Month: March 2019

In Gender Equality and State Environmentalism, Kari Norgaard and Richard York study the gender gap for environmental concern. They prove the interconnectedness of sexism and environmental degradation and their reinforcing processes. They acknowledged three main ways that ecofeminist theory implies that environmental degradation and gender inequality are linked:

First, nation-states with greater gender inequality may be less environmentally responsible due to the hegemony of the logic of domination. Second, due to the presence of parallel social and historical constructions of women and nature, nation-states with greater gender inequality may be less concerned with environmental protection. Finally, the parallel valuing or devaluing of the reproductive labor of women and of the natural environment will likely affect both gender equality and state environmentalism.

They then began research to consider the relationship between gender and environmentalism empirically by analyzing the associations between the representation of women in Parliament and state environmentalism. Their results show that the greater representation of women in Parliament leads to more environmental treaties being ratified. They then considered feminist theories that could provide a reason for this positive association. “These reasons include the fact that women have more pro-environmental values, are more risk averse, are more likely to participate in social movements, typically suffer disproportionately from environmental degradation, and sexism and environmental degradation can be mutually reinforcing processes.”

---

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/us/womens-crucial-role-in-combating-climate-change.html

This New York Times article discusses the relationship between women in politics and environmentalism. They claim that climate change has a greater impact on women because women’s roles often are focused around providing food and water for their family, which is getting increasingly difficult. With women being elected into more political positions, these issues receive more attention. Women have been able to make significant and positive change in the communities they have been elected to represent and support. Some of the changes that have been made are public transportation becoming electric powered, some roads in big cities being converted to pedestrian only, and solar panels being installed. They claim that it doesn’t matter who is in political power at the top, because it doesn’t change the plan to assess and implement systems for environmental change.

---

Invest in Women to Tackle Climate Change and Conserve the Environment

I also chose this article from Women Deliver. Women Deliver is a global advocate group promoting gender equality and health and rights of women and girls. While they mention the relationship between representation of women in parliament and environmental treaties ratification, they do so in a list of other reasons to invest in girls and women to create a ripple effect of benefits. “Including women in climate change mitigation will help guarantee enough clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food, and secure shelter for future generation.”

---

Only 35% of environmental sector ministries have a gender focal point.

This is a statistic I found on the Women Deliver website. With all of the information we have showing that women tend to have more first hand experience with environmental issues, and the association between women in parliament and environmental treatise ratification, it seems silly to not specifically include women in environmental efforts. There is so much evidence supporting women’s significant and positive effect on the environment from a position in politics and just as citizens, one could easily assume that the environmental sector ministries would make more, more meaningful, and lasting effects and improvements if they made gender a focal point.

I’d like to begin this post with complete transparency. I am pro-choice and within this group I tend to hold the extreme liberal view. I think people too often tip-toe around the topic of abortion. I fully understand that it is an extremely difficult decision for some people to make, making it more difficult to talk about conceptually and objectively. I, personally, have not yet had to make this decision, but I know what I would do. (You can tell me it will be different if I actually went through it; you can tell me I have no frame of reference; you can tell me I’m heartless — but that won’t make me feel ashamed or guilty or change my stance) I firmly believe that it is the mother’s fundamental and unalienable human right to all decisions regarding her body, without needing to justify or defend her decisions to anyone. I think it is really self-centered and inconsiderate for pro-life individuals to shame and guilt women for their decision to abort, especially knowing and acknowledging how difficult of a decision it is. I also think it’s backwards to claim that you don’t/won’t judge a woman for her decision, but in the same breath call her reasoning evil.

Furthermore, it’s as if pro-life individuals feel like they bear the moral guilt and negative weight of other women’s decisions. We bear the weight and accept the consequences of our own decisions, not others’. That is the responsibility we accept for any decisions we have the right to make.

I agree with Hawkins. I briefly skimmed some of my classmates blog posts, curious what their tendencies were and I felt like there were many misinterpretations.

Hawkins is defending abortion from an ecofeminist perspective. While considering population size, poverty, and environmental degradation, she writes:

While the poor may seek to have large families as a way of coping with their immediate economic conditions, providing more hands to work and offering an increased chance that parents will be cared for in their old age, the long term trade-off parallels that of employing ecologically damaging farming practices because of today’s need to eat: tomorrow, the overall needs will be greater, while the resources for meeting them will be proportionately less.

