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Hilkka Pietilä, M. Sc. Independent Author and Researcher(Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki)

DAUGHTERS OF MOTHER EARTH

Integrating ecophilosophy and feminism makes a recipe for sustainable development

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At the edge of a new era2

Time-honoured images 3

How do women feel? 3

What does history prove?4

Man forged his own shackles 5

Feminist ethics - ecological ethics6

Scientific and ethical revolution7

The sex roles reversed to a new dualism 8

The relationships of men and women to Life, Death and Nature9

Male self-criticism11

"The warp and the weft"12

Matching eco-philosophy with feminism14

Sisterhood embraces brothers too! 15

Masculine-feminine liberation 15

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NOTES and BIBLIOGRAPHY 17

This was originally a lecture held in 1986 in Helsinki University, then written as article for a book edited by J.R.Engel & J.Gibb Engel: Ethics of Environment and Development, Belhaven Press in association with the IUCN, London 1990. Later published as various versions also in books in Finland, Greece, India and Norway.

DAUGHTERS OF MOTHER EARTH

Integrating ecophilosophy and feminism makes a recipe for sustainable development

"I shall sing of Gaia, universal Mother, firmly founded, the oldest of divinities."

-Homer

At the edge of a new era

It is not by chance these days that we speak so often of world crisis. Although each one of us may see the situation somewhat differently, anyone familiar with the global situation and ongoing trends in world economics will agree that there are reasons enough to speak about crises. There is a human crisis, there is an environmental crisis, not to mention an economic and political crisis.

Development of a major part of the world has not only stagnated, but in great regions, like Africa, declined. In the recent decades, the quality of people's lives has deteriorated rather than improved. Environmental deterioration has also continued and become widespread. Many countries in the Global South have fallen into endless debt, which does not allow them choices in action and policies.

But the issues today are no longer only drought, decertification, and erosion in the Third World. It is now a question of rapidly spreading disasters in the rich world as well: the creeping death of the forests; increasing pollution and acidity of the lakes and rivers; cities, highways, and airports confiscating more and more fertile land in the North; and the greenhouse-effect and damage to the ozone layer frightening us all.

Our mother Gaia seems to be at the edge of an unforeseen dilemma, of either totally shaking us off her surface, or forcing us to adjust ourselves to the ancient rules of her household. It seems to be difficult for us, humans, to believe that we could be one of the extinct species fairly soon - in Gaian time.

The United Nations Programme of Action: Agenda 21 was adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio 1992. It is the latest internationally adopted programme for sound environmental policies

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and future perspectives for development and survival.(1) The title "Agenda 21" means a programme for the 21st century. The paramount thrust is the concept of "sustainable development", meaning that unless we learn to and want to make development in all countries ecologically sustainable, there will not be much chance for the future.

In spite of women's breakthrough as an internationally organized caucus at UNCED, Agenda 21 still seems to omit to quite an extent the potentialities of women's culture to provide practical and philosophical recipes for reconstructing sustainable development. It is therefore all the more important to highlight here the possible alternative philosophy hidden in the midst of us.

This paper is an effort to illustrate, from women's point of view, the historical path which has led us here, and the potential of traditions, skills and values to be found in women's culture, which could be an untapped source of fresh ideas for the sustainable future.

Time-honoured images

The mythology of humankind is full of parables and expressions combining woman and nature, mother and earth, the fertility of women and nature. The goddesses of fertility are always women. There are many names for the goddesses of Earth, Nature, and Fertility; the Universal Mother: Gaia, Astarte, Isis, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Ilmatar, Lilith, Maria etc.

The native American cultures held the earth as highly sacred Universal Mother. The Squamish Chief Seattle from the west coast of North America once said to the white man:

Teach your children what we havetaught our children, that the Earthis our Mother. Whatever befalls the Earthbefalls the sons of the Earth.If men spit on the ground,they spit on themselves. (2)

In 1979, Winona La Duke, a native American woman brought a message to the people of Europe concerning the hazards of uranium mining. This message of the International Traditional Elders ended like this:

They tell us to farm the land - how dare you ask us to cut our mother's hair,

They tell us to mine the land - how dare you ask us to level our mother's breast,They tell us to plough the land - how dare you ask us to cut out mother's side. (3)

A modern Finnish theatre director (male!) recently said in a television interview: "Woman holds the mystery of life. She has the keys to the secrets of life." The ancient beliefs still prevail!

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An American writer, Riane Eisler, gives in her book "The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future" a lot of new information and totally new interpretations concerning the ancient high cultures of Europe, which were mothercentric, ecologically sustainable, egalitarian, peaceful, and had mostly female divinities.(4)

How do women feel?

What is the experience of women themselves? How would they define their relationship with the nature? Do women associate themselves with these ancient myths? References to the relationship of women with the nature can be found in the folklore of many nations and in their traditions, as well as in their indigenous poetry, where women have expressed themselves.

It is said that women invented agriculture at the dawn of history when their men were out hunting, and thus acquired a dominant position in the community. They also tamed the cubs of wild animals by breast feeding them. This was the beginning of animal husbandry. These discoveries helped women provide food for their families even when their men did not bring in a catch from fishing and hunting. Women discovered a more reliable means for sustaining life.

