VIII. Intersectionality & Connectivity

Intersectionality is the idea that we have multifaceted identities that impact our experiences within the world, particularly regarding oppression. Intersectionality holds that all the different forms of oppression are connected and therefore must all be acknowledged and addressed simultaneously. Applying this concept to feminism means recognizing that not all women experience oppression at the same degree, with different parts of their identity privileging or further oppressing them. Feminism that lacks intersectionality, which we are exposed to often in western media, is known as “white feminism.”

When considering how feminism and ecology interact, intersectionality is pertinent. Domestically and globally, women are impacted by environmental issues to different degrees based on their identities. Factors like class, race, ability, sexuality, etc. impact a person’s position in society and the power they have within it, with those who are members of multiple disenfranchised groups having the least power and therefore most likely to be impacted by environmental degradation. For example, in Flint, MI, the water crisis would undoubtedly not still be ongoing if it had occurred in an area that was not predominantly populated by Black people with a high poverty rate.

As detailed in the the article “Women and the Climate,” from Feminist Campus, “Water scarcity and contamination disproportionately impact low-income women and girls.” With poverty disproportionately impacting non-white people, as well as disabled people, transgender people, and other marginalized groups, as a result of deeply ingrained systems that uphold domination over them, this means that more specifically, these groups are more more likely to be impacted by water scarcity and contamination.

Feminism that lacks intersectionality typically focuses only on placing woman, specifically white upper/middle class cis women, in the same positions as their white upper/middle class cis male counterparts. This form of “equality” does little for the majority of women who are marginalized by other parts of their identity. Opening space for women within oppressive systems – like in office, in law enforcement, etc., does little to nothing in the quest for liberation, since these systems are strongly invested in upholding other forms of oppression and exploiting people through this oppression. Norgaard and York touch on this in the article “Gender Equality and State Environmentalism,” where they discuss that while they found that greater gender equality in state power leads to the passage of more eco-friendly policy, this does not translate in a state’s actual actions towards the environment, and consequentially towards the marginalized groups impacted by these actions.

Applying intersectionalism to ecofeminism would include acknowledgement of the different relationships women have to nature based on these intersecting identities, i.e. how their impacted by environmental degradation, how the women-nature connection manifests differently (for example the historical animalization of Black women), or how shaming the use of certain products, or calling that they be fully banned (like plastic straws or prepackaged fruit) dismisses the very real benefits these provide for disabled people. In “Intersectionality and the Changing face of Ecofeminism,” Kings puts some of the readings we’ve already looked at in conversation with each other, and other sources, and within the intersectionality framework. Kings very succinctly states that:

“Attempts to romanticise the relationship between women and nature by first universalising the experience of ‘one kind of woman’ and then appealing to some essential ‘essence’ or necessary connection, leads those into a trap whereby one becomes blinded to the multitude of ways in which the concept of ‘womanhood’ is implicated in the continued constraints and exploitations experienced by women and the natural environment” (77).

Prevailing narrow perceptions of womanhood and femininity that are exclusive counterproductively further enforce the ideas used to oppress women and more importantly further emphasize these other forms of oppression for women marginalized by factors other than their gender.