by Charlene Spretnak

(From Charlene Spretnak, “Critical and Constructive Contributions of Ecofeminism,” Pp. 181- 189 in Peter Tucker and Evelyn Grim (Eds.),Worldviews and Ecology, Philadelphia: Bucknell Press, 1993.)

The earth-body and the womb-body run on cosmological time. Just as the flow of earth’s life-giving waters follows lunar rhythms, so too follow the tides of a woman’s womb. No culture has failed to notice these connections or the related feats of elemental power: that the female can grow both sexes from her very flesh and transform food into milk for them, and that the earth cyclically produces vast bounty and intricate dynamics of the biosphere that allow life. Cultural responses to the physical connections between nature and the female range from respect and honor to fear, resentment, and denigration. Whatever the response, it is elaborately constructed over time and plays a primal, informing role in the evolution of society’s worldview.

The central insight of ecofeminism is that a historical, symbolic, and political relationship exists between the denigration of nature and the female in Western cultures. The field has grown immensely since the term (as eco-feminisme) was coined in 1972 by Françoise d’Eaubonne in La feminisme ou la mort. Women have come into ecofeminism in the United States from several directions, including the environmental movement, various types of alternative politics, and the feminist spirituality movement. (l) In recent years, a number of ecofeminist anthologies, as well as hundreds of articles, have been published. (2) This introductory article will present three main aspects of ecofeminism: philosophy, political activism, and spirituality.

Historical Background

With regard to European cultures, considerable archaeological evidence indicates that both the earth and the female were held in high regard in the Neolithic settlements prior to the Bronze Age. (3)Ritual figurines of a stylized sacred female with incised patterns of water or with the head of a bird, for instance, reflect perceptions of inherent interconnectedness with nature and seemingly “obvious” honoring of the elemental power of the female. After 4500 B.C. the archaeological record reveals a radical shift. Graves were no longer roughly egalitarian between the sexes (with women having somewhat more burial items than men) but suddenly followed the barrow model of burial, wherein a chieftain is surrounded by the bodies of men, women, children, animals and objects that he owned or controlled. The westward migrations of nomadic Indo-European tribes from the Eurasian steppes imposed in old Europe a warrior cult, the addition of fortifications around settlements, a patriarchal social system, and the transferral of the sense of the sacred from nature and the female to a distant sky-god, although not all societies followed this pattern, of course. (4)

From the Bronze Age onward, the denigration of nature and the female in European societies fluctuated but never disappeared. The Pythagoreans codified their influential table of opposites in which the female is linked with the negative attributes of formlessness, the indeterminate, the irregular, the unlimited–that is, dumb matter, as opposed to the (male) principles of fixed form and distinct boundaries. Aristotle considered females to be passive deformities. The intellectual prowess of the male, he felt could reveal and categorize all forms and functions of organisms in nature. Later, the medieval cosmology ranked men above women, animals, and the rest of nature, all of which were considered to be entangled with matter in ways that the male spirit and intellect were not. The advent of modernity created by the succession of Renaissance humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment shattered the holism (but not the hierarchical assumptions) of the medieval synthesis by framing the story of the human apart from the larger unfolding story of the earth community. (5) The “new mechanical philosophy” of the Scientific Revolution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries perceived the natural world as a clockwork that could be fully apprehended and mastered by (male) human intellect. The practitioners of empirical science used metaphors that express heady delight in assaulting nature in order to learn “her” secrets. “Ecofeminists and others have noted that similar metaphors and attitudes were used in the “trials” (legalistic rituals of patriarchal hysteria) that preceded witch burnings and other torture during the era of the new rationalism. (6)

Dualistic Thinking in Western Philosophy and Culture

The dualistic thinking that has shaped so much of the Eurocentric worldview is perhaps the central concern of ecofeminist philosophical and political analysis. Countless ramifications follow from the Eurocentric notion of “the masculine” being associated with rationality, spirit, culture, autonomy, assertiveness, and the public sphere, while “the feminine” is associated with emotion, body, nature, connectedness, receptivity, and the private sphere. The reductionism of this orientation is accompanied by several assumptions that are essential to patriarchy: that the cluster of attributes associated with the masculine is superior to that associated with the feminine; that the latter exists in service tithe former; that the relationship between the two is inherently agonistic; and that a logic of domination over nature and the female should prevail among (male) humans in the “superior” configuration. The Eurocentric construction of masculinity hence is a reactive and unstable posturing to appear “not-nature” and “not-female.” The patriarchal core of the Eurocentric worldview is the culturally imposed fear that nature and the elemental power of the female are potentially chaotic and engulfing unless contained by the will of the cultural fathers.

Ecofeminists feel that the above analysis is relevant to identifying problematic assumptions in philosophical and political situations that have evolved within the Eurocentric orientation. In the area of ecofeminist philosophy, two topics that have received good deal of attention are the critique of “mainstream” (7)environmental ethics and the dialogue between ecofeminism and deep ecology.

Ecofeminist Critiques of Environmental Philosophy

With regard to the field of environmental ethics, ecofeminists maintain that many of its leading philosophers are largely blind toothier patriarchal assumptions and hence can only replicate the logic of domination, albeit embedded in various versions of an ecological worldview. Ecofeminist philosophers reject the assumption that clinging to the rationalist concept of the self and the instrumental view of nature that dominates Western philosophy is a viable way to frame a post patriarchal environmental ethics. The Kantian-rationalist framework is based on appositionally construed reason: intellectual facility that is sharply distinct from the “corrupting” influences of the emotional, the personal, the particular. (8) Because the self disbelieved to be discontinuous from other humans and the rest of the natural world, moral progress is possible via a progression away from personal feelings to abstract, universalized reason. This approach results in strong opposition between care and concern for particular others (the “feminine,” private realm) and generalized moral concern (the “masculine,” public realm). Ecofeminists have identified this false opposition as a major cause of Western maltreatment of nature, noting that concern for nature should not be viewed as the completion of a process of (masculine) universalization, moral abstraction and disconnection, discarding the self, emotions, and special ties(“Nature,” passim).

Ecofeminists also challenge the Eurocentric concept of rights as a basis for philosophical frameworks of environmental ethics. “Ethical humanists” and “animal liberationists” attempt to establish the relative values of various parts of nature via such criteria as sentience, consciousness, rationality, self-determination, and interests. A being possessing one of these characteristics is said to have “intrinsic value” and hence the right to “moral consideration.”(9) Ecofeminists generally regard this approach as static, arbitrary, and lacking a holistic apprehension of the natural world (including humans). Another objection to the use of rights theory is that it requires strong separation of individual rights-holders and is set in a framework of human community and legality. Its extension to the rest of the natural world often draws upon Mill’s notion that if a being has a right to something not only should he or she (or it) have that something but others are obligated to intervene and secure it. Such reasoning gives humans almost limitless obligations to intervene massively in all sorts of far-reaching and conflicting ways in natural, balanced cycles to secure rights of a bewildering variety of beings (“Nature,” 8). Ecofeminists feel that a more promising approach for an ethics of nature would be to remove the concept frights from the central position it currently holds and focus instead on less dualistic moral concepts such as respect, sympathy, care, concern, compassion, gratitude, friendship, and responsibility(“Nature,” 9). (10)

The Ecofeminist Dialogue with Deep Ecology

The response of ecofeminist philosophers to the body of thought known as deep ecology has drawn attention to its gender-blind assumptions in condemning anthropocentrism without taking seriously the formative dynamics of androcentrism, or male dominance. Most ecofeminists acknowledge common ground with deep ecology’s rejection of rationalist value theories and an environmental ethic grounded in abstract principles and universal rules believed to be discoverable through reason alone. (11) Most ecofeminists also appreciate deep ecology’s rejection of the Eurocentric sense of discontinuity between humans and nature. However, ecofeminists are wary of assumptions that may lie embedded in the concept of the “ecological self,” which was formulated by the founder of deep ecology, Arne Naess, and which refers to the aspect of one’s being that is continuous with the large Self (that is, the unitive dimension of being) rather than the individual self. It is sometimes described by Naess’s colleagues in ways that could be interpreted to result in the obliterating of all particularity, a worrisome notion to the sex that has been socialized in patriarchal culture to sacrifice their own self-definition to the needs of husbands and children. Other ecofeminist concerns include issues of differentiation (embedded in relationship), biocentric egalitarianism (the recognition that all species have worth), and concepts of caring. (12)

Political Analysis and Activism

In this area, ecofeminists have astutely critiqued the masculinist bias in the daily functioning of the environmental movement; (13)played an important role in the growing challenge to the modern model of “development” for the Third and Fourth Worlds; (14) and been a leading force in campaigns for animal rights (15.) and opposition to several aspects of reproductive technologies. (16) Most ecofeminist activists are engaged with grassroots political work, whether or not they identify themselves with any particular party, movement, or ideology. Many ecofeminists work in the Green politics movement, often within Green parties, because the democratic, community-based, and the ecological Green political vision includes ecofeminist concerns and aspirations. (17.) Its ideal of community-based economics, in which wealth and ownership are spread as broadly as possible, stands in stark contrast to the increasing centralization of power and control in the hands of huge corporations.

