The taint of the feminine

As a young kid, I was pretty angry that I was a girl. I saw that most boys ran faster, were stronger, didn’t give birth or have periods, and, most alluring of all to the seven year old me, could pee standing up. Society didn’t help me to feel positive about being a girl, men had important jobs and were respected. Most grown women I knew were housewives - a role that did not shout “honored”. From a young age, I keyed into how our language belittles women - for starters being ‘girly’ or ‘sissy’ was a bad thing. Even in my very liberal upbringing, I’d perceived that my aspirations weren’t as important as my brothers’ or my male classmates’. Combined with a tomboy nature, the lure of male status drew me to masculine hobbies and even a male dominated career. When I got my PhD in theoretical astrophysicist, my parents were overjoyed. But astronomy, as exhilarating as it was, wasn’t answering my deep rooted calling to protect wildlife. I cannot convey the depths of my father’s disappointment when I decided to leave astronomy and study climate change.

Although my Dad was a physicist, he never thought human induced climate change was real. Until his death in 1999, he regularly sent me climate denial articles - which was pretty demoralizing. I don’t know exactly what was at the root of his climate denial, but as I’ve gathered years I’ve wondered if it was tied up with the perception that environmentalism is tainted by association with the feminine. If so, he was not alone. Most of us think of environmentalism as feminine, and most of us undervalue the feminine.

We give lip service to the value of traditional female roles, but we don’t give financial, social, or linguistic value to these roles. More on this below, but first note that this disregard for the feminine extends to caring for nature. Many scorn eco-choices as soft and over-caring, and those making eco-choices are labelled as unrealistic or emotional, and feminine. But it is not just our low regard for nurturing that ties nature to the feminine, we tend to think of nature itself as feminine - and that association goes back thousands of years.

The ancient Greeks believed Gaia was the personification of Earth and the ancestral mother of all life. Many Native American traditions think of the Earth as our nurturing sacred Mother. Today, women are more likely to seek eco-solutions than men: three quarters of vegans are women, three quarters of animal rights groups members are women, and women consume less carbon and buy more green products. An in-depth literature review postulates that the greater pro-eco behaviors of women arise from traditionally feminine characteristics like altruism, caring and nurturing roles, and approval seeking, as well as the feminine characterization of nature. But there are other social constructs at play here too.

To try to turn this connection between the feminine and eco-action to our favor, it is constructive to remind ourselves how deeply society devalues women.

The Bureau of Labor statistics reports that as of 2023, American women earned 84% of what men in the same field earned, with the gap increasing as salaries increase. There are many attempts to dismiss this gender pay gap with arguments such as “women have less experience because they take time off work to care for people”, or “women aren’t aggressive enough in asking for promotions or raises” or “women choose low paying jobs”. All these arguments have been refuted: women with comparable experience and degrees are paid less than comparable men, women actually ask for raises and promotions more than men, and women don’t choose low paying jobs but rather as women enter a field the pay drops, by as much as 5% for every 10% increase in the number of women doing a given job. The gender pay gap is real. But even if the above attempts to dismiss the gap could survive scrutiny, their very articulation appear to me as further examples of how we don’t value women. We are not financially valuing the caring they’ve done, the way they approach their career, or the jobs they choose.

We also undercut women linguistically. Perhaps most famously is that we refer to extreme or uncontrolled behavior by it comparing to a woman’s ovaries - hysterical is derived from a Greek word meaning “of the womb”. This manages to belittle an entire gender with one word. English uses “man” as a placeholder for all of humanity (mankind, chairman, human). This drove me mad as a young person but like many of my frustrations with social norms, my anger was dismissed as me being overly sensitive, i.e. overly feminine. Once you start paying attention, you can pick out slights to women all the time, which chips away at women’s confidence and does men no favors either.

