Plastic Free Part 2

Hi everyone and welcome back. This post is just going to be me describing my results of trying to be plastic-free for a week! This was my original plan: The plan here is to avoid taking plastic bags if I dare to venture out anywhere right now, use a reusable water bottle to hold my drinks, avoid getting carryout food (which will be difficult during this time of isolation) and use reusable utensils at work for my lunch breaks (and wash them afterward).

Results

First, I wanted to talk about what I have been doing for the past few weeks. During this pandemic, I have been working 4-5 days a week at CVS, as well as doing my online classes. I also recently found out that reusable bags in this area have been BANNED, and if you are to go shopping you must use plastic. This has been incredibly difficult for me, especially with this topic I chose to pursue. So here are my results so far. If I buy something at work, I try to not buy a lot so I do not need a bag at all. However, I found out employees are supposed to always take a bag for their items so it shows on camera that the items have been paid for. I talked to my manager and she said I can either not take a bag and just be cashed out by a manager, or I can bring my own reusable bag as long as I clean it often. I have only had to take a bag twice so far since I started this project because I was buying more than what would fit in my bag. This past Monday I actually had to venture out to Petco and Target. My betta fish got very sick, so I had to go pick up some medicine and food and thankfully Petco has paper bags! When I cashed out at Target I just did not take bags because I did not buy that much. As far as plastic bottles go, I have failed. When I am home, I just drink out of a glass cup all day, but when I go to work, we are not allowed to have a reusable bottle because “they do not know what is in it”. So every day I go to work, I have a bottle of Gatorade or iced tea with me. This is something I wish I could change but it goes against company policy. Another issue I have run into is the fact that I have to wear plastic gloves at work because of this pandemic. We go through at least 2 boxes of gloves a day, so that is even more plastic waste being produced right now that I cannot change. However, I have completely avoided ordering carryout food that comes in plastic or styrofoam containers, and I have been using my reusable utensils at work for my breaks, so I think that is a win!

Effectiveness

I have come to the conclusion that this was not an ideal time to try and become plastic-free due to the pandemic and all the plastic waste that comes along with it. If we weren’t in the middle of the ‘world-ending’, I feel like I would have had no problem being plastic-free. I already had reusable bottles, shopping bags, and utensils and had been using them when I would remember to. The main thing I wanted to change was my plastic bag use, and it seems like we are all going to have to retire our reusable bags and other products for now until things can get back to normal. This pandemic has been a huge step backward for anyone trying to work on ecofriendly products, conservation, and ending plastic product production.

Amazon.com: Keep The Sea Plastic Free Let Our Wildlife Be ...

Plastic-Free!

Hi everyone, welcome back! This week I wanted to do something a little different and put my words into action. This post will be an outline of what I plan to do in the next few weeks as an ecofeminist to try and change my ways of living.

The Idea:

Single-use plastics are a huge issue right now, and it is something that can be so easily avoided if we were just self-aware. Any type of plastic can take up to, if not more than, 1,000 years to decompose, and that is when it is disposed of properly (landfill and not in the ocean). Single-use plastics include items such as water bottles, utensils, plastic bags, carryout containers, and food wrappers. Plastic water bottles can easily be avoided if we each carry around a reusable water bottle, plastic utensils can actually be reused if you wash them after every use, plastic bags can be replaced with reusable fabric bags that are washable (in order to keep them clean), plastic carryout containers are actually reusable as well if you wash them the correct way (styrofoam is not), and lastly, food wrappers such as plastic wrap can be avoided if we use reusable containers to store our food.

The Plan:

With the amount of plastic we all use each and every day, I would like to try and go the rest of the semester (so 2-3 weeks) without obtaining any additional single-use plastics. That being said, I will still keep the plastic containers I have right now such as shampoo, conditioner, and other items like that, but I will make sure they are properly disposed of once finished (in the recycling bin). The plan here is to avoid taking plastic bags if I dare to venture out anywhere right now, use a reusable water bottle to hold my drinks, avoid getting carryout food (which will be difficult during this time of isolation), and use reusable utensils at work for my lunch breaks (and wash them afterward). As many of you know, during this pandemic we are in the midst of most places are closed, except for my work. So, I feel like this plan should be easy enough seeing that I cannot go anywhere besides work and home for the foreseeable future.

