Abstract

The philosophies required to understand the relationship between gender and climate change are rooted in feminism. Understanding climate change also requires knowledge of context: how the natural and physical world is known and how knowledge is produced, as well as cultural, social, economic, and legal structures. Critical understandings of these also owe a debt to feminist philosophies, including feminist philosophies of science, the economy, philosophies of care, and feminist-inspired legal philosophies.Feminist philosophies emerged in force in the twentieth century, although these are informed by influential forerunners. Arguably one of their greatest strengths is to question the privilege and objectivity of “modern” or “enlightenment” science or knowledge, which now dominates ways of thinking on this planet. Exposing the agendas and beliefs of those in power as equally as subjective as the rest of us, and grounded or situated in all of our backgrounds and interests, is core to feminist philosophy.Many of these philosophies, to some degree or another, have both informed and drawn upon ecofeminist philosophies which explore the relationship between how dominant society treats nondominant humans and how it treats other-than-human nature. To understand this, it is also important to understand how the social structures within which we are all embedded interact with our natural and physical environment, of which feminist environmental philosophy has been a powerful interpreter. Further, it is necessary to clarify that how we interpret “gender” is a cultural or social act, and feminist philosophy and theory has laid the groundwork for this.