The experience of most feminists who have entered the environmental movement either in institutionalized organizations or alternative groups has been painfully disillusioning. The historical link noted by ecofeminist theory between patriarchal attitudes and the logic of domination over nature, women, and people of color has yet to be acknowledged in practice by most male activists. In the Green politics movement this situation is often somewhat better than in environmentalist organizations because feminist values are among the core values, at least in principle. Hence Greens are ideologically committed to eliminating patriarchal behavior. When that fails to occur, women leave the Greens, as they have demonstrated in several countries. Sometimes they return when conditions improve.

An example of the political issues addressed by ecofeminists is their vocal opposition to policies that reduce women of the Third(“developing”) and Fourth (indigenous) Worlds to “resources” in the emerging global economy. A leading ecofeminist critic, Vandana Shiva, who is an Indian physicist, maintains that “maldevelopment” is a new project of Western patriarchy, one that results in the death of the “feminine principle.” She asserts that the modern model of development being imposed by the West is inherently patriarchal because it is fragmented, “anti-life,” opposed to diversity, dominating, and delights in “progress” based on nature’s destruction and women’s subjugation. (18) Ecofeminists insist that Third and Fourth World women themselves must have control over decisions about whether to opt for local self-reliance or integrate into the global economy. Unfortunately, enormously powerful banks and transnational corporations in the “developed” world are furthering “maldevelopment” via centralized, large-scale projects that are usually capital-intensive, energy-intensive, and disruptive of local self-reliance and ecological integrity.

Spiritual Dimension

In addition to the philosophical and political aspects, ecofeminism contains a spiritual dimension. The ecofeminist alternative to the Western patriarchal worldview of fragmentation, alienation, agonistic dualisms, and exploitative dynamics is a radical reconceptualization that honors holistic integration: interrelatedness, transformation, embodiment, caring, and love. Such an orientation is simpatico with the teachings of several Eastern and indigenous spiritual traditions on nonduality and the relative nature of seemingly sharp divisions and separations. To refer to the ultimate mystery of creativity in the cosmos–its self-organizing, self-regulating dynamics– spiritual traditions draw on metaphor and symbol. Those may be female, male, or nonanthropomorphic, such as the Taoist perception of The Way. Ecofeminists are situated in all the major religious traditions, and most see good reason for women to use female imagery in references to “the divine,” or ultimate mystery in the cosmos. Particularly, in patriarchal societies, the choice of female metaphors is a healthy antidote to the cultural denigration of women. Those ecofeminists drawn to Goddess spirituality appreciate the nature-based sense of the sacred as immanent in the earth, our bodies, and the entire cosmic community–rather than being located in some distant father-god far removed from “entanglement” with matter. The transcendent nature of creativity in the cosmos, or the divine, lies not above us but in the infinite complexity of the sacred whole that continues to unfold. Goddess spirituality is not the sole tradition that contains these understandings, and even religions that are somewhat hostile to them are being persistently challenged by their own ecofeminist members.

Conclusion

In summary, ecofeminism is a movement that focuses attention on the historical linkage between denigration of nature and the female. It seeks to shed light on why Eurocentric societies, as well as those in their global sphere of influence, are now enmeshed in environmental crises and economic systems that require continuing the ecocide and the dynamics of exploitation. Ecofeminism continues the progression within traditional feminism from attention to sexism to attention to all systems of human oppression (such as racism, classism, ageism, and heterosexism) to recognition that “naturism”(the exploitation of nature) is also a result of the logic of domination. (19) Ecofeminism challenges environmental philosophy to abandon postures upholding supposedly gender-free abstract individualism and “rights” fixations and to realize that human relationships (between self and the rest of the world) are constitutive, not peripheral. Hence care for relationships and contextual embeddedness provides grounds for ethical behavior and moral theory. Politically, ecofeminists work in a broad range of efforts to halt destructive policies and practices and to create alternatives rooted in community-based legitimacy that honors the self-determination of women as well as men and that locates the well-being of human societies within the well-being of the entire earth community. Spiritually, ecofeminists are drawn to practices and orientations that nurture experiences of nonduality and loving reverence for the sacred whole that is the cosmos.

Ecofeminism is a global phenomenon that is bringing attention to the linked domination of women and nature in order that both aspects can be adequately understood. Ecofeminists seek to transform the social and political orders that promote human oppression embedded in ecocidal practices. The work consists of resistance, creativity, and hope.

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Notes

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1. See Charlene Spretnak, “Ecofeminism: Our Roots and Flowering,” in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, ed. Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1990).

2. The anthologies include the one in the previous citation plus Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, ed. Judith Plant (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989); Ecofeminism. Women, Animals, and Nature, ed. Greta Gaard (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Ecofeminism and the Sacred, ed. Carol J. Adams (New York: Crossroads Press, 1993); Ecofeminist Philosophy, ed. Karen J. Warren (New York: Routledge); and Ecological Feminism, ed. Karen J. Warren(Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

3. See Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilization and The Civilization of the Goddess: Neolithic Europe before the Patriarchy (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1989 and 1991respectively). Gimbutas cites the work of numerous European archaeologists in addition to the discoveries from her own excavations.

4. For an account of other, living options, see Peggy Reeves, Female Power and Male Dominance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

5. See Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988).

6. See Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row,1980). Also see Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring inside Her (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).

7. The term “manstream” is used by Janis Birkeland to refer to the male-dominant manstream of Eurocentric societies. See ‘ Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice,” in Gaard, ed., Ecofeminism.

8. See Val Plumwood, ”Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism, “Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 6, no. 1 (Spring1991): 1-7; hereafter, “Nature,” with page references cited in the text.

9. See Marti Kheel, “The Liberation of Nature: A Circular Affair.” Environmental Ethics 7, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 139.

10. This list is common in feminist models for ethics, but Plumwood is citing here from a book on Buddhism, Francis Cook’s Hue-Yen Buddhism The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977). Plumwood’s citation of an admirable approach to moral theory from a book on Buddhism reflects the common ground between many of the concerns of ecofeminism and those spiritual traditions that emphasize nonduality, wisdom, and compassion.

11. Marti Kheel, “Ecofeminism and Deep Ecology: Reflections on Identity and Difference,” Covenant for a New Creation: Ethics, Religion, and Public Policy, ed. Carol S. Robb and Carl J. Casebolt (Mary Knoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991), 142-45.

12. For a summary of the dialogue between ecofeminism and deep ecology as of spring 1987, see Michael E. Zimmerman, “Deep Ecology and Ecofeminism: The Emerging Dialogue,” in Diamond and Orenstein, eds., Reweaving the World. Also see the articles by Kheel and Plumwood cited in nn 8, 9, and 11, above. Also see Charlene Spretnak, ‘Radical Nonduality in Ecofeminist Philosophy,” in Warren, ed., Ecological Feminism.

13. See Pam Simmons, ‘The Challenge of Feminism,” The Ecologist 22, no. 1 (January/ February 1992): 2-3.

14. See Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London Zed Books, 1988). Also see Pam Simmons, “‘Women in Development’: A Threat to Liberation,” The Ecologist22, no. I (January/February 1992): 16-21.

15. See Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics Meat (New York: Continuum, 1990). Also see Andree Collard and Joyce Contrucci, Rape of the Wild: Men’s Violence against Animals and the Earth(London: The Women’s Press, 1988). Also see several articles in Gaard, ed., Ecofeminism. Also see the article by Kheel cited in n. 9. above.

16. See Irene Diamond, “Babies, Heroic Experts, and a Poisoned Earth,” Reweaving the World, 201-10. Also see Vandana Shiva,” The Seed and the Earth: Women, Ecology, and Biotechnology,” The Ecologist 22, no. I (January/February 1992): 4-7.