She is not blaming environmental degradation on poor communities, often which are communities of color, but rather just acknowledging the short term and long term effects of the choice to have a large family. It may appear to some as a white and classist perspective, simply because of the example used.

She does not promote abortion as the ideal primary form of birth control, but rather as “backup birth control.” When talking about developing countries she notes “when smaller family sizes are becoming desirable but contraceptive use is unfamiliar or unavailable, that abortion plays a prominent and necessary role in fertility reduction, with abortion rates later declining as contraceptive use increases.”

While I think most people tend to consider abortion with an individualized and personal perspective, this essay considers its use systematically. This may feel inhumane and reductive, but I believe it’s just objective (which is a necessary perspective to consider).

Sources:

Abortion

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/abortion-right-to-privacy-women-right-to-equality

“Reproductive Choices: The Ecological Dimension” by Ronnie Zoe Hawkins

I chose these three images from Carol Adam’s “Sexual Politics of Meat” examples. The “Hey Babe / Fresh Chicken” image immediately recalled in my mind Adam’s comments on non-human animals as whores. The chicken’s proportions are not nearly as humanized as some of the other illustrations, but the way it’s posing with its “hand” on its hip and the one bent leg and head turned to the side is sexualized in a way that is very much directed towards men. I remember in highschool some girls were having a conversation on the proper way to pose for pictures or when you see a cute boy so that your body looks its best. You apparently weren’t “supposed to” directly face the camera/boy, but be at a slight angle, bend a leg to angle your hips more, turn your face to the side so they see more of your jaw line, put your hand on your hip to accentuate the curve, et cetera. By the end of it you might as well have tied yourself into a knot, how can that be comfortable? (I assume comfort isn’t the point. . .) And the phrase “hey babe.” It’s casual, it’s flirty, it’s something you might say to a love interest. This chicken has been illustrated for the consumer to lust for it, not just craving the meat, but a sexual lust and attraction because of the similarities between that chicken and women.

The second image of “meat makes men sexy” is something I’ve never understood. There has always been something dominant, masculine, strong, alluring, whatever that advertisements and our society attribute to meat-eaters. Even when girls eat burgers it’s like the men are more attracted to her because she’s somehow more powerful or confident for eating meat. It’s not just “meat makes men sexy,” it’s “meat makes people sexy.” All people, everyone everywhere. That’s the message being sent, that’s the message being echoed. Adam’s references Catherine MacKinnon saying inequality is made sexy and tasty. It’s seen here as well as anywhere else. The consuming of meat is the same as the consuming of women. A man eating meat is often viewed as equal to a man having a hookup or a one-night stand — consuming the woman and leaving, dinner.

The last image I chose just kind of shocked me in a different way. Most of the images in Adam’s pool of examples are of signs or advertisements, but this one appears to be writing on the back of a woman’s shirt — why would a woman (or anyone) want / choose to wear this shirt? It reads “women are like calves only takes two fingers to make them suck.” Eeesh. There’s an obvious woman-nature association here between cows and women. If my extended family weren’t farmers I would not get this “joke.” For those of you who are unfamiliar, one way to teach calves to drink (“suck”) is to put two fingers in their mouth and stick their head into a bucket of milk and when you spread your fingers and let the milk get into their mouth, they start to learn how to drink. Seems like an innocent thing, to teach a young animal to eat and drink. . . The quote on the shirt sexualizes the calves and animalizes the women.

I chose this Burger King ad to analyze in addition to Adam’s examples. There is a pretty blonde woman with eyeliner, blush, red lipstick and her mouth open waiting for the “BK Super Seven Incher.” Everything about this is sexualized. The woman has been made up and posed a very specific way. The sandwich is coming towards her from outside of the frame, and we can’t see the other end. A sandwich on its own typically isn’t considered to be a relatively phallic food, but in this case the sandwich’s sexual nature could compete with a cucumber. Even the name “super seven incher” feels sexualized. And how have I not commented on the slogan yet?! “It’ll blow your mind away.” Gross. It may be a woman about to eat the sandwich in the advertisement but this is definitely not targeted towards women. Like Adam’s talked about in the interview, most advertisements are made for white men — this fits the bill. Everything about this ad is oppressive from the imagery to the copy language.