeminisms-future
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335441481_General_Overview_of_Ecofeminism