Hopes and Dreams:

With this plan to avoid single-use plastics, I hope to lessen my carbon footprint and my plastic consumption to benefit the environment. I also hope that by actively avoiding single-use plastics for the next few weeks, I can get into the habit and avoid these plastics on the long term scale. I also hope that I can convince my manager at work to switch to paper bags. I have tried in the past and she said OK, and ordered the paper bags, but never made the official switch. The amount of plastics bags I have given out to people over the 4 years I have worked for CVS could probably fill a football field 2 times over, and it kills me to think I have contributed to the plastic pollution our world is going through by simply just doing my job. I always ask people if they want a bag, and 9 times out of 10 they say yes and ask for extras for their trash bins at home. I hope I can change this but it definitely won’t be done in the next 2 weeks.

The environment - The known unknowns of plastic pollution ...

Intersectionality

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog once again. I hope everyone is managing during this horrible time of the coronavirus. Anyways, on to the blog.

This week I wanted to talk about intersectionality within an ecofeminist web, and also revisit one of my older posts to tie in my overall ideas. Here is an example of what an intersectional ecofeminist web looks like.

external image Intersecting-Axes.jpg

One example of an intersectional ecofeminist web is from author A. E. Kings’, ‘Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism”, where he states, “I have always approached intersectionality as being more of a web of entanglement, than a traffic junction or road. Each spoke of the web representing a continuum of different types of social categorization such as gender, sexuality, race, or class; while encircling spirals depict individual identities.” This is a clear example of how an ecofeminist explains these kinds of webs and directly ties into the image I have included above. Another example of an ecofeminist view on intersectionality webs is from Kimberle Crenshaw’s where she states, “Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects.” which also directly ties into the image above.

Next, I would like to talk about the connection to 2 of my old blog posts where I talked about the connection between women and nature, and the association of men and meat. These 2 topics connect pretty well and here is why. In the post where I talked about women and nature association, we saw that women are used in advertisements for food/meat/etc and are shown as oversexualized animals or just oversexualized images in general, to attract the attention of men. This then ties into my post where we talked about how meat is seen as a masculine food and women are not to eat it if they want to be feminine. By using oversexualized women in advertisements for things such as burgers, pork, beef, or anything of the sort, it attracts men and therefore solidifies the idea that eating meat is directly related to masculinity and dominance/power. Pulled from my “Vegetarian Life” post, as stated in the article, “In a series of experiments, researchers found that after consumers experience a threat to their masculinity, the availability of a meat dish lowered their anxiety back to the level of an unthreatened control group. A flesh-free alternative presented to the threatened group did not produce the same anxiety-alleviating effect. The researchers hypothesize this effect is due to the masculinity-symbolizing power of meat. Or, in layman’s terms: eat a steak, feel more like a man”. Eating meat relates to “eating” women and they both make a man feel more masculine and like they have more power over other people. If a man has both of these things in their life, a women and a good burger, then they are as happy as can be. Just as an example, one of the most famous burger joints out there for men is Hooters, and what is their world-known theme? Women dressed in oversexualized clothes serving men burgers and other meat. It is the perfect example of women-meat association, and as I have noticed throughout my life, it is (almost) every man’s dream to go to this restaurant and exert their dominance over the barely dressed waitresses.

Activism

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog.

This week I wanted to talk about activism and the evidence of the oppression of women and the oppression of nature in communities.

First, to better understand the reading I wanted to give the definition of activism: the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change. (from google)

Becoming Unstuck With Relational Activism

Next, I would like to mention an article I read by Sam Levin called At Standing Rock, women lead fight in face of Mace, arrests and strip searches, where he talks about “Native women say they are protecting the basic human right to clean water. But for some indigenous activists, the internationally recognized movement has become a larger fight against a history of misogyny, racism, and abuse by law enforcement.” So basically, the native women in the area are fighting for their basic right to clean water and for their indigenous land, and police are fighting back and punishing them for it. The police are dehumanizing the indigenous women and treating them like criminals. The author also talks about how “Several women who were arrested said they were crowded into vans and cells. Behind bars, they encountered mostly native women, many who were incarcerated for what appeared to be low-level offenses.” So native women were being thrown in jail for fighting for their land and clean water. Once thrown in jail, they were treated very poorly and was described as, “the jail was packed with native women incarcerated for reasons other than the pipeline actions, including one who was pregnant and feared she was having a miscarriage and another who appeared to be severely ill.” This last quote is very important because it shows just how oppressed these women were and how they were being treated so poorly. They were being denied basic human rights to healthcare because they were fighting to protect their land.

