Feminism and Climate Change

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

I've been thinking a lot about climate change recently with all the Xr protests going on. Call me naive but I really didn't realise things were that bad. I mean, I knew they were bad, but I thought we were on track to fix it. I thought we had time to fanny around with recycling and reusable coffee cups. Reading the Xr website and seeing the phrase "mass extinction event" used over and over really got to me. I thought things were going in the right direction, but it turns out we're at ground zero. My own fault for having my head in the sand and not looking deeper into it. Anyway, I was thinking about the ways this all intersects with feminism:

1. Reproductive rights . Clearly over population is a big problem here. On the one hand, increasing access to abortion, contraception, and sex education helps with this. But any attempts to limit population growth in a more active way, such as through legislation, will necessarily infringe on women's rights. China's "single child" policy is an obvious example of this, with it's double effect of not only controlling women's reproduction but also increasing sex selective abortions/ the murder of female infants.

1. Consumerism . Rightly or wrongly, when it comes to things like food shopping, gift buying, and fashion, women have a lot more consumer power than man. Obviously this ties into patriarchal expectations such as women being "just better" at gift buying, women doing the food shop because they're SAHPs, and pressure on women to wear the last fashion which lead to the rise of cheap "fast fashion" like Primark. Under patriarchy we earn less of the money, but in many ways have a lot more say in how it's spent.

1. Unpaid labour . A lot of the stuff we're encouraged to do at an individual level to halt CC comes down to an increase in unpaid labour. Off the top of my head this includes sorting and cleaning things to be recycled, washing reusable nappies, researching and buying eco friendly products, and taking longer over cleaning jobs from using less effective but greener cleaning products. This increase in labour disproportionately affects women.

1. Politics . The main green political party in this country has aligned itself against women and alienated thousands of it's female voters. Women are being excluded from women only short lists. The ability of girls to participate fully in education is being reduced. We are seeing first hand how poorly female activists are treated by the police. In short, climate change activism and feminism have a large cross over, and in many ways a lot of the power for change is in female hands, but women are being excluded at a political and social level, and being discouraged from activism. We need more power but even the small amount we have is being taken from us.

So, those were my thoughts so far. How do we re-engage women in green politics? How do we make the changes that we need to make as a society when many of those changes will disproportionately disadvantage women? How do we balance our fight for women's rights with our desire to not go extinct?

Excellent post. I've been really rolling this around for a while too, as I've always had a leaning towards permaculture style stuff and so forth, and I had been thinking that side of my interests fell in quite naturally and obviously with feminist thought.

But actually, I have an extremely woke friend who is someone ten years ago I would have considered very feminist from my position then of not being feminist at all, who is very into green issues and waste free living etc. and her lifestyle of sustainable stuff is so labour intensive and yet middle class that I really struggle with it. Plus she is completely TWAW.

I personally admire her commitment, but she is someone with a solid financial base and enough time to be doing all the extra stuff, and I do often think when I see everything she does to promote plastic free living and lentil weaving, "Well, yes, bamboo toothbrushes and recycling your pee to dye your clothes are all very well if you've got the time and resources, but what about my other friend who works two jobs just to keep her kids in cheap shoes and fish fingers?"

It's ironic that the Green Party had feminism as one of its four founding principles. Hey ho.

Ecofeminism has almost half a century of thinkers and writers and activists. See e.g.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofeminism
www.britannica.com/topic/ecofeminism
for reading suggestions.

For one look at how education and opportunities for women lead to fewer births:
ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#empowerment-of-women
This gives some ideas of what initiatives to support, globally.

MsTiggywinkletoyou thanks for those links, will have a look.

FloralBunting I think the same with my friends who are very low income/ single parents/ on benefits (all of whom are women). All the eco living products are so expensive, and also just having the head space to think about it is a privileged thing.

Also thinking about the way women's rights have been thrown out for the "greater good" of trans rights, I have very little hope that our right's will be considered when they conflict with any other movement. The Green Party especially, I wouldn't trust them not to promote green initiatives that harm women.

On a day to day level, those who can, should.
It annoys me when people dismiss organic veg boxes and bamboo toothbrushes as mc indulgences.
Ok they are. But they are still positive choices, and a few mc mum's supporting a local organic farm is a good thing for the local ecosystem in terms of biodiversity etc.
Pretty much all the individual can do is use their disposable income and their time to best use.
Good on those who have both and do

Not at all to do with your point OP.

Though a do remember a comment online about ten years ago now, saying that men hop on planes to tell women to wash babies nappies in cold water and crushed leaves. It did stick with me.

