Karen Warren's Feminist Environmental Philosophy

When Francoise d'Eaubonne coined the term "ecological feminisme," she has drawn attention to the relationship between women and nature. Karen Warren in her essay "Feminist Environmental Philosophy" (2015) claims that women-nature connections are "often based in different disciplinary perspectives (such as History, Literary Criticism, Political Science, Sociology, and Theology)." This is important because ecofeminism did not emerge as a distinct philosophical position until the late 1980s and early- to mid 1990s. (Warren 2015: 8)

Warren proposes "a general, common-denominator characterization of 'ecofeminist philosophy' … that it: (1) explores the nature of the connections between the unjustified dominations of women and nature; (2) critiques

First, the "care-focused" ethics, which focuses on "the justice versus care debate," with the former referring to ethics of individual rights and duties and the latter referring to values of care and empathy. Second, the "environmental virtue ethics," which wonders about the traits, attitudes, and positions that a person should hold in order to let the nonhuman nature "survive and flourish in a healthy way." Third, the "justice-focused" ethics, which attempts to deal with issues of social justice, for example, "environmental harms to women and children (especially poor women of colour who are single heads of households with children under the age of eighteen)." (Warren 2015:

Socioeconomic Perspectives:

Vandana Shiva (1988) and Karen Warren (2015) argue that according to 'materialist ecofeminism,' socioeconomic conditions are basic to the intertwined domination of women and nature. 'Capitalist patriarchy' draws on the notion that the "means" of production: raw materials, land, natural resources; and the "forces" of production: factories, machineries, experienced workers; are all property of 'man' , which results in unfair distribution of natural resources between men and women, unrecognition of women's labour, and ultimately unrevised exploitation of natural resources.

Vandana Shiva in her book " Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India" presents the idea of the "maldevelopment" of Western development, and traces it to the European colonization of Asia, especially India, and Africa. The colonizers have replaced domestic crops and forests for cash crops for their native European countries. Crops that native women used to plant and represented a source of income and domestic use – has been eliminated and women were held responsible for "non-money based" household duties, which resulted in what Shiva calls "feminization of poverty", subordination of women, as well as the degradation of nature. (This notion of maldevelopment will be discussed in detail in