17. The “Ten Key Values” of’ the Green politics movement in the U.S. are ecological wisdom, nonviolence, grassroots democracy, social justice and personal responsibility, community-based economics, decentralization, feminism, respect for diversity, global responsibility, and sustainable future focus. See Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra, Green Politics: The Global Promise (New York: Dutton, 1984)

18. See Shiva, Staying Alive.

19. See Karen J. Warren, “The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism,” Environmental Ethics 12, no. 2 (Summer 1990):132-46. Note that the first footnote in this article is a bibliographic listing that cites numerous ecofeminist books and articles.

by Mary Mellor

PAPER PRESENTED IN VALENCIA, SPAIN MAY 1999 AS PART OF A PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES ECONOMICA ECOLOGICA 1998-9 SPONSORED BY FUNDACIO BANCAIXA, SPAIN
Ecofeminism has a major contribution to make to our understanding of the current destructive relationship between humanity and nonhuman nature.
Ecofeminism as its name implies brings together the insights of feminism and ecology.
FEMINISM is concerned with the way in which women in general have been subordinated to men in general.
ECOLOGY is concerned that human activity is destroying the viability of the global ecosystem.
ECOFEMINISM argues that the two are linked.
Women have been seen as inferior to men in most human societies – I would even go so far as to say all. The natural world has not suffered the same almost universal devaluing within human societies. Through much of human history it has been valued, even worshipped. However, the natural world is not just ecology, the ecosystem, it is also biology. It is through their biology that women have been devalued, even seen as unclean. Women have historically been associated with the life and needs of the human body – that is, domestic work. Their own bodies have also been seen as weak, even dangerous.
Women have been persecuted as witches, disproportionately subject to infanticide and suffered domestic violence in most cultures. Males on the other hand are valued, as strong, resourceful with automatic rights of social dominance. Successful women often have to portray themselves as ‘honorary’ men without the attributes or dependencies of womanhood – particularly the needs of children.
However not all women are subordinate to all men and many men are oppressed through class, caste, ‘race’ or ethnic discrimination. Women also dominate each other. The key issue for ecological economics, therefore is not sex-gender difference but the gendering of human societies.
For ecofeminists the most important aspect of the present global economy is that it represents a value system that subordinates both women and nature. It also sees itself as superior to traditional economies based on rural subsistence production for direct use and local exchange. The modern economic system is based on a dualistic hierarchy of values:

HIGHLY VALUED LOW/NO VALUE
Men /Women
Employment /Domestic work
Market /Subsistence
Marketable resources /Eco-systems
Personal wealth /Social reciprocity
Science/technology /Traditional Knowledge
Reason /Emotion
Mind and Intellect/ Body
Able-bodied Adults /Children,Elderly,People with disabilities

Valuing within economic systems is mainly expressed through money/profit but also as prestige. External to these values are the unvalued or undervalued, the resilience of the eco-system, the unpaid and unrecognised domestic work of women, the social reciprocity in communal societies as represented in non-market economies. While the modern global economy may displace traditional subsistence production, societies still need the stability of social reciprocity – what Adam Smith referred to as moral sentiments.
The valued economy rests on these unacknowledged and unvalued support structures. In doing so it avoids meeting the costs of that economy:

VALUED ECONOMY ME-ECONOMY
( money, profit, prestige) (based on men’s experience)
marketable resources
well paid work
authority/status

SUPPORT ECONOMIES WE-ECONOMY
(undervalued, unacknowledged) (based on women’s experience)
resilience of ecosystem
unpaid domestic work
social reciprocity

The link between women’s subordination and the degradation of the natural world lies in women’s centrality to the support economies of unpaid domestic work and social reciprocity i.e. the home and the community. It is the world of women, of women’s experience – a WE-economy. The valued economy on the other hand is male dominated, representing men’s experience -a ME-economy.
Ecofeminist political economy offers an explanation of how destructive economic systems are constructed and see the WE-economy as the basis of an alternative non-exploiting, sustainable economy.
Central to the present globalised ME-economy is the insistence that we all jump to the same tune – the iron law of so-called free market economics. As in the fairy story, like the children of Hamelin we are compelled to follow the economic piper to our doom. However, if we remember the story, there was one child with disabilities who couldn’t keep up and avoided the fate of the rest. For ecofeminists this is the position of women. They have largely been left behind as the mad economic dance goes by. In the lives and experience of women there lies the possibility of an alternative path.
The roots of our current ills go much deeper than the present globalised capitalist market economy. It is a reflection of the way human activities are valued in all societies that devalue women. And it is not just a case of values, it reflects real material relations. What my studies and those of other feminists have revealed is that women do the majority of work in human societies and are devalued on account of it. The stories of man the hunter are a myth and man-the -breadwinner is a very contemporary and socially limited phenomenon. Throughout history, women have formed the backbone of economic and social systems, although their work has been largely unacknowledged – hidden from history.
Compared with women’s work, men’s valued activities can be seen as an extension of play – often dangerous and difficult – complex and competitive – building monuments, exploring, trading, fighting, hunting, politicking, professing, preaching. Behind they leave the evidence of their passing, the great defensive walls, the tombs and palaces, the gladiatorial arenas, cathedrals, missile silos, Trump tower, the Getty museum.

WOMEN’S WORK
Women have always worked. In modern economies they are particularly exploited as low wage labourers. In the early industrial economies it was women and children who filled the first factories. Women have lower pay than men and less job security, pension, perks and all the other benefits of being at the head of the economic dance. Globalisation is mercilessly exploiting the labour of women as cheap and expendable workers.
However, I am not basing my argument on the unfairness of women’s lives within economic systems but their position at the boundaries of economic systems.
Women have two lives one within the valued economy as workers, consumers, professionals and one without, the world of women’s work. It is generally accepted that women workers with families have two shifts, the first at paid work and the second at home with domestic work, unless their social position enables them to employ other women to do it.
It is important to make a distinction between the work of women and women’s work. The work of women is what they have done through history (including being Prime Minister of Britain). Women’s work is a particular type of work that would be demeaning for a man to do on a regular basis unless he was already demeaned by his low social status on the basis of class, caste, ‘race’ or ethnicity. If a man is not to lose status, women’s work is reclassified from cook to chef, dressmaker to tailor.
Women do far more domestic work than men even when they have full time paid work. The UN Human Development Report of 1995 surveyed 31 countries and showed that combining paid and unpaid work women on average worked much longer hours than men. Men spent from 55 – 79% of their time in paid work. Women spent from 42% – 81% of their time in unpaid work. If women’s unpaid work was valued it would be equivalent to 40% of GDP – even based on the low pay rates for women.
Studies show women doing up to 80% of subsistence agricultural labour in rural communities. There are women in Mozambique spending 2 hours a day collecting water. Women in Peru spending three hours a day gathering fuel wood.
Marilyn Waring reports that among the Nomadic people of the Iranian Zagros mountains while the men look after the animals the women do virtually everything else:
Preparing meals, looking after children, fetching water, collecting fuel wood (which can take up to half a day and large distances), milk and shear the animals, collect edible plants, churn butter, make cheese and yoghurt, spin wool to make clothes, tent cloth and carpets.

WHAT IS WOMEN’S WORK?
Women’s work is the basic work that makes other forms of activity possible. It secures the human body and the community. It is work done for others. While a good deal of this has passed to the market in modern economies a lot remains.
– CARING – child care, sick care, aged care, animal care, community care (volunteering, relationship building), family care (listening, cuddling, sexual nurturing, esteem building)
– ROUTINE AND REPETITIVE – cooking, cleaning, fetching and carrying, weeding,
– WATCHING AND WAITING – being there, available, dependable, on call
(if women go out men are often asked to ‘baby sit’ their own children as if doing a favour)
– EMBODIED It is the work of the human body and its basic needs. Maintenance and sustenance through the cycle of the day and the cycle of life (birth to death). in sickness and in health.
-EMBEDDED WORK It is of necessity local, communal close to home. In subsistence economies it is embedded in the local ecosystem.
When women’s work is taken into the valued economy its pay rates and conditions of work are poor (nursing, catering and cleaning).
The interesting question about women’s work is why is it not valued? Why are there no historical monuments to the woman weeder, grinder, spinner, water carrier?
What is even more interesting is the way women’s economic activities have been lost to history. The modern economy has its ideal as man-the-breadwinner. The true history is woman-the-breadmaker after she has planted, harvested and ground the grain.
Studies of women’s activities in gatherer-hunter and early agricultural
societies show that women’s work was much more important than that of men in the provision of calories. Women were the gatherers, gardeners, small scale trappers and hunters. Men’s activities were much more intermittent, ritual and leisure-based. Through history women (and children) worked the fields and on the looms. They were in the mines (in the UK they formed the first miner’s union).
If this is the case how have men come to dominate valued economic systems? The answer lies in the process by which economic systems are constructed. Economic systems do not relate to human labour directly, what could be described as the real economy, they relate to valued labour. It is the process of valuing and male-ness that are connected. Men do not obtain value because they work, they work because they obtain value. Where there is no value in preference they do not work. The more work is valued, the more male-dominated it becomes. The more necessary and unremitting it is, the more female-dominated work becomes.