Interesting question. There’s always a gendered dimension. It’s a terrible shame the Green Party have so enthusiastically adopted the gender as identity agenda because it has certainly alienated me. However I wonder if the UK Green Party is less relevant than movements like Extinction Rebellion and zero waste? These grassroots movements are having an impact on the behaviour of individuals and organisations in a way the the Green Party never has.

It would be fantastic I think if women could lead the way in rejecting consumerism and especially packaging. Maybe this is something women can organise around that will connect us and refocus on the roles women play in consumer society and might even improve women’s lives. I’ve been on here before discussing the terrible quality of products for women. We need to develop stuff that lasts and ditch all the frippery. On an individual level I’m already reducing my consumption, packaging, commuting, etc. I suspect a lot of women are doing this because the zero waste Facebook group seems to be mostly women. Wouldn’t it be great for women to take the lead?

I can't remember who it was 7Days, but not long ago some middle aged male politician or journalist said that disposable nappies should be illegal and everyone should have to use cloth. It really fucked me off because I just knew that he had probably never so much as changed a nappy disposable or otherwise! I doubt he'd have said that if he was the one scraping shit off a cloth nappy every day. But when it's a "woman's job" no one blinks at making it a bit harder.

I'm not dismissing bamboo toothbrushes. I've investigated them for my own family. But if green measures are consistently presented as a lifestyle choice for the comfortable, that's a barrier to them being especially helpful in changing anything effectively.

And tbh, that wasn't even my point wrt feminism and eco lifestyles - it was that my friend with the financial support of her partner is doing all this extra labour and bending over backwards which is admirable, of course, but it's an excessive workload on her, and it's totally out of reach for the other friend who equally gives a shit about her environment but doesn't have the resources to do anything, therefore has an added burden of guilt and stress, and even if she did have those resources, it would just mean extra work for her as it does for my eco warrior friend.

I can't see much of an upside in all that, the.

I agree wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool , we don't just have to boycott the products we don't like, we can create the products we do. Green activism which creates a new space for women in the economy.

This is actually one area where both sex and gender are relevant. A lot of plastics and chemicals are targeted at women because of gender not sex, i.e. make-up/ hair products, designed to sell from the idea that women must be feminine. The eco push back here comes in the form of thins like shampoo bars I guess. Then others like sanpro obviously are targeted at us because of our sex, with a push back coming from reusable pads/ mooncups.

Did any of you hear the MP for Wigan on Any Questions the other day talking about the necessity for systems that would allow ordinary people to join in with reducing carbon emissions and so on? It’s true that much of this is v middle class and much of the most serious eco activism v woke. She argued that attention must be paid to the needs of working people because it’s so hard to give up your car in an area like Wigan where public transport has been cut to shreds and work is scarce. And she’s absolutely right. We have to put pressure on governments to provide alternatives and we have to understand how difficult it can be when you are struggling along with life to make the necessary changes.

For me the main thing is changing the way we work. Almost no one need work in an office in a city or town. We can Skype and email and stay home but in my old job when I asked to work from home they were horrified and kind of sceptical even though without my long commute and open plan office I got a lot more work done. Everything needs rethinking and I like how ER are forcing people to face the problem.

Looking at the Xr FAQs FloralBunting they had an interesting bit about using their "privilege" (have grown to hate that phrase) to get their message across, specifically putting their white protesters in positions where they might get arrested rather than their POC protesters because they know the police/ justice system treats POCs worse. They also talked about developed countries needing to do twice as much to reflect the fact that other countries can do less. So maybe that same class aspect needs to be reflected internally as well, i.e. MC/ affluent people making bigger changes to offset the fact that less well off people can't afford bamboo this and reusable that. It doesn't shift the burden off women sadly, but it shifts it from poor single mums to well off SAHMs with supportive partners. Which I guess is the (original, pre TRA) point of intersectional feminism. Recognising that even within an oppressed class, some women are more oppressed than others, and adjusting your activism accordingly. Though really we just need to shift the burden onto the class with the actual power.

Yes, I totally agree. That's where it all gets very difficult, though, because what seems to be happening with green issues is two tandem movements - the anarchist protest stuff, which I understand, and the consumerist business element which is a very different animal.

The problem is that a capitalist system is predicated on ever expanding growth, and a sustainable eco worldview doesn't work like that. 'Green' is just going to become another commodity in a capitalist system, balance and all that is just a slogan and a sales pitch.