In addition to financial and linguistic gender biases, we grant men far more social status than women. A striking example of this comes in the form of medical patients seeking second opinions. Analyzing four sets of gender combinations for an initial specialist visit (male patient-male specialist, male patient-female specialist, female patient-male specialist, and female patient-female specialist), researchers found that the male patients in the male patients-female specialist group were far more likely to seek out a second opinion than the other three pairings. Ruling out many possible contributing factors, the authors concluded that this enhanced second opinion rate was driven by distrust of the female doctors’ skills. The authors also found that this lose of patients resulted in a reduction of female specialists’ income by 15% relative to their male counterparts.

There are loads of other examples of the lower social status of women. I’ve got a 60 year catalog of them if you’d allow me. But I’ll refrain (it’s hard) and instead refer you to some statistics. The fascinating book Invisible Woman provides a review of study upon study exploring how the modern world is designed around the average guy. For instance, from the 1950s to 2011, all crash test dummies were based on the average man - and as of the writing of the book it hadn’t gotten much better. Because safety tests ignore the differences between men and women’s bodies, when a woman is in car crash, she is 17% more likely to die and 47% more likely to be seriously injured. On a larger scale, a UN report finds that people making national and working condition decisions are predominantly male: only 27% of parliamentary seats and 28% of management positions are held by women. To quote a 2004 paper about cultural gender stereotypes in the US :

“Men are viewed as more status worthy and competent overall and more competent at the things that ‘count most’ (e.g., instrumental rationality). Women are seen as less competent in general but ‘nicer’ and better at communal tasks even though these tasks themselves are less valued”.

Ouch.

Our disregard for women is so strong, that researchers have found that men are less likely to make choices if they perceive those choices as feminine. For instance, this study by Brough et al found:

• consumers making green choices were consistently ranked as more feminine,

• men were less likely to make a green choice if a precursor activity entailed a gender threat - which could be something as simple as receiving a frilly birthday card, and

• prior masculine affirmations led men to make more green choices.

In concurrence with previous research, the authors of this study concluded that men were making choices to maintain their gender identity. It seems our inaction on climate change and biodiversity protection is driven, in part, by gender identity safeguarding.

Indeed, eco-activists in the 1980s sought to sever the connection between eco-actions and the feminine, in order to jettison the taint of the feminine and thus elevate environmentalism’s status. Frankly, that’s just insulting. And probably impossible. Another school of thought, radical ecofeminism, contends that the patriarchy intentionally groups women and nature together in order to regulate and commodify both. I baulk at the idea that half the human race intentionally supresses the other half, but I have to admit there does seem to be some justification for this point of view. The commodification of women and natural resources has fueled much of our economic growth. It is estimated that, globally, women do around 11 trillion $USD a year of unpaid labor - almost half the US’ GDP. And the UN concludes that resource extraction, in addition to being a global case of unpaid for goods, is driving three threats to humananity’s very existence: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Radical ecofeminism claims that the patriarchy excuses this abuse of women and nature by labeling them both as chaotic, irrational, and in need of control.

This idea that the patriarchy has intentionally suppressed women and nature is supported by recent archeological evidence which indicates that patriarchy was nurtured to justify hierarchy and support the elite. Until recently we’ve thought that patriarchy arose from the development of agriculture, but some scientists argue that the timing doesn’t align. There was domestication of plants and animals long before women began to be subjugated. And whats more, women did, and still do, roughly half of all farm work. Instead, researchers claim that archaeological evidence supports the hypothesis that patriarchy arose as states began to develop. Those in power needed surfs to work, lower classes to make things, women to birth more surfs, warriors to go fight battles to protect wealth, and so forth. In this point of view, the wealthy elites would have encouraged patriarchy as just one of several hierarchical social structures, to justify and empower their rule. Historical evidence shows that as these social hierarchies grew, women starting to disappear from the public world. Patriarchal structures were all about keeping the wealthy rich.