GENDERING ECONOMIES: TIME, SPACE AND ALTRUISM
Valued economic systems are created through a distinction within human activities. Some activities are counted in, others are not. At the same time social time and space is accumulated. The more time an activity takes and the more limited it is spatially the more likely it is to be excluded from economic value. From my reading of the history of gender relations it seems that men have claimed social space and time while women have been engaged in the routine and necessary labours of life close to home and domestic responsibilties.
We have an old socialist saying in Britain:WHEN ADAM DELVED (was digging) AND EVE SPAN (was spinning) WHO WAS THEN THE GENTLEMAN?
My version would read:
WHILE EVE DELVED AND SPAN ADAM BECAME A GENTLEMAN
Women’s work in the unvalued economy is based on boundaries of space and time
LIMITED SPACE: women’s work is close to home. Her duties mean that she cannot move far from her responsibilities. She often cannot take higher paid jobs because of her limited mobility
UNLIMITED TIME: Women’s work never ends. Its routine nature means that it endlessly recycles and it must be done when needed – by day or night. The sick must be nursed when they are ill, the children when they wake.
UNREWARDED/ALTRUISTIC: Women do not get any tangible benefit from this work although they may find it intrinsically rewarding. They usually put their own needs last in the family.
The valued economy is quite the opposite:
UNLIMITED SPACE: Mobility is all, goods fly around the world regardless of seasons and local availability. Companies make a fetish of moving their senior staff every few years if not months or days.
LIMITED TIME: The working day has a beginning and end. There is a distinction between paid and unpaid time (leisure). In fact, many women take paid work to get time for themselves even if the work is low paid.
REWARDED: Work is rewarded by pay and prestige

WOMEN’S WORK AS IMPOSED ALTRUISM
Why do women do women’s work? Why through history have they not refused? Partly it is the nature of the work. It is necessary, remorseless work. If it is not done suffering will ensue quite quickly. We can see the problem of street children in societies where women no longer have the resources to cope.
Women in this sense have been altruistic. They have worked through history for little recognition. However this is an imposed altruism. Most women feel they have little choice but to do this work, although it might be experienced as an expression of love and duty. For many women it is fear of violence and/or lack of any other economic options.
Men have justified women’s imposed altruism by claiming that women are naturally suited to women’s work. They are naturally caring and nurturing. Many ecofeminists have sympathy with this view and speak of an ethics of care that can be extended to the natural world. However, I would argue that this ethic is related to women’s work rather than to women themselves.
In prosperous economies women are increasingly refusing to undertake women’s work. Marriage and birth rates are falling dramatically where women have clear economic choices. Italy’s birth rate is 1.3% well below replacement level and women give as their reason for not having children that men do not help domestically. The gender differential in overall working hours is higher in Italy than elsewhere in Europe (nearly two hours a day). In Japan many women are refusing to marry, particularly if a man displays traditional values.
Men’s assumption that they have a natural right to socio-economic domination is also being challenged by women. Where professional positions depend on academic qualifications, women are competing very actively with men.
However, for ecofeminists the future does not lie with women playing
the male game even if that does have the side effect of reducing population rates. A country with a small or negative population growth and a high level of consumption is much more problematic ecologically than a country with a high population growth and low consumption. If women join men in the high production-consumption stakes they will compound the ecological problems we face.

THE ME-ECONOMY: EXTERNALISING WOMAN AND NATURE
The case for linking women’s work with the ecosystem is that they are both externalised by male-dominated economic value systems. Women’s work is not valued because it is body-work, the work associated with the most basic needs of human existence. The natural environment is also the basis for human existence. Why, then are these both externalised? The answer lies in the nature of the ME-economy. The ME-economy is disembodied from the daily cycle, the life cycle and women’s work. It is disembedded from the ecological framework:
ME-ECONOMY
DISEMBODIED FROM BIOLOGICAL TIME:
DAILY CYCLE – The ideal ME-economy worker comes to work fed, cleaned nurtured and emotionally supported.
LIFE CYCLE – The ideal ME-economy worker is not too young or old, fit, healthy
NO WOMEN’S WORK – The ideal ME-economy worker has no routine responsibility for others and is personally mobile.
DISEMBEDDED FROM ECOSYSTEM:
SEASONS: The ME-economy is not limited by local growing seasons
LOCAL ECOLOGICAL LIMITS: The ME-economy draws on the resources of countries around the world – The ecological footprint of London alone requires the equivalent of the land area of Britain
RESOURCE DEPLETION: This will affect future generations, poorer communities or other species not the privileged members of the ME-economy.
TOXICITY/POLLUTION: The ME-economy locates its polluting industries and toxic dumps in poorer communities.
In the ME-economy there is no space for the young, the old, the sick, the tired, the unhappy except as consumers of the (private) old folks home or therapist. They are seen as a burden on the welfare state, which itself is also seen as a burden on the so-called wealth-creating sector. Mostly they disappear into the world of women, the home and community.
The ME-economy is not concerned with the loss of resources for future generations, loss of habitat for other species, loss of biodiversity, the loss of peace, quiet and amenity – unless it can be sold.
The ME-economy is a DIS-EMBEDDED system. It bears no responsibility for the life-cycle of its environment. It is disengaged from ECOLOGICAL TIME – that is the time it takes to restore the effects of human activity – the life-cycle of renewal and replenishment within the eco-system. If there is any possibility of renewal.
The valued economy can be seen as disengaged from BIOLOGICAL TIME – the time of replenishment and renewal for the human body in its daily cycle and life-cycle.
It is not therefore to be unexpected that such an economic system should disrupt biological and ecological systems. Destructiveness is central to its fundamental structure.
How did such a disembodied and disembedded system emerge?

WOMEN’S WORK AS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE ME-ECONOMY AND THE ECO-SYSTEM
Ecofeminists see women’s work as the ‘bridge’ between unsustainable economic systems and the embedded nature of human existence.
The gendered nature of human society means that women in most societies throughout history have done the routine work of the body whether as food growers or domestic workers. Dominant men have distanced themselves from these roles and taken more statusful roles whether as ritual leaders, traders or war-makers.
In most societies there is some version of the ‘men’s house’, a separate place or set of activities which are barred to women. Within this space men concoct the elaborate socio-political ‘games’ that maintain their dominance. In modern societies women have stormed these men’s houses: the law, business, medicine, politics, the military but only on male terms. As Audre Lorde and other feminists have argued you cannot use men’s tools to break down the men’s house.
Men have generally been seen as doing the important things in human history. It has been claimed that men have constructed civilisation. Have they? Are the monuments they have left more important than the sustenance of human existence? Women’s digging stick has rotted back into the earth unlike the stone monuments of men. Why should the digging stick be less valued than the sword?
My basic argument is that male-dominated socio-economic systems have not accepted the embodied and embedded nature of human existence. Instead this has been rejected and despised as women’s work. Valued systems have therefore been erected on a false base. The modern economy does meet many of our basic needs but that is not its primary purpose. The value base is profitable financial exchange or prestige occupations not sustainable provisioning on an equitable basis. The command economy of the Soviet Unionwas little better. It did try to meet basic needs but valued male militarism and monumentalism equally highly. Women carried the double burden of work and the ecological consequences were appalling.
We cannot however, look to women or to Nature for the answer. If women step in and sort out the ME-economy’s mess they are again doing women’s work and no wisdom will have been gained.
It is the responsibility of dominant men and the few women who have joined them, to have the vision to understand the false base upon which historic systems have rested. This understanding will be triggered by the instability and unsustainablity of the ME-economy. Falsely grounded economic systems have built-in contradictions as Marx has pointed out.
Men and women can then jointly construct new socio-economic structures that are egalitarian and sustainable. Where to begin? A number of greens suggest returning to a subsistence economy. I am not sure this is practicable for urbanised and industrialised societies. We should certainly support existing subsistence economies to retain their skills and resource base. However, I would envisage most people living in an economic system based on a division of labour and mutually achieved sufficiency, rather than peasant-style self-sufficiency.

ECOFEMINIST ECONOMICS: GETTING FROM THERE TO HERE
The central feature of the modern ME-economy is the fact that it is beyond the control even of those who benefit from it. In a very real sense it is always THERE somewhere else (national, trans-national, global) and never HERE where we live in our lives. Although most of us take the THERE economy for granted very little of it is HERE within our control. This is fundamentally undemocratic and makes us behave in unsustainable ways to secure our livelihood.
What would an ecofeminist economy look like?
1. There would be a shift of focus from disembedded and disembodied structures to patterns of work and consumption that are sensitive to the human life cycle and to ecological sustainability.
2. Local production would be oriented to local need using sustainable local resources with minimal waste.
3. Basic food provisioning would be local and seasonal. Food would be grown locally where possible, but direct purchasing arrangements could also be agreed with local farmers. Farmers markets would be encouraged where they do not already exist.
4. Provisioning of necessary goods and services would be the main focus of economic systems not money making. It should be possible for people to live and work entirely within a provisioning system.
5. The emphasis would be on useful work rather than employment. That is, people would not need to do harmful work in order to have a livelihood. Any additional profit-based economic activity would be subject to stringent resource/pollution and labour exploitation rules.
6. Work and life would be integrated. Workplace and living base would be interactive. People of all ages would share activities. Living base households would vary from single person to multi-person.
7. Necessary work would be fulfilling and shared. Work and leisure would interact. Productive work would be regularly punctuated by festivals and other celebratory activities
8. Inter-regional and international trade would be seen as a cultural as much as an economic exchange. Travel would also be seen as education and communication rather than consumption.
9. Personal security would rest in the social reciprocity of a provisioning WE-economy rather than in money accumulation systems, particularly in old age.

A crocodile attack can reveal the truth about nature in an instant.

But putting that insight into words can take years.