To answer the question of, do you agree that behind the material deprivations and cultural losses of the marginalized and the poor lie the deeper issues of disempowerment and/or environmental degradation? I would say yes and this is because I believe that lower class and poor people seem to be more oppressed than middle-class individuals, and have a harder time keeping afloat. Women in Haiti have a harder time collecting basic human needs such as clean water and food, whereas women in the US just have a harder time getting into a position of power in the government.

Another reading I wanted to talk about is by Wangari Maathai, called Speak Truth to Power. It talks about how “Wangari Maathai, Kenya’s foremost environmentalist, and women’s rights advocate, founded the Green Belt Movement on Earth Day, 1977, encouraging the farmers (70 percent of whom are women) to plant “Green Belts” to stop soil erosion, provide shade, and create a source of lumber and firewood. She distributed seedlings to rural women and set up an incentive system for each seedling that survived. To date, the movement has planted over fifteen million trees, produced income for eighty thousand people in Kenya alone, and has expanded its efforts to over thirty African countries, the United States, and Haiti.” This Green Belt Movement was created by a woman and has impacted many other women all around Haiti, as well as impacted their environment in a positive way. Women play a huge role in contributing to activism for our environment, and I think it will be women who ultimately come up with a way to heal our planet and make us self sustainable.

Climate activism is now a global movement, but it's still not ...

Ecofeminist government

Hi again, two posts in one week!

In this post, I will be talking about an ecofeminist analysis of government, particularly government actions and policies.

Two authors, Kari Norgaard and Richard York wrote Gender Equality and State Environmentalism. They conducted a study to compare how successful a country was at creating gender equality, and a country’s ability to help the environment with women in power. They state, “Specifically, we perform a cross-national analysis examining the association between the percentage of national Parliament composed of women and national support for a selection of key international environmental treaties “. In the conclusion of their study, they found that “Our results clearly show that nation-states with a greater proportion of women in national Parliament, controlling for other factors, typically are more prone to environmental treaty ratification than other nations”, meaning that they found significant evidence to the correlation between gender equality and environmentalism with women in parliament. So, in order to achieve gender equality and progress to better the environment, we must put more women in power positions in the government who are ecofeminists.

Next, we were asked to find two examples of the connection between women in political power and state environmentalism. One example I found was from a website (linked below) that talks about the connection between women and the environment. One example they gave was of, “Aleksandra Koroleva worked both within government and as a community organizer with Ecodefense! where she coordinated acts of civil disobedience to raise awareness around pollution of water resources, nuclear waste and creating protected nature reserves”. Aleksandra also is part of an organization called, “The Barefoot College trains women in Tilonia, Rajasthan, in solar engineering in ways that ensure that this scientific knowledge remains, grows, and circulates within the community.” This one woman was able to accomplish so many wonderful things to help the other women in her community. This example connects to the Kari Norgaard and Richard York study directly because it shows that when women are put into positions of power, they can accomplish great things that benefit the environment and government as well as their community.

Chapter 11: Women and the Environment

Another example I found was from, Greta Thunberg, a 17-year-old environmental activist. She spends her days fighting for climate change to be stopped. She protests and started school strikes all around the world in order to bring awareness to this issue. As stated in the article, “But as her fame has grown, she has called for governments around the world to do more to cut global emissions. She has spoken at international meetings, including the UN’s 2019 climate change gathering in New York, and this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. At the forum, she called for banks, firms, and governments to stop investing and subsidizing fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and gas.” This directly relates back to Norgaard and York’s study as well because this one girl has called to make changes in governments from multiple countries to benefit the environment, and she is acting as a female role model for women and kids all over the world.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49918719

Lastly, we were asked to find a statistic that illustrates Norgaard and York’s central thesis. I have found that The New Green Deal fits this criterion. What is the Green Deal? “The Green New Deal is a congressional resolution that lays out a grand plan for tackling climate change. Introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats, the proposal calls on the federal government to wean the United States from fossil fuels and curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions across the economy. It also aims to guarantee new high-paying jobs in clean energy industries.” This Deal was introduced by women and will be settled by women in power in the government.

(The photo below has a link imbedded in it to the website I used, it will not allow me to paste the link).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/climate/green-new-deal-questions-answers.html

Abortion

Hello all, welcome back to my blog.

