How ecofeminists use complexity in ecological economics

AS: OK, let’s start with a little history. It was a French writer, Françoise d’Eaubonne, who first used the term ‘ecofeminism’ in her book Le Féminisme ou la mort, published in 1974. I am not sure how widely known this work was at the time, but the American theologian Rosemary Ruether published her influential ecofeminist text New Woman, New Earth (1975) not long after. This elaborated on the core proposition of ecofeminist thinking: that the subordination of women and degradation of the earth are deeply interlinked. There is a chapter outlining a chronology of the movement in my Ecofeminism as Politics (Salleh 1997) that reveals a great deal of international grassroots activity and many publications from women calling themselves ecofeminist from the mid-1970s on. Among these, Mary’s book Breaking the Boundaries (Mellor 1992) was an important contribution; and Vandana’s text Ecofeminism, co-authored with Maria Mies (Mies and Shiva 1993), was particularly useful in setting our politics against the backdrop of North-South relations and debates about ‘development’.