In the early wet season, Kakadu’s paperbark wetlands are especially stunning, as the water lilies weave white, pink, and blue patterns of dreamlike beauty over the shining thunderclouds reflected in their still waters. Yesterday, the water lilies and the wonderful bird life had enticed me into a joyous afternoon’s idyll as I ventured onto the East Alligator Lagoon for the first time in a canoe lent by the park service. “You can play about on the backwaters,” the ranger had said, “but don’t go onto the main river channel. The current’s too swift, and if you get into trouble, there are the crocodiles. Lots of them along the river!” I followed his advice and glutted myself on the magical beauty and bird life of the lily lagoons, untroubled by crocodiles. Today, I wanted to repeat that experience despite the drizzle beginning to fall as I neared the canoe launch site. I set off on a day trip in search of an Aboriginal rock art site across the lagoon and up a side channel. The drizzle turned to a warm rain within a few hours, and the magic was lost. The birds were invisible, the water lilies were sparser, and the lagoon seemed even a little menacing. I noticed now how low the 14-foot canoe sat in the water, just a few inches of fiberglass between me and the great saurians, close relatives of the ancient dinosaurs. Not long ago, saltwater crocodiles were considered endangered, as virtually all mature animals in Australia’s north were shot by commercial hunters. But after a decade and more of protection, they are now the most plentiful of the large animals of Kakadu National Park. I was actively involved in preserving such places, and for me, the crocodile was a symbol of the power and integrity of this place and the incredible richness of its aquatic habitats.

After hours of searching the maze of shallow channels in the swamp, I had not found the clear channel leading to the rock art site, as shown on the ranger’s sketch map. When I pulled my canoe over in driving rain to a rock outcrop for a hasty, sodden lunch, I experienced the unfamiliar sensation of being watched. Having never been one for timidity, in philosophy or in life, I decided, rather than return defeated to my sticky trailer, to explore a clear, deep channel closer to the river I had travelled along the previous day.

The rain and wind grew more severe, and several times I pulled over to tip water from the canoe. The channel soon developed steep mud banks and snags. Farther on, the channel opened up and was eventually blocked by a large sandy bar. I pushed the canoe toward the bank, looking around carefully before getting out in the shallows and pulling the canoe up. I would be safe from crocodiles in the canoe I had been told but swimming and standing or wading at the water’s edge were dangerous. Edges are one of the crocodile’s favourite food-capturing places. I saw nothing, but the feeling of unease that had been with me all day intensified.

The rain eased temporarily, and I crossed a sandbar to see more of this puzzling place. As I crested a gentle dune, I was shocked to glimpse the muddy waters of the East Alligator River gliding silently only 100 yards away. The channel had led me back to the main river. Nothing stirred along the riverbank, but a great tumble of escarpment cliffs up on the other side caught my attention. One especially striking rock formation a single large rock balanced precariously on a much smaller one held my gaze. As I looked, my whispering sense of unease turned into a shout of danger. The strange formation put me sharply in mind of two things: of the indigenous Gagadgu owners of Kakadu, whose advice about coming here I had not sought, and of the precariousness of my own life, of human lives. As a solitary specimen of a major prey species of the saltwater crocodile, I was standing in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

I turned back with a feeling of relief. I had not found the rock paintings, I rationalized, but it was too late to look for them. The strange rock formation presented itself instead as a telos of the day, and now I could go, home to trailer comfort.

