Ecofeminism Revisited

Greta Gaard’s article returns to the backlash against ecofeminism in the 1980s and 1990s. She takes seriously the danger of claims that women are naturally closer to nature, but argues that rejecting ecofeminism wholesale also discards a powerful way of thinking across sexism, racism, classism, colonialism, speciesism, and environmental harm.

The article’s contribution is to reframe ecofeminism as a material and political analysis rather than a simple identity claim. Gaard asks how humans produce animals, species difference, and nature as categories available for domination, and why feminist theory should not treat these questions as secondary to gender or race.

For FemRes, this text belongs after Gaard’s “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” It helps readers see ecofeminism not as a closed historical label, but as a revisable tool for thinking about climate crisis, care, interspecies ethics, and structural inequality.