This week I will be talking about a very sensitive topic, abortion.

Image result for abortion

First off I would like to voice my own opinion on the matter. As a woman, I would like to believe I have control over my own body and have my own choices over what happens to it. If I were to get pregnant, I would like to be able to have the option to get an abortion or not. In recent times we have seen certain states ban abortion, which is wrong in my opinion. Yes, I do believe abortion a bad thing, but I do believe it is a necessary evil we need to avoid people doing it themselves. When women are denied abortions when they desperately want one, they either do one of two things, they do it themselves, or they commit suicide. Both are terrible outcomes, but it happens every day. Abortions are something that should be allowed, but only for cases deemed necessary, such as abusive relationships, rape, homelessness, other underlying illnesses, etc. This is all just my opinion, do not be offended by anything I say please!

According to an article on abortion, “There are three main views: first, the extreme conservative view (held by the Catholic Church); second, the extreme liberal view (held by Singer); and third, moderate views which lie between both extremes”. This quote just explains the types of views there are on abortion and that there are extremists, liberals, and moderates. Next, I would like to talk about Hawkins, an author who believes that abortion is necessary for multiple reasons. She talks about how our planet has a capacity for the number of humans it can hold which would be around 10-12 billion. Abortion is one tool we can use to limit the number of people. She also believes that once we hit this limit, most people will be living in poverty or homeless. Hawkins mentions that “abortion has recently been viewed as a “masculine” response to unwanted pregnancy” (Hawkins 693), which to me means that abortion is viewed as something that is to be decided by a man, which is definitely not true. The decision of abortion should be between the woman and man that created the baby, but ultimately should be the woman’s decision. If by having the baby, the mother is put at risk of illness or death, I feel as though it should be her decision alone if she wants an abortion or not, not the man. Ultimately, it is the woman who is carrying the baby and therefore it is her responsibility and choice if she wants to put her body through the hardships of childbirth. Hawkins also mentions that without abortion, we would see large spikes in population growth which would then lead us to hit the carrying capacity of the earth. Overpopulation could be a huge issue in our future as it would cause food shortages, land shortages, more disease, and many other pandemics like what we are dealing with today. Right now we are dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, which was so easily spread through overpopulated countries like China. Imagine if the entire earth was as heavily populated as China, we would have no chance of survival in an outbreak like this. Ultimately, I agree with Hawkins’s viewpoints on abortion and believe it is a necessary evil we must keep in place.

Women-Nature Association

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog!

This week I wanted to talk about the objectification and sexualization of women and animals. I have chosen three images from an online source to show this objectification of women and animals and inserted them below.

skinny-cow-2.jpg

This first image is of a female cow who is posed in a seductive manner, has an unnatural shape to her body, and is shown with a measuring tape around the waist, likely from a Weight Watcher or Skinny Cow advertisement (both real companies). This image implies that this is what a ‘sexy’ women/animal should look like, skinny and pretty.

bestbutts copy.jpg

This next image is of a female pig dressed in revealing clothes and posed in a seductive manner, pointing to the slogan, “Best Butts in Georgia”. This image implies that this particular restaurant has the best pork rinds in town, but they are targeting towards a male audience with this over-sexualized image of the female pig.

Catalan, a language spoken in the North East of Spain %22Those are legs!%22 bocatta copy.jpg

This next image I chose is of yet another female pig in revealing clothes and posed in a seductive manner, one of which is the famous Marilyn Monroe pose where her dress was being blown upwards from the wind, which got world-famous (mostly by men) due to its over-sexualized nature. This advertisement is likely in front of a store front for meat, or even dresses.

Image result for sexualized advertisements

This last image I found was this advertisement for burgers with Paris Hilton, a very famous female model, dressed in lingerie eating a burger with the slogan, “she’ll tell you size doesn’t matter. She’s lying” which is a very obvious sexual innuendo. This advertisement is obviously targeted towards men and the restaurant wants to attract these men with the image of Paris Hilton. This same thing happens with car advertisements. I would like to pull a quote from Carol Adams, author of “The Pornography of Meat” where she talks about the objectification of women in advertisements and, “she goes on to state that some readers “may feel aroused” while others “will feel distaste”. I for one feel distaste when looking at this advertisement, but some men might feel aroused by it, and feel intrigued to try the burger that Paris Hilton is eating.