And just in case you are under the misconception that patriarchy is some “natural state” of humanity, the archeological record shows that humanity was far more egalitarian in the deep past. The earliest cave drawings depict men and women being of equal size. If at first that doesn’t seem like much evidence for egalitarian societies, let it in sink in for a while. Recall that psychologists use the relative size of family members in children’s drawings as an insight into the child’s perception of who has power. Other evidence of egalitarian pre-historic societies come from burials. At Çatalhöyük, the largest known neolithic site, a 9,000 year old settlement in Turkey, archaeologists found that men and women had identical diets, did similar work, and were buried in the same ways. Men and women were nearly the same size, though the men were slightly taller, the women were slightly heavier. Artifact finds there support the conclusion that this early society was egalitarian. In further support of idea that patriarchy is not hardwired into us, note that there are 160 matrilineal human societies in the world today. In these societies, power and influence are often shared between men and women. Of our two nearest relatives, one is patriarchal and the other is matriarchal. Chimpanzee’s are patriarchal and they use violence to sort out problems. Infanticide and violent subjugation are common. On the other hand, in bonobo society the females run an egalitarian social strucutre - and they use sex to solve problems. Which would you choose?

We also find that in gender equal human societies, men are less likely to be depressed, have a reduce risk of a violent death, and have lower suicide rates. And of course, in more egalitarian societies it is okay to have masculine and/or feminine traits because both are valued, men are allowed to show their feelings and are more likely to have well developed emotional intelligence and have better mental health outcomes. The rise of the patriarchy didn’t just demote women to second class citizens, it also demoted the vast majority of humanity to serfdom. This continues today as the rich continue to get richer and the poor poorer. In 2016, the wealhiest 1% in the US controled 32% of the country’s wealth, whereas the poorest 50% control just 3% of the wealth.

My understanding is that it has primarily been the oligarchy, and not patriarchy, which has oppressed women, most men, non-whites, and nature for the benefit of the ultra wealthy. Today corporatations and billionaires exert staggering levels of influence on governments and populist leaders - preventing and delaying action on climate change, gun laws, equal rights, and health care.

Dismantling the patriarch (and the oligarchy) is not about oppressing men or putting women over men. Rather is about uplifting women to an equal status with men. All genders are celebrated for their strengths. The heart of Cultural Ecofeminism is that respect for all living beings is seen as a strength, an aspiration, and valuable. Women, men, and nature, are seen as sacred and interconnected. Diversity is celebrated. This seems like a self evident truth to me.

So … to summarize, nature and the feminine are connected in our minds in the following way

• we perceive nature as feminine

• we think caring for nature is a feminine act

• women do more to protect nature

• women and nature are both undervalued, subjugated, and controlled by society.

But there is a further way that women and nature are connected. As humans, 50% - 90% of the natural resources we extracted from Mother Earth are for traditionally feminine chores, like cooking and running our homes. We can greatly reduce this usage of natural resources if we adopt eco-friendly behaviors - like reducing our meat intake, cooking wholefoods from scratch, line drying clothes, repairing and mending, and saving energy. One might be tempted to suggest that we ought to embrace the traditional housewife role. But that can’t be the responsibility of women alone. Women already do more of these chores than men - even in households with a man and woman earning nearly the same amount women do 5 hours more of household chores a week than their partners. The men use the extra 5 hours to do a bit more of their paid job and to have a bit of leisure.

The lure of paid work seems to be the bottleneck here. Earning money affords all kinds of status, freedom, and a sense of security. Intellectually I understand that caring and nurturing are the most important things we do, but I cringe at the lack of recognition and interest that greets me when I tell people I’m retired and work as an eco-activist. I now have greater purpose and meaning than academia ever afforded me. But this work, which is so aligned with the feminine, is so often dismissed. I am pigheaded - so I soldier on. But what of those who are more busy, more concerned with safeguarding their masculinity, or more centrist than I? They will likely abandon their green leanings. So perhaps the greatest everyday act we can do encourage eco-actions is to value, respect, be proud of, and shout from the roof tops that we appreciate and love our mothers - human and Gaian.