I veer between wondering if we can harness the better elements of the free market, or if complete revolution is the only realistic solution.

Almost no one need work in an office in a city or town.

Agree, and again, encouraging employers to make more jobs work from home/ remote massively increases the ability of women to advance/ fit work around childcare. If done right, green activism could end up forcing a lot of the changes feminists have been arguing for.

This is a great thread OP. I've been looking into GC groups and I'm an ex Green Party member looking for a new political home.

I've also found mostly women, groups of women and married couples with kids launching the zero waste stores in my area.

I've mostly encountered women in zero waste conversations and all the things I buy are from companies run by women.

I think there's an opportunity for some kind of grassroots movement if it could all be connected on some way.

'Green' is just going to become another commodity in a capitalist system

If I understand rightly that's why Xr want a citizen's assembly to try and prevent exactly that kind of "capture". It really made me think of the "capture" we've seen with the diversity movement, and also pop feminism.

I veer between wondering if we can harness the better elements of the free market, or if complete revolution is the only realistic solution.

I've been asking myself the same thing

And on that note, having been up since 5am and working a full, physically demanding day in an extremely busy retail environment and having come home to a broken dishwasher and three bowls full of washing up to do, I shall call it a night and pick this up tomorrow. G'night all.

I think there's an opportunity for some kind of grassroots movement if it could all be connected on some way.

Me too. I can see a bunch of ways this can help women - increased power to lobby for reproductive rights, increased entrepreneurial opportunities for women, a move towards a economic modal that works for women. But it could, in the wrong hands, devastate women's progress, by limiting our reproductive choices, forcing us into more unpaid labour roles, exploiting us through increased marketing of expensive eco friendly makeup (and other "gendered" products), and the political capture of a green movement as a further way to control any women who engage in it.

So, basically, we need to take this bull by the horns early and make it work for us, rather than reacting when someone else has already co-opted it and is using it against us.

This really is an excellent thread. I’ll be back tomorrow but have to go to bed. Big work day tomorrow. *yawns

Night both, sleep well :)

Almost no one need work in an office in a city or town

I don't agree with this. The idea of isolated individuals all working from home, never interacting face to face with colleagues or clients sounds ghastly and impractical.

Interesting thread.

We can all do our bit, but when the council or government don't, it makes it seem almost an insurmountable problem.
How do we get counties to care enough to change when they've not yet cared?
We (personal we) recycle more than we throw away, but when there's a news leak that the rubbish and recycling are ending up in the same place, I wonder at the time and water I've wasted.
I guess it's the apathy that's hard to counter.

* Warning - Tin Foil Hat Theory *

1. Reproductive rights . Clearly over population is a big problem here. On the one hand, increasing access to abortion, contraception, and sex education helps with this. But any attempts to limit population growth in a more active way, such as through legislation, will necessarily infringe on women's rights. China's "single child" policy is an obvious example of this, with it's double effect of not only controllingwomen's reproduction but also increasing sex selective abortions/ the murder of female infants.

It’s been commented on a lot that TRA’ism feels like a top down push. Would the effective sterilisation of the next generation slow the population growth enough to make a difference?

Prepared to be told I’m barking.

I agree, Lass.

And I think the work ‘place’ can function as refuge from the domestic sphere, in a number of ways.

GirlDownUnder I've seen that theory repeated in a few places now, but I don't think I can believe it. I feel like I spend a lot of time with my tin foil hat on atm, especially with the whole "sex work is work", "pro surrogacy" thing, but I think that ones a bridge too far.

Good point Lass I think I meant "need" in a physical sense rather than thinking about emotional need as well. Lots of work doesn't physically need to be office based, but of course working outside the house has other benefits that many people need.

I've been thinking a lot about climate change recently with all the Xr protests going on. Call me naive but I really didn't realise things were that bad.

Grab, I’m going to be honest and say this makes me so cross.

Do you feel the information has somehow been hidden (it really, really hasn’t) or did you just not want to know, because it would limit your lifestyle?

Packaging is just such bloody obvious starter. I bought a new phone case this week. It came in a plastic moulding inside a cardboard box. It is completely unnecessary.

Carphone Warehouse could have had one unpacked model on display. The rest of the stock for that model could have been supplied to them in a box with no individual wrapping. The individual units could have been wrapped up in old newspaper or similar for protection during transit and sold to customers with no packaging at all.

Actually thinking about it, I'm fairly certain Radley and some Cath Kidston phone covers (which are much nicer but only for iPhones) are displayed and sold without packaging.