ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
60
patenting, tying issues of biotechnology to the larger struggle between
neo-colonialism, global capital, ecological sustainability, and women’s local
knowledge.28
The emergence of post-colonial feminist discussion in the mid-1980s
brought U.S. ecofeminists engaged in such forums into a transnational feminist
movement, Ecofeminists have assumed leadership in international forums such
as the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) which
sponsored the World Women’s Congress for a Healthy Planet in November of
1991. While WEDO is not an explicitly ecofeminist organization, a distinct
ecofeminist perspective is visible within their literature that still emphasizes the
woman/nature dichotomy and the question of peace. Indeed, WEDO’s
Declaration of Interdependence of 1989 is reminiscent of the Women’s
Pentagon Action’s Unity Statement almost a decade before:
It is
our belief that man’s dominion over nature parallels
the
subjugation of women in many societies, denying them sovereignty
over their lives and bodies. Until all societies truly value women and
the environment, their joint degradation will continue...Women’s
views on economic justice, human rights, reproduction and the
achievement
of peace
must be
heard
at
local,
national,
and
international forums, wherever policies are made that could affect the
future of life on earth. Partnership among all peoples is essential for
the survival of the planet.
Yet while retaining some of the analytical categories of its earlier “anti-militarist”
days, U.S. ecofeminists in international forums such as WEDO have sought to
link questions of nature to issues of gender, social justice, and health, thus
expressing a desire for nature that tends to be socially, rather than individually,
based. Again, when we compare WEDO’s Declaration to anti-humanist
statements written by many in the deep ecology movement during the late
1980s, we can better appreciate he significance of ecofeminist attempts to raise
questions
of
“economic
justice,
human
rights,
reproduction,
and
he
achievement of peace” in relation to he question of ecology.
The shift from an ecofeminism derived from a U.S. based anti-militarist
movement
to
development,
a
transnational
complexified
ecofeminism
ecofeminist
focused
theory,
boh
on
questions
broadening
of
and
grounding he idea of he ecological subject. As poor women in he South
inscribed issues of development, colonialism, and globalization as ‘ecological’,
hey unsettled universal assumptions often built into northern ecofeminists’
“desires for nature.”