As I pulled the canoe out into the main current, the rain and wind started up again. I had not gone more than five or ten minutes down the channel when, rounding a bend, I saw in midstream what looked like a floating stick one I did not recall passing on my way up. As the current moved me toward it, the stick developed eyes. A crocodile! It did not look like a large one. I was close to it now but was not especially afraid; an encounter would add interest to the day.
Although I was paddling to miss the crocodile, our paths were strangely convergent. I knew it would be close, but I was totally unprepared for the great blow when it struck the canoe. Again it struck, again and again, now from behind, shuddering the flimsy craft. As I paddled furiously, the blows continued. The unheard of was happening; the canoe was under attack! For the first time, it came to me fully that I was prey. I realized I had to get out of the canoe or risk being capsized.
The bank now presented a high, steep face of slippery mud. The only obvious avenue of escape was a paperbark tree near the muddy bank wall. I made the split-second decision to leap into its lower branches and climb to safety. I steered to the tree and stood up to jump. At the same instant, the crocodile rushed up alongside the canoe, and its beautiful, flecked golden eyes looked straight into mine. Perhaps I could bluff it, drive it away, as I had read of British tiger hunters doing. I waved my arms and shouted, “Go away!” (We’re British here.) The golden eyes glinted with interest. I tensed for the jump and leapt. Before my foot even tripped the first branch, I had a blurred, incredulous vision of great toothed jaws bursting from the water. Then I was seized between the legs in a red-hot pincer grip and whirled into the suffocating wet darkness.
Our final thoughts during near-death experiences can tell us much about our frameworks of subjectivity. A framework capable of sustaining action and purpose must, I think, view the world “from the inside,” structured to sustain the concept of a continuing, narrative self; we remake the world in that way as our own, investing it with meaning, reconceiving it as sane, survivable, amenable to hope and resolution. The lack of fit between this subject-centered version and reality comes into play in extreme moments. In its final, frantic attempts to protect itself from the knowledge that threatens the narrative framework, the mind can instantaneously fabricate terminal doubt of extravagant proportions: This is not really happening. This is a nightmare from which I will soon awake. This desperate delusion split apart as I hit the water. In that flash, I glimpsed the world for the first time “from the outside,” as a world no longer my own, an unrecognizable bleak landscape composed of raw necessity, indifferent to my life or death.
Few of those who have experienced the crocodile’s death roll have lived to describe it. It is, essentially, an experience beyond words of total terror. The crocodile’s breathing and heart metabolism are not suited to prolonged struggle, so the roll is an intense burst of power designed to overcome the victim’s resistance quickly. The crocodile then holds the feebly struggling prey underwater until it drowns. The roll was a centrifuge of boiling blackness that lasted for an eternity, beyond endurance, but when I seemed all but finished, the rolling suddenly stopped. My feet touched bottom, my head broke the surface, and, coughing, I sucked at air, amazed to be alive. The crocodile still had me in its pincer grip between the legs. I had just begun to weep for the prospects of my mangled body when the crocodile pitched me suddenly into a second death roll.
When the whirling terror stopped again I surfaced again, still in the crocodile’s grip next to a stout branch of a large sandpaper fig growing in the water. I grabbed the branch, vowing to let the crocodile tear me apart rather than throw me again into that spinning, suffocating hell. For the first time I realized that the crocodile was growling, as if angry. I braced myself for another roll, but then its jaws simply relaxed; I was free. I gripped the branch and pulled away, dodging around the back of the fig tree to avoid the forbidding mud bank, and tried once more to climb into the paperbark tree.
As in the repetition of a nightmare, the horror of my first escape attempt was repeated. As I leapt into the same branch, the crocodile seized me again, this time around the upper left thigh, and pulled me under. Like the others, the third death roll stopped, and we came up next to the sandpaper fig branch again. I was growing weaker, but I could see the crocodile taking a long time to kill me this way. I prayed for a quick finish and decided to provoke it by attacking it with my hands. Feeling back behind me along the head, I encountered two lumps. Thinking I had the eye sockets, I jabbed my thumbs into them with all my might. They slid into warm, unresisting holes (which may have been the ears, or perhaps the nostrils), and the crocodile did not so much as flinch. In despair, I grabbed the branch again. And once again, after a time, I felt the crocodile jaws relax, and I pulled free.
I knew I had to break the pattern; up the slippery mud bank was the only way. I scrabbled for a grip, then slid back to-ward the waiting jaws. The second time I almost made it before again sliding back, braking my slide by grabbing a tuft of grass. I hung there, exhausted. I can’t make it, I thought. It’ll just have to come and get me. The grass tuft began to give way. Flailing to keep from sliding farther, I jammed my fingers into the mud. This was the clue I needed to survive. I used this method and the last of my strength to climb up the bank and reach the top. I was alive!
Escaping the crocodile was not the end of my struggle to survive. I was alone, severely injured, and many miles from help. During the attack, the pain from the injuries had not fully registered. As I took my first urgent steps, I knew something was wrong with my leg. I did not wait to inspect the damage but took off away from the crocodile toward the ranger station.
After putting more distance between me and the crocodile, I stopped and realized for the first time how serious my wounds were. I did not remove my clothing to see the damage to the groin area inflicted by the first hold. What I could see was bad enough. The left thigh hung open, with bits of fat, tendon, and muscle showing, and a sick, numb feeling suffused my entire body. I tore up some clothing to bind the wounds and made a tourniquet for my bleeding thigh, then staggered on, still elated from my escape. I went some distance before realizing with a sinking heart that I had crossed the swamp above the ranger station in the canoe and could not get back without it.
I would have to hope for a search party, but I could maximize my chances by moving downstream toward the swamp edge, almost two miles away. I struggled on, through driving rain, shouting for mercy from the sky, apologizing to the angry crocodile, repenting to this place for my intrusion. I came to a flooded tributary and made a long upstream detour looking for a safe place to cross.
My considerable bush experience served me well, keeping me on course (navigating was second nature). After several hours, I began to black out and had to crawl the final distance to the swamp’s edge. I lay there in the gathering dusk to await what would come. I did not expect a search party until the following day, and I doubted I could last the night.
The rain and wind stopped with the onset of darkness, and it grew perfectly still. Dingoes howled, and clouds of mosquitoes whined around my body. I hoped to pass out soon, but consciousness persisted. There were loud swirling noises in the water, and I knew I was easy meat for another crocodile. After what seemed like a long time, I heard the distant sound of a motor and saw a light moving on the swamp’s far side. Thinking it was a boat, I rose up on my elbow and called for help. I thought I heard a faint reply, but then the motor grew fainter and the lights went away. I was as devastated as any castaway who signals desperately to a passing ship and is not seen.
The lights had not come from a boat. Passing my trailer, the ranger noticed there was no light inside it. He had driven to the canoe launch site on a motorized trike and realized I had not returned. He had heard my faint call for help, and after some time, a rescue craft appeared. As I began my 13-hour journey to Darwin Hospital, my rescuers discussed going upriver the next day to shoot a crocodile. I spoke strongly against this plan: I was the intruder, and no good purpose could be served by random revenge. The water around the spot where I had been lying was full of crocodiles. That spot was under six feet of water the next morning, flooded by the rains signaling the start of the wet season.
In the end I was found in time and survived against many odds. A similar combination of good fortune and human care enabled me to overcome a leg infection that threatened amputation or worse. I probably have Paddy Pallin’s incredibly tough walking shorts to thank for the fact that the groin injuries were not as severe as the leg injuries. I am very lucky that I can still walk well and have lost few of my previous capacities. The wonder of being alive after being held quite literally in the jaws of death has never entirely left me. For the first year, the experience of existence as an unexpected blessing cast a golden glow over my life, despite the injuries and the pain. The glow has slowly faded, but some of that new gratitude for life endures, even if I remain unsure whom I should thank. The gift of gratitude came from the searing flash of near-death knowledge, a glimpse “from the outside” of the alien, incomprehensible world in which the narrative of self has ended.
I had survived the crocodile attack, but not the cultural drive to represent it in terms of the masculinist monster myth: the master narrative. The encounter did not immediately present itself to me as a mythic struggle. I recall thinking with relief, as I struggled from the attack site, that I now had a good excuse for being late with an overdue article and a foolish but unusual story to tell a few friends. Crocodile attacks in North Queensland have often led to massive crocodile slaughters, and I feared that my experience might have put the creatures at risk again. That’s why I tried to minimize publicity and save the story for my friends alone.
This proved to be extremely difficult. The media machine headlined a garbled version anyway, and I came under great pressure, especially from the hospital authorities, whose phone lines had been jammed for days, to give a press interview. We all want to pass on our story, of course, and I was no exception. During those incredible split seconds when the crocodile dragged me a second time from tree to water, I had a powerful vision of friends discussing my death with grief and puzzlement. The focus of my own regret was that they might think I had been taken while risking a swim. So important is the story and so deep the connection to others, carried through the narrative self, that it haunts even our final desperate moments.
By the same token, the narrative self is threatened when its story is taken over by others and given an alien meaning. This is what the mass media do in stereotyping and sensationalizing stories like mine and when they digest and repackage the stories of indigenous peoples and other subordinated groups. As a story that evoked the monster myth, mine was especially subject to masculinist appropriation. The imposition of the master narrative occurred in several ways: in the exaggeration of the crocodile’s size, in portraying the encounter as a heroic wrestling match, and especially in its sexualization. The events seemed to provide irresistible material for the pornographic imagination, which encouraged male identification with the crocodile and interpretation of the attack as sadistic rape.
Although I had survived in part because of my active struggle and bush experience, one of the major meanings imposed on my story was that the bush was no place for a woman. Much of the Australian media had trouble accepting that women could be competent in the bush, but the most advanced expression of this masculinist mind-set was Crocodile Dundee, which was filmed in Kakadu not long after my encounter. Two recent escape accounts had both involved active women, one of whom had actually saved a man. The film’s story line, however, split the experience along conventional gender lines, appropriating the active struggle and escape parts for the male hero and representing the passive “victim” parts in the character of an irrational and helpless woman who has to be rescued from the crocodile-sadist (the rival male) by the bushman hero.
I had to wait nearly a decade before I could repossess my story and write about it in my own terms. For our narrative selves, passing on our stories is crucial, a way to participate in and be empowered by culture. Retelling the story of a traumatic event can have tremendous healing power. During my recovery, it seemed as if each telling took part of the pain and distress of the memory away. Passing on the story can help us transcend not only social harm, but also our own biological death. Cultures differ in how well they provide for passing on their stories. Because of its highly privatized sense of the individual, contemporary Western culture is, I think, relatively impoverished in this respect. In contrast, many Australian Aboriginal cultures offer rich opportunities for passing on stories. What’s more, Aboriginal thinking about death sees animals, plants, and humans sharing a common life force. Their cultural stories often express continuity and fluidity between humans and other life that enables a degree of transcendence of the individual’s death.
In Western thinking, in contrast, the human is set apart from nature as radically other. Religions like Christianity must then seek narrative continuity for the individual in the idea of an authentic self that belongs to an imperishable realm above the lower sphere of nature and animal life. The eternal soul is the real, enduring, and identifying part of the human self, while the body is animal and corrupting. But transcending death this way exacts a great price; it treats the earth as a lower, fallen realm, true human identity as outside nature, and it provides narrative continuity for the individual only in isolation from the cultural and ecological community and in opposition to a person’s perishable body.
It seems to me that in the human supremacist culture of the West there is a strong effort to deny that we humans are also animals positioned in the food chain. This denial that we ourselves are food for others is reflected in many aspects of our death and burial practices the strong coffin, conventionally buried well below the level of soil fauna activity, and the slab over the grave to prevent any other thing from digging us up, keeps the Western human body from becoming food for other species. Horror movies and stories also reflect this deep-seated dread of becoming food for other forms of life: Horror is the wormy corpse, vampires sucking blood, and alien monsters eating humans. Horror and outrage usually greet stories of other species eating humans. Even being nibbled by leeches, sandflies, and mosquitoes can stir various levels of hysteria.
This concept of human identity positions humans outside and above the food chain, not as part of the feast in a chain of reciprocity but as external manipulators and masters of it: Animals can be our food, but we can never be their food. The outrage we experience at the idea of a human being eaten is certainly not what we experience at the idea of animals as food. The idea of human prey threatens the dualistic vision of human mastery in which we humans manipulate nature from outside, as predators but never prey. We may daily consume other animals by the billions, but we ourselves cannot be food for worms and certainly not meat for crocodiles. This is one reason why we now treat so inhumanely the animals we make our food, for we cannot imagine ourselves similarly positioned as food. We act as if we live in a separate realm of culture in which we are never food, while other animals inhabit a different world of nature in which they are no more than food, and their lives can be utterly distorted in the service of this end.
Before the encounter, it was as if I saw the whole universe as framed by my own narrative, as though the two were joined perfectly and seamlessly together. As my own narrative and the larger story were ripped apart, I glimpsed a shockingly indifferent world in which I had no more significance than any other edible being. The thought, “This can’t be happening to me, I’m a human being. I am more than just food!” was one component of my terminal incredulity. It was a shocking reduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat. Reflection has persuaded me that not just humans but any creature can make the same claim to be more than just food. We are edible, but we are also much more than edible. Respectful, ecological eating must recognize both of these things. I was a vegetarian at the time of my encounter with the crocodile, and remain one today. This is not because I think predation itself is demonic and impure, but because I object to the reduction of animal lives in factory farming systems that treat them as living meat.
Large predators like lions and crocodiles present an important test for us. An ecosystem’s ability to support large predators is a mark of its ecological integrity. Crocodiles and other creatures that can take human life also present a test of our acceptance of our ecological identity. When they’re allowed to live freely, these creatures indicate our preparedness to coexist with the otherness of the earth, and to recognize ourselves in mutual, ecological terms, as part of the food chain, eaten as well as eater.
Thus the story of the crocodile encounter now has, for me, a significance quite the opposite of that conveyed in the master/monster narrative. It is a humbling and cautionary tale about our relationship with the earth, about the need to acknowledge our own animality and ecological vulnerability. I learned many lessons from the event, one of which is to know better when to turn back and to be more open to the sorts of warnings I had ignored that day. As on the day itself, so even more to me now, the telos of these events lies in the strange rock formation, which symbolized so well the lessons about the vulnerability of humankind I had to learn, lessons largely lost to the technological culture that now dominates the earth. In my work as a philosopher, I see more and more reason to stress our failure to perceive this vulnerability, to realize how misguided we are to view ourselves as masters of a tamed and malleable nature. The balanced rock suggests a link between my personal insensitivity and that of my culture. Let us hope that it does not take a similar near-death experience to instruct us all in the wisdom of the balanced rock.

Val Plumwood survived this incident in February 1985. After a stint as visiting professor of women’s studies at North Carolina State University, she returned to Australia and became ARC Fellow at the University of Sydney. She died in 2008. This essay is adapted from ‘The Ultimate Journey’ (Travelers’ Tales, 1999).