When viewing these images I asked myself, what do we learn about the objectification of women/animals? After viewing the images, it is clear to me that almost every advertisement we see today is targeted towards a male audience, and women and animals are objectified by how we are supposed to look and act to appear attractive to that audience. For example, how many times do you see an advertisement with a man who is being sexualized for a female audience? Almost never. After reading an interview by, Carol Adams, she states that both women and animals are just consumables to most men and that, “Animals are assumed to want it like women. One can consume either a pig or a woman. One can exploit and destroy a calf or a woman. Because women are not being depicted, no one is seen as being harmed and so no one has to be accountable. Everyone can enjoy the degradation of women without being honest about it.”, meaning that a pig and a women have the same sexual desires and are assumed to want the same things. While reading this interview I asked myself, who is “consumed” and who is the “consumer”? Well that is pretty simple, women and animals are the consumed, and men are the consumers. Now, I do not believe that it is only white men who are the consumers, which seems to be the target audience Adams thinks all of these advertisements are for. I believe it is ALL men who are the consumers, and for her to say that it is only white men being the consumers, is quite racist in my opinion. Any man can objectify a female, and the color of skin has nothing to do with it.

Vegetarian Life

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog.

This week I wanted to talk about what being a vegetarian means, what gendered foods are, and how other scholars view animals and our relationships.

Below I have included a photo of a human figure slicing a piece of meat, which to me shows a disconnection between human and animals. By looking at this photo, we can not even tell what animal the meat is from, or where it is from, or the life of the animal who gave their life to feed us. When we look at this photo, all we see is food. It also gives me a sense of uneasiness because there are two knives in the meat, signifying one knife to kill the animal, and one knife to carve up the animal meat. It just looks very computerized and makes me think about my food choices.

Person carving a joint of meat

Now lets talk about something called, “gendered foods”. As stated in an article called, “Meat Heads: New Study Focuses on How Meat Consumption Alters Men’s Self-Perceived Levels of Masculinity”. This idea of certain foods being for men or women seems to be a topic of interest on online forums and talks about how meat is a “masculine” food, and salad is a “feminine” food. As stated in the article, “In a series of experiments, researchers found that after consumers experience a threat to their masculinity, the availability of a meat dish lowered their anxiety back to the level of an unthreatened control group. A flesh-free alternative presented to the threatened group did not produce the same anxiety-alleviating effect. The researchers hypothesize this effect is due to the masculinity-symbolizing power of meat. Or, in layman’s terms: eat a steak, feel more like a man”, this means that meat is for men to eat so they feel more manly, and salad is for women to eat to feel more feminine. In my opinion, anyone should be able to eat what they want, when they want, and if their date does not like that, then BYE. For me, I try to not eat red meat as much as possible, but I still like to enjoy chicken quite often, and the occasional steak tips.

Some examples of other scholars view vegetarianism is Gaard and Curtin. According to Deane Curtin, she identifies as a “contextual moral vegetarian” and she says that by being a contextual moral vegetarian that she, “cannot refer to an absolute moral rule that prohibits meat-eating under all circumstances. There may be some contexts in which another response is appropriate. Though I am committed to moral vegetarianism, I cannot say that I would never kill an animal for food. Would I not kill an animal to provide food for my son if he were starving? Would I not generally prefer the death of a bear to the death of a loved one? I am sure I would. The point of a contextualist ethic is that one need not treat all interests equally as if one had no relationship to any of the parties”.

Another point of view is from Greta Gaard, who believes that animals should have rights, and that “feminists that politicize their care for animals see a specific linkage between sexism and speciesism, between the oppression of women and the oppression of animals. Speciesism is defined as the oppression of one species by another” and she even relates to having pets that you neglect, neuter, and control is the same or similar to slavery within humans. Overall, I believe that being a vegetarian is a good thing and does really help the environment and nature. Although I am not a vegetarian, I can respect those who are, and I do try and limit my meat intake on an everyday basis. Thanks for reading!

Image result for baby cow

My Happy Place

Hi everyone, welcome back!

(Tip: Click on the photo to enlarge it if you want to see it more clearly, it looks blurry if you don’t!)

