At this time of global climate and ecological emergency, we believe that one significant key to building regenerative human cultures* is by accelerating women’s stewardship of Earth restoration projects.
Both men and women need to stand with nature, but they have different roles to play in this process. Because of their historical placement in our culture, what women have to contribute to this process may be especially significant.
As we are finding our way through this unprecedented time in Earth history, we are being asked to step up, and collaborate authentically to restore the Earth- leading to a Gender-just ecological leadership.
We intends to start a dialogue around the question — How does one create spaces for all genders to come together and truly collaborate for the Earth?
Video: Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, Women on the frontlines of Climate Change.
Video: ActionAid Bangladesh, Women’s Leadership and Climate Change.
Women have faced an unacceptable choice within patriarchy with respect to their ancient identity as nature. They either accept it (naturalism) or reject it (and endorse the dominant mastery model). Attention to the dualistic problematic shows a way of resolving this dilemma. Women must be treated as just as fully human and as fully part of human culture as men. But both men and women must challenge the dualised conception of human identity and develop an alternative culture which fully recognises human identity as continuous with, not alien from, nature. The dualised conception of nature as inert, passive and mechanistic would also be challenged as part of this development.
Thus the anti-dualist approach reveals a third way which does not force women into the choice of uncritical participation in a masculine biased and dualised construction of culture or into accepting an old and oppressive identity as ‘earth mothers’: outside of culture, opposed to culture, not fully human. In this alternative, women are not seen as purely part of nature any more than men are; both men and women are part of both nature and culture (Warren 1987; Ynestra King 1989) Both men and women can stand with nature (Ynestra King 1989) and work for breaking down the dualistic construction of culture, but in doing so they will come from different historical places and have different things to contribute to this process. Because of their placement in the sphere of nature and exclusion from an oppositional culture, what women have to contribute to this process may be especially significant. Their life choices and historical positioning often compel a deeper discomfort with dualistic structures and foster a deeper questioning of a dualised culture.
- Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 1993.
*Regenerative cultures are unique expressions of the potential inherent in the people and places of a given bioregion. They add value and health to the nested wholeness from local, to regional, to global in the understanding that human thriving critically depends on healthy ecosystems and a life-supporting biosphere. -
Daniel Christian Wahl in Regenerative Cultures, Regenerative Economies, and Bioregional Regeneration
Inner Climate Academy (ICA)
ICA is a project of Social Entrepreneurship Association, a unit of the Auroville Foundation.
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