PAPER PRESENTED IN VALENCIA, SPAIN MAY 1999. PART OF A PUBLIC LECTURE  SERIES ECONOMICA ECOLOGICA 1998-9 SPONSORED BY FUNDACIO BANCAIXA, SPAIN

Ecofeminism has a major contribution to make to our understanding of the current destructive relationship between humanity and nonhuman nature.
Ecofeminism as its name implies brings together the insights of feminism and ecology.
FEMINISM is concerned with the way in which women in general have been subordinated to men in general.
ECOLOGY is concerned that human activity is destroying the viability of the global ecosystem.
ECOFEMINISM argues that the two are linked.

Women have been seen as inferior to men in most human societies – I would even go so far as to say all.
The natural world has not suffered the same almost universal devaluing within human societies. Through much of human history it has been valued, even worshipped. However, the natural world is not just ecology, the ecosystem, it is also biology.  It is through their biology that women have been devalued, even seen as unclean. Women have historically been associated with the life and needs of the human body – that is, domestic work. Their own bodies have also been seen as weak, even dangerous.

Women have been persecuted as witches, disproportionately subject to infanticide and suffered domestic violence in most cultures. Males on the other hand are valued, as strong, resourceful with automatic rights of social dominance. Successful women often have to portray themselves as ‘honorary’ men without the attributes or dependencies of womanhood – particularly the needs of children.
However not all women are subordinate to all men and many men are oppressed through  class, caste, ‘race’ or ethnic discrimination. Women also dominate each other. The key issue for ecological economics, therefore is not sex-gender difference but the gendering of human societies.
For ecofeminists the most important aspect of the present global economy is that it represents a value system that subordinates both women and nature. It also sees itself as superior to traditional economies based on rural subsistence production for direct use and local exchange.   The modern economic system is based on a dualistic hierarchy of values:

HIGHLY VALUED                        LOW/NO VALUE
Men                                               Women
Employment                                 Domestic work
Market                                           Subsistence
Marketable resources                   Eco-systems
Personal wealth                            Social reciprocity
Science/technology                       Traditional Knowledge
Reason                                          Emotion
Mind/Intellect                                   Body
Able-bodied Adults                         Children/Elderly/People with disabilities

Valuing within economic systems is mainly expressed through money/profit but also as prestige. External to these values are the unvalued or undervalued, the resilience of the eco-system, the unpaid and unrecognised domestic work of women, the social reciprocity in communal societies as represented in non-market economies. While the modern global economy may displace traditional subsistence production, societies still need the stability of social reciprocity – what Adam Smith referred to as moral sentiments.
The valued economy rests on these unacknowledged and unvalued support structures. In doing so it avoids meeting the costs of that economy:

VALUED ECONOMY                     ME-ECONOMY
( money, profit, prestige)                (based on men’s experience)
marketable resources
well paid work
authority/status

SUPPORT ECONOMIES               WE-ECONOMY
(undervalued, unacknowledged)     (based on women’s experience)
resilience of ecosystem
unpaid domestic work
social reciprocity

The link between women’s subordination and the degradation of the natural world lies in women’s centrality to the support economies of unpaid domestic work and social reciprocity i.e. the home and the community. It is the world of women, of women’s experience – a WE-economy. The valued economy on the other hand is male dominated, representing men’s experience -a ME-economy.
Ecofeminist political economy offers an explanation of how destructive economic systems are constructed and see the WE-economy as the basis of an alternative non-exploiting, sustainable economy.
Central to the present globalised ME-economy is the insistence that we all jump to the same tune – the iron law of so-called free market economics. As in the fairy story, like the children of Hamelin we are compelled to follow the economic piper to our doom. However, if we remember the story, there was one child with disabilities who couldn’t keep up and avoided the fate of the rest. For ecofeminists this is the position of women. They have largely been left behind as the mad economic dance goes by. In the lives and experience of women there lies the possibility of an alternative path.
The roots of our current ills go much deeper than the present globalised capitalist market economy. It is a reflection of the way human activities are valued in all societies that devalue women. And it is not just a case of values, it reflects real material relations. What my studies and those of other feminists have revealed is that women do the majority of work in human societies and are devalued on account of it. The stories of man the hunter are a myth and man-the -breadwinner is a very contemporary and socially limited phenomenon. Throughout history, women have formed the backbone of economic and social systems, although their work has been largely unacknowledged – hidden from history.
Compared with women’s work, men’s valued activities can be seen as an extension of play – often dangerous and difficult – complex and competitive – building monuments, exploring, trading, fighting, hunting, politicking, professing, preaching.  Behind they leave the evidence of their passing, the great defensive walls, the tombs and palaces, the gladiatorial arenas, cathedrals, missile silos, Trump tower, the Getty museum.
WOMEN’S WORK
Women have always worked. In modern economies they are particularly exploited as low wage labourers. In the early industrial economies it was women and children who filled the first factories. Women have lower pay than men and less job security, pension, perks and all the other benefits of being at the head of the economic dance. Globalisation is mercilessly exploiting the labour of women as cheap and expendable workers.
However, I am not basing my argument on the unfairness of women’s lives within economic systems but their position at the boundaries of economic systems.
Women have two lives one within the valued economy as workers, consumers, professionals and one without, the world of women’s work. It is generally accepted that women workers with families have two shifts, the first at paid work and the second at home with domestic work, unless their social position enables them to employ other women to do it.
It is important to make a distinction between the work of women and women’s work. The work of women is what they have done through history (including being Prime Minister of Britain). Women’s work is a particular type of work that would be demeaning for a man to do on a regular basis unless he was already demeaned by his low social status on the basis of class, caste, ‘race’ or ethnicity. If a man is not to lose status, women’s work is reclassified from cook to chef, dressmaker to tailor.
Women do far more domestic work than men even when they have full time paid work. The UN Human Development Report of 1995 surveyed 31 countries and showed that combining paid and unpaid work women on average worked much longer hours than men. Men spent from 55 – 79% of their time in paid work. Women spent from 42% – 81% of their time in unpaid work. If women’s unpaid work was valued it would be equivalent to 40% of GDP – even based on the low pay rates for women.
Studies show women doing up to 80% of subsistence agricultural labour in rural communities. There are women in Mozambique spending 2 hours a day collecting water. Women in Peru spending three hours a day gathering fuel wood.
Marilyn Waring reports that among the Nomadic people of the Iranian Zagros mountains while the men look after the animals the women do virtually everything else:
Preparing meals, looking after children, fetching water, collecting fuel wood (which can take up to half a day and large distances), milk and shear the animals, collect edible plants, churn butter, make cheese and yoghurt, spin wool to make clothes, tent cloth and carpets.
WHAT IS WOMEN’S WORK?
Women’s work is the basic work that makes other forms of activity possible. It secures the human body and the community. It is work done for others. While a good deal of this has passed to the market in modern economies a lot remains.
– CARING  – child care, sick care, aged care, animal care, community care (volunteering, relationship building), family care (listening, cuddling, sexual nurturing, esteem building)
– ROUTINE AND REPETITIVE – cooking, cleaning, fetching and carrying, weeding,
– WATCHING AND WAITING  – being there, available, dependable, on call
(if women go out men are often asked to ‘baby sit’ their own children as if doing a favour)
– EMBODIED  It is the work of the human body and its basic needs. Maintenance and sustenance through the cycle of the day and the cycle of life (birth to death). in sickness and in health.
-EMBEDDED WORK  It is of necessity local, communal close to home. In subsistence economies it is embedded in the local ecosystem.
When women’s work is taken into the valued economy its pay rates and conditions of work are poor (nursing, catering and cleaning).
The interesting question about women’s work is why is it not valued? Why are there no historical monuments to the woman weeder, grinder, spinner, water carrier?
What is even more interesting is the way women’s economic activities have been lost to history. The modern economy has its ideal as man-the-breadwinner. The true history is woman-the-breadmaker after she has planted, harvested and ground the grain.
Studies of women’s activities in gatherer-hunter  and early agricultural
societies show that women’s work was much more important than that of men in the provision of calories. Women were the gatherers, gardeners, small scale trappers and hunters. Men’s activities were much more intermittent, ritual and leisure-based. Through history women (and children) worked the fields and on the looms. They were in the mines (in the UK they formed the first miner’s union).
If this is the case how have men come to dominate valued economic systems? The answer lies in the process by which economic systems are constructed. Economic systems do not relate to human labour directly, what could be described as the real economy, they relate to valued labour. It is the process of valuing and male-ness that are connected. Men do not obtain value because they work, they work because they obtain value. Where there is no value in preference they do not work. The more work is valued, the more male-dominated it becomes. The more necessary and unremitting it is, the more female-dominated work becomes.
GENDERING ECONOMIES: TIME, SPACE AND ALTRUISM
Valued economic systems are created through a distinction within human activities. Some activities are counted in, others are not. At the same time social time and space is accumulated. The more time an activity takes and the more limited it is spatially the more likely it is to be excluded from economic value. From my reading of the history of gender relations it seems that men have claimed social space and time while women have been engaged in the routine and necessary labours of life close to home and domestic responsibilties.
We have an old socialist saying in Britain:WHEN ADAM DELVED (was digging) AND EVE SPAN (was spinning) WHO WAS THEN THE GENTLEMAN?

