Are Earth Girls Easy?: Ecofeminism, Women's History and Environmental History

Are Earth Girls Easy? Ecofeminism, Women's History and Environmental History Greta Gaard, ed. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Phüadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. vu + 331 pp. ISBN 0-8772-2988-0 (d). Carol Bigwood. Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature, and Art. Phüadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. xi + 375 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-8772-2986-4 (d). Joni Seager. Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis. New York: RouUedge, 1993. ill. ISBN 0-415-90720-9. Carolyn Merchant. Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England. Chapel HUl and London: University of North Carotina Press, 1989.380 pp.; ill. ISBN 0-8078-1858-5 (cl); 0-8078-4254-0 (pb). Harriet Kofalk. No Woman Tenderfoot: Florence Merriam Bailey, Pioneer Naturalist . CoUege Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1989. 248 pp.; Ul. ISBN 0-89096-378-9. Vera Norwood. Made from This Earth: American Women and Nature. Chapel HUl and London: University of North Carotina Press, 1993. xxü + 368 pp; Ul. ISBN 0-8078-2062-8 (cl). Virginia Scharff Luce women's history, the relatively new field of environmental history took root in the politics of the 1960s and 1970s; its ambivalent but persistent rdationship with the poUtical movement that made scholarly projeds compelling. At this point, however, few women's historians have ventured into the domain of environmental history, and just as few environmental historians take seriously either the gendering of historical/ecological relations or the sigrtificance of women's experience. Indeed, so wide is the gap between women's history and environmental history that these fields refled the persistence of occupational segregation by sex in the historical profession. Ecofeminist phüosophy informs what I want to caU women's environmental history, though the authors whose work I review here would certainly disagree about the extent to which existing work in women's environmental history is, or ought to be, ecofeminist. In this essay I wül discuss two works in ecoferninist phüosophy and politics, along with one investigative polemic in what I term feminist environmentatism. I wül then consider three studies attempting to bring gender analysis, women's history and environmental history together in the embryonic field of women's environmental history. Diverse as these six books are, they dem- © 1995 Journal of Women's Hbtoky, Vol. 7 No. ζ (Summer) 1995 Book Review: Virginia Scharff 165 onstrate some of the problems arising from the contractidory conjunction between the claims of ecofeminist thinking, and the current distance between women's and environmental history. These works also suggest some of the struggles and possibüities that might lead to more fruitful interaction between women's and environmental history. The designation "ecofeminist" demands some attention from the outset, and the two works of ecofeminist theory I examine here reveal how complex and contradictory this self-consdously poUtical form of inquiry has proven. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, edited by Greta Gaard, is an anthology of short, sometimes clashing essays by women who identify themsdves as ecofeminists. The coUection represents various fields. Carol Bigwood's Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature, and Art is a phüosopher's careful and extended attempt to reconcile postmodernism and ecofeminism . These two books Ulustrate the commonaUties and the tensions among ecofeminists. Gaard provides a straightforward definition of ecofeminisrn in the introdudion to her edited volume, ^cofeminism's basic premise," she explains, "is that the ideology which authorizes oppressions such at those based on race, dass, gender, sexuaUty, physical abtiities, and spedes is the same ideology which sanctions the oppression of nature" (p. 1). Thus for ecofeminists, "nature" must be "liberated" if women or any other oppressed group is to achieve emandpation. This political-phUosophical position, termed "hoUstic" by ethicist Marti Khed (one of the contributors to this book), inspires ecofeminists to compare the subordination of women to men to the exploitation of animals and plants, and for that matter, earth, air, fire, and water, by human beings. Whüe there is enough diversity among the essays in Ecofeminism to raise questions about whether a couple of them even belong to the category of ecofeminisrn (and I shaU argue presently that two of them bdong more to feminist environmentatism), most share certain charaderistics. First...