Environmental Ethics

Volume 9, Issue 1, Spring 1987

Feminism, Deep Ecology, and Environmental Ethics

Deep ecologists have criticized reform environmentalists for not being sufficiently radical in their attempts to curb human exploitation of the nonhuman world. Ecofeminists, however, maintain that deep ecologists, too, are not sufficiently radical, for they have neglected the cmcial role played by patriarchalism in shaping the cultural categories responsible for Western humanity’s domination of Nature. According to eco-feminists, only by replacing those categories-including atomism, hierarchalism, dualism, and androcentrism - can humanity learn to dweIl in harmony with nonhuman beings. After reviewing the eco-feminist critique both of reform environmentalism and of deep ecology, I sketch a critical dialogue between eco-feminism and deep ecology.