We noted in Chapter 1 and earlier in this chapter that cultures are heterogeneous and that gender is a key marker of difference within places and regions. Geographers and other social scientists have documented significant differences between men’s and women’s relationships with the environment. This observation holds for many different types of cultures. Ecofeminism is one way of thinking about how gender influences our interactions with nature. This concept, however, might seem to suggest that there is something inherent or essential about men and women that makes them think about and behave toward the environment in particular and different ways. Although cultural geographers would argue against such essentialism, few would disagree that gender is an important variable in nature-culture relations.
A doctrine proposing that women are inherently better environmental preservationists than men because the traditional roles of women involve creating and nurturing life, whereas the traditional roles of men too often necessitate death and destruction.
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Diane Rocheleau’s work on women’s roles in the management of agroforestry systems makes this point. Agroforestry systems are farming systems that combine the growing of trees with the cultivation of agricultural crops. Agroforestry is practiced by folk and indigenous cultures across the tropical world and has been shown to be a highly productive and ecologically sustainable practice. It is common in these production systems for men and women to have very distinct roles. Generally, for example, women are involved in seeding, weeding, and harvesting, whereas men take responsibility for clearing and cultivation. Gender differences also often exist in the types of crops men and women control and in the marketing of produce.
A cultivation system that features the interplanting of trees with field crops.
After conducting studies for many years—first in East Africa and later in the Dominican Republic—Rocheleau was able to see general themes regarding the way human-environment relations are different between men and women in not only agroforestry systems but also many rural and urban environments. Together with two colleagues, she identified three themes: gendered knowledge, gendered environmental rights, and gendered environmental politics. First, because women and men often have different tasks and move in different spaces, they possess different and even distinct sets of knowledge about the environment (gendered knowledge). Second, men and women have different rights, especially with regard to the ownership and control of land and resources (gendered environmental rights). Third, for reasons having to do with their responsibilities in their families and communities, women are often the main leaders and activists in political movements concerned with environmental issues (gendered environmental politics). Taken together, these themes suggest that environmental planning or resource management projects that do not address issues of gender are likely to have unintended consequences, some of them negative for both women and environmental quality.