This week, I wanted to talk about where I grew up: Westport, Massachusetts. The photo above is a photo I took this past summer of a little pond called Devol Pond located at the end of my private street here in Westport. This is a place I have been visiting ever since I was a little girl, and it is a place I sometimes go to when I need clarity and just some simple peace and quiet. This little hidden gem is private property, so only the people who live around the perimeter of the pond and the people on my street can visit it, making it that more special. To get to it, you have to walk down a little pathway filled with trees and bushes, but once you get through that, the land opens up to a small beachfront with a picnic table. My neighbors often bring their boats down to the pond in the summer to go fishing and enjoy the ponds’ calming waters. It is also the place that sparked my desire to get involved with photography, and many photos I have taken of this pond have won photography and art awards over the years. Most of the photos I take are of ponds, lakes, oceans, and nature. I would include more of my photography but unfortunately, I lost everything on my phone recently. Nonetheless, I have taken hundreds of photos of this pond over the years, and feel like I will never get sick of its beauty.

Although this pond of mine is not a mountainous area where you can see trees and wildlife for miles, it functions as my quiet place to unwind in the wildness. I read an article by Barbra Kingsolver about her cabin in the woods of Walker Mountain where she lives during the summer months with her family, and they love every minute of it. She mentions that they go to the cabin for those few months as their summer vacation to get away from the busy city life, and she does most of her creative writing while at the cabin. She even had an encounter with a bobcat! Kingsolver mentions that “People need wild places. Whether or not we think we do, we do. We need to be able to taste grace and know once again that we desire it. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers” which I could not agree with more. Every person needs time with nature once and a while, whether they think they do or not. “Nature cleansing” is a technique some folks use when they are over-stressed with their everyday lives, so they go out into the wilderness for an hour or more with no outside distractions and just breathe. Many people do not know, but UMASSD has a few pathways where the old windmill resides, and during the warmer months of the school year, groups of people to go walk down there and spend hours using the nature cleansing technique before finals. I have done this once before and let me tell you, it really works. Although we may all feel like we do not have time for such things, or that it is too dangerous to go alone, but the simple fact is: humans need this type of interaction and it as huge benefits. Being out in the wilderness can lower blood pressure, relieve migraines, and help with focusing issues. It sure helped me.

Ecofeminism Continued…

Last week we talked about what we thought ecofeminism meant to us and connected those thoughts to a few ecofeminist writers.

Today, I will be answering a few questions, one of which being, “In what ways are women in the Global South affected by environmental degradation?” Well for starters, women in the South have to take on the responsibilities of the household which includes cooking, cleaning and caring for the kids. Once environmental degradation came into play in the South, these women had more to worry about. As stated in the article Water and Gender,  “without safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and hygiene facilities at home and in places of work and education, it is disproportionately harder for women and girls to lead safe, productive, healthy lives. Across low-income countries, women and girls have primary responsibility for the management of household water supply, sanitation, and health”. In these areas, finding clean water is a huge issue that falls on the women to solve, and it is the women who are affected by this contaminated water the most.

In an interview between Scott London and Vandana Shiva, Dr. Shiva explains how she lead her life beginning as a female physicist and then transitioning to the ecofeminism world. She explains that after her experiences with physicists, she states, “The other issue was the disappearance of the Himalayan forest where I had grown up. There was a movement blossoming called the Chipko movement. Peasant women were coming out and embracing trees to prevent logging. My father had been a forester and I had grown up on those hills. I had seen forests and streams disappear”, this experience of watching her home be destroyed, she knew she had to take action. She later tells the interviewer Scott London that, “I jumped into this movement and started to work with the peasant women. I learned from them about what forests mean for a rural woman in India in terms of firewood and fodder and medicinal plants and rich knowledge”.

Image result for ecofeminism"

Last week we talked about two authors named Warren and Hobgood-Oster and their specific views on ecofeminism. As a recap, Hobgood-Oster believes that ecofeminism is a way of life that “acts in both and neither of these broad movements, simultaneously serving as an environmental critique of feminism and a feminist critique of environmentalism”. Warren believes that “the goal of ecofeminist environmental ethics is to develop theories and practices concerning humans and the natural environment that are not male-biased and provide a guide to action in the prefeminist present”. This week our spotlight author is Bina Agarwal and her article, The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India, and states, “The Green Revolution embodies a technological mix which gives primacy to laboratory-based research and manufactured inputs and treats agriculture as an isolated production system”. She talks about how the agriculture industry in the South has been industrialized and is more laboratory-based than what it used to be which is causing environmental impact.

Personally, I find the Southern ecofeminism point of view more intriguing because I would like to find out how these women ecofeminists plan to take on the issues of having clean water and also how they will battle gender inequality in their hometowns.