Why Ecofeminism Matters

Narrating/translating Ecofeminism(s) around the World

Abstract

Ecofeminism is a widely encompassing ideology, touching on subjects as diverse as nature-based religion, women’s rights, environmental issues about water, land, and air pollution, wildlife conservation but also the oppression of Third World countries and peoples by Western industrialized nations. A major proposition is that a society based on cooperation and balance rather than dominance and hierarchy is necessary for the survival on this planet of any living being, that is why ecofeminist scholars propose to think about a change in our perspective about a sense of community based on a system of cooperation, ecology, and protection of planet Earth, and not its exploitation and destruction.
As a theoretical and activist movement, ecofeminism emerged in the US context of the 70s and 80s from the intersection of feminist studies and the arising movements for social justice and environmental health. It started as a framework that sought to combine, re-examine and widen these movements. Since then ecofeminism has developed into different directions and spread across the world. When we discuss ecofeminism today we know it is intersectional and global, it shows how women live and act in different geographical, social, political and cultural contexts. My essay wants to examine how ecofeminist ideas have been narrated and translated into various linguistic/cultural contexts since their American beginning and how they have developed, changed and readapted through different textual typologies, from books to newspaper articles, blogs and web publications.