My version would read:

WHILE EVE DELVED AND SPAN ADAM BECAME A GENTLEMAN
Women’s work in the unvalued economy is based on boundaries of space and time
LIMITED SPACE: women’s work is close to home. Her duties mean that she cannot move far from her responsibilities. She often cannot take higher paid jobs because of her limited mobility
UNLIMITED TIME:  Women’s work never ends. Its routine nature means that it endlessly recycles and it must be done when needed – by day or night. The sick must be nursed when they are ill, the children when they wake.
UNREWARDED/ALTRUISTIC:  Women do not get any tangible  benefit from this work although they may find it intrinsically rewarding. They usually put their own needs last in the family.
The valued economy is quite the opposite:
UNLIMITED SPACE: Mobility is all, goods fly around the world regardless of seasons and local availability. Companies make a fetish of moving their senior staff every few years if not months or days.
LIMITED TIME: The working day has a beginning and end. There is a distinction between paid and unpaid time (leisure). In fact, many women take paid work to get time for themselves even if the work is low paid.
REWARDED:  Work is rewarded by pay and prestige

WOMEN’S WORK AS IMPOSED ALTRUISM
Why do women do women’s work?  Why through history have they not refused? Partly it is the nature of the work. It is necessary, remorseless work. If it is not done suffering will ensue quite quickly. We can see the problem of street children in societies where women no longer have the resources to cope.
Women in this sense have been altruistic. They have worked through history for little recognition. However this is an imposed altruism. Most women feel they have little choice but to do this work, although it might be experienced as an expression of  love and duty. For many women it is fear of violence and/or lack of any other economic options.
Men have justified women’s imposed altruism by claiming that women are naturally suited to women’s work. They are naturally caring and nurturing. Many ecofeminists have sympathy with this view and speak of an ethics of care that can be extended to the natural world. However, I would argue that this ethic is related to women’s work rather than to women themselves.
In prosperous economies women are increasingly refusing to undertake women’s work. Marriage and birth rates are falling dramatically where women have clear economic choices. Italy’s birth rate is 1.3% well below replacement level  and women give as their reason for not having children that men do not help domestically. The gender differential in overall working hours is higher in Italy than elsewhere in Europe (nearly two hours a day). In Japan many women are refusing to marry, particularly if a man displays traditional values.
Men’s assumption that they have a natural right to socio-economic domination is also being challenged by women. Where professional positions depend on academic qualifications, women are competing very actively with men.
However, for ecofeminists the future does not lie with women playing
the male game even if that does have the side effect of reducing population rates. A country with a small or negative population growth and a high level of consumption is much more problematic ecologically than a country with a high population growth and low consumption. If women join men in the high production-consumption stakes they will compound the ecological problems we face.
THE ME-ECONOMY: EXTERNALISING WOMAN AND NATURE
The case for linking women’s work with the ecosystem is that they are both externalised by male-dominated economic value systems. Women’s work is not valued because it is body-work, the work associated with the most basic needs of human existence. The natural environment is also the basis for human existence. Why, then are these both externalised? The answer lies in the nature of the ME-economy. The ME-economy is disembodied from the daily cycle, the life cycle and women’s work. It is disembedded from the ecological framework:

ME-ECONOMY
DISEMBODIED FROM BIOLOGICAL TIME:
DAILY CYCLE –   The ideal ME-economy worker comes to work fed, cleaned nurtured and emotionally supported.
LIFE CYCLE – The ideal ME-economy worker is not too young or old, fit, healthy
NO WOMEN’S WORK – The ideal ME-economy worker has no routine responsibility for others and is personally mobile.
DISEMBEDDED FROM ECOSYSTEM:
SEASONS:  The ME-economy is not limited by local growing seasons
LOCAL ECOLOGICAL LIMITS: The ME-economy draws on the resources of countries around the world – The ecological footprint of London alone requires the equivalent of the land area of Britain
RESOURCE DEPLETION: This will affect future generations, poorer communities or other species not the privileged members of the ME-economy.
TOXICITY/POLLUTION: The ME-economy locates its polluting industries and toxic dumps in poorer communities.
In the ME-economy there is no space for the young, the old, the sick, the tired, the unhappy except as consumers of the (private) old folks home or therapist. They are seen as a burden on the welfare state, which itself is also seen as a burden on the so-called wealth-creating sector. Mostly they disappear into the world of women, the home and community.
The ME-economy is not concerned with the loss of resources for future generations, loss of habitat for other species, loss of biodiversity, the loss of peace, quiet and amenity – unless it can be sold.
The ME-economy is a DIS-EMBEDDED system. It bears no responsibility for the life-cycle of its environment. It is disengaged from ECOLOGICAL TIME – that is the time it takes to restore the effects of human activity – the life-cycle of renewal and replenishment within the eco-system. If there is any possibility of renewal.
The valued economy can be seen as disengaged from BIOLOGICAL TIME – the time of replenishment and renewal for the human body in its daily cycle and life-cycle.
It is not therefore to be unexpected that such an economic system should disrupt biological and ecological systems. Destructiveness is central to its fundamental structure.
How did such a disembodied and disembedded system emerge?
WOMEN’S WORK AS  THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE ME-ECONOMY AND THE ECO-SYSTEM
Ecofeminists see women’s work as the ‘bridge’ between unsustainable economic systems and the embedded nature of human existence.
The gendered nature of human society means that women in most societies throughout history have done the routine work of the body whether as food growers or domestic workers. Dominant men have distanced themselves from these roles and taken more statusful roles whether as ritual leaders, traders or war-makers.

In most societies there is some version of the ‘men’s house’, a separate place or set of activities which are barred to women. Within this space men concoct the elaborate socio-political ‘games’ that maintain their dominance.  In modern societies women have stormed these men’s houses: the law, business, medicine, politics, the military but only on male terms. As Audre Lorde and other feminists have argued you cannot use men’s tools to break down the men’s house.
Men have generally been seen as doing the important things in human history. It has been claimed that men have constructed civilisation. Have they? Are the monuments they have left more important than the sustenance of human existence?  Women’s digging stick has rotted back into the earth unlike the stone monuments of men. Why should the digging stick be less valued than the sword?
My basic argument is that male-dominated socio-economic systems have not accepted the embodied and embedded nature of human existence. Instead this has been rejected and despised as women’s work. Valued systems have therefore been erected on a false base. The modern economy does meet many of our basic needs but that is not its primary purpose. The value base is profitable financial exchange or prestige occupations not sustainable provisioning on an equitable basis. The command economy of the Soviet Unionwas little better. It did try to meet basic needs but valued male militarism and monumentalism equally highly. Women carried the double burden of work and the ecological consequences were appalling.
We cannot however, look to women or to Nature for the answer. If women step in and sort out the ME-economy’s mess they are again doing women’s work and no wisdom will have been gained.
It is the responsibility of dominant men and the few women who have joined them, to have the vision to understand the false base upon which historic systems have rested. This understanding will be triggered by the instability and unsustainablity of the ME-economy. Falsely grounded economic systems have built-in contradictions as Marx has pointed out.
Men and women can then jointly construct new socio-economic structures that are egalitarian and sustainable. Where to begin? A number of greens suggest returning to a subsistence economy. I am not sure this is practicable for urbanised and industrialised societies. We should certainly support existing subsistence economies to retain their skills and resource base. However, I would envisage most people living in an economic system based on a division of labour and mutually achieved sufficiency, rather than peasant-style self-sufficiency.
ECOFEMINIST ECONOMICS: GETTING FROM THERE TO HERE
The central feature of the modern ME-economy is the fact that it is beyond the control even of those who benefit from it. In a very real sense it is always THERE somewhere else (national, trans-national, global) and never HERE where we live in our lives. Although most of us take the THERE economy for granted very little of it is HERE within our control. This is fundamentally undemocratic and makes us behave in unsustainable ways to secure our livelihood.
What would an ecofeminist economy look like?
1. There would be a shift of focus from disembedded and disembodied structures to patterns of work and consumption that are sensitive to the human life cycle and to ecological sustainability.
2. Local production would be oriented to local need using sustainable local resources with minimal waste.
3. Basic food provisioning would be local and seasonal. Food would be grown locally where possible, but direct purchasing arrangements could also be agreed with local farmers. Farmers markets would be encouraged where they do not already exist.
4. Provisioning of necessary goods and services would be the main focus of economic systems not money making. It should be possible for people to live and work entirely within a provisioning system.
5. The emphasis would be on useful work rather than employment. That is, people would not need to do harmful work in order to have a livelihood. Any additional profit-based economic activity would be subject to stringent resource/pollution and labour exploitation rules.
6. Work and life would be integrated. Workplace and living base would be interactive. People of all ages would share activities. Living base households would vary from single person to multi-person.
7. Necessary work would be fulfilling and shared. Work and leisure would interact. Productive work would be regularly punctuated by festivals and other celebratory activities
8. Inter-regional and international trade would be seen as a cultural as much as an economic exchange. Travel would also be seen as education and communication rather than consumption.
9. Personal security would rest in the social reciprocity of a provisioning WE-economy rather than in money accumulation systems, particularly in old age.