Already we see a relationship between women and nature which is co-operative, not only exploitative or plundering. It easily develops into a relationship of caring and nurturing, mutually giving and receiving. Women have also collected wood and water, gathered berries and flowers, herbs and plants for use as medicine and dyes. At the same time, nature - trees, animals, plants and flowers - has given women solace, experiences of beauty and harmony, and taught them the skills to use the products of nature for healing and magic.

Women's own bodies provide an excellent and ever-present bridge to Nature. The menstrual cycle follows the stages of the moon; even fertility follows the rhythm of the seasons to some extent. Women's life is a part of the eternal cycle of birth, growth, maturation, and death - they are in the midst of the stream of life, not at the edge of it. In this way, women experience nature - the process of life - within themselves.

It was probably women who discovered healing skills; they learned from the realities of life around and within themselves. They studied the effects of plants, herbs, and whatever other extracts they had available. But these skills also made them so powerful and uncontrollable that their knowledge and tradition of healing was cruelly uprooted in the Middle Ages in Europe when the most advanced women were burned as witches and heretics. This interrupted the development of natural healing in Europe and reduced medicine to merely biological and technological methods of treatment for centuries.

What does history prove?

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Western contemporary science and philosophy has long roots of dualism, from Plato and the early fathers of the church to the late authorities of the 19th and 20th centuries. It implies the dichotomy between:

physical - spiritualbody - mindnature - cultureemotional - rationalsubjectivity - objectivityprivate - publicecology - economics

It is commonly "understood" that women and femininity are linked with the left side, and man and masculinity with the right side of this chart. According to this philosophy, woman is viewed as part of nature, associated with the physical world, and thus submitted to the rule of man, since the physical, the material, is subjugated to the spiritual and intellectual. A deep dichotomy is thus created between men and women. In this way, the suppression of women and nature are historically and ideologically linked.

According to critique of this philosophy by an American feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruether, such dichotomizing constitutes an ideology in the strong sense of the word.(5) It creates a strong hierarchical structure which is reflected in the policies and practices of social institutions, as well as in science.

Concerning the relationship between men and women, and their differences: the man is the subject, the one who defines and the woman the one who is defined. "The essence of the male ideology can be said to be contained precisely in this cultural relationship, where the woman is the one acted upon and defined by the male perception and 'use' and her own self-definition and perspective are never heard or incorporated culturally. Women, as all oppressed people, live in a culture of silence, as objects, never as subjects of the relationship," wrote Rosemary Radford Ruether.(6)

According to the experiences of many of us contemporary women, this principle is still very alive. Women confined to silence, even in so-called progressive countries like Finland and Sweden. It can be seen, for example, on the pages of any newspaper, where practically only the ruling men are interviewed and referred to, and in the lists of references of any book written by a man.

Man forged his own shackles

This kind of dichotomy leads to the interpretation than man represents the spirit; the intellect; and as the image of God, the soul. Women represent the body, the physical life. The basic human characteristics are divided between the sexes instead of being seen equally in both sexes.(7)

Throughout the ages, this schizophrenia in the prevailing concept of a human being led to fatal consequences for men themselves. Since this concepts's masculinity implies the domination of inferior things - the body,

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nature, women - it develops, when being exercised to the extreme, into a flight from body, nature, and women. For centuries, male consciousness focused its energy on this world-fleeing agenda and praised heroes like ascetics and hermits who tried to rid themselves of the flesh, to severe the connections of mind and body, thus achieving the qualification for eternal, spiritual life.(8)

Men have tortured themselves with their fear of the rebellion of the flesh, of their own bodies (the feminine, nature), against the transcendental order of the mind and the spirit. Here, some of the foundation of the masculine fear of women may very well lay.

Manifestations of masculine fear or defiance of their own body, their own physical being, can be observed even in daily life. Men often know their physical functions very poorly, and they directly damage their bodies by smoking, drinking, and excessively straining themselves physically, or indirectly by taking irrational risks in specifically masculine exercises like mountain climbing, motor racing, sailing alone across oceans, etc., and even by forcing themselves to overwork.

Ruether parallels the techno-scientific progress-belief with the theological body-mind dualism because they both aim to transcend man above nature and the material. This train of thought is the matrix of both patriarchal religion and society, but the issue is basically to deny one's own mortality, to escape the necessity of the coming-to-be-and-passing-away cycle.

Interestingly enough, an American alternative economist and futurologist, Hazel Henderson, has independently come to the same conclusion when she discusses industrial 'machismo', "the need to compete with each other and the fearful need to control, dominate and 'own' not only each other but women, children, animals, plants and all of Mother Nature." She views these unhealthy drives as being rooted in a fear of death and a sense of alienation from the natural world.(9)

To Rosemary Ruether, patriarchal religion has lost its ground in modern society only ostensibly. In reality it appears in many new disguises. She calls this "the patriarchal self-deception", which according to its own logic leads to the suppression of those who are identified with the nature - like women - and to the destruction of the earth.

Paradoxically, the fear of death is transformed into a ideology which seems to lead to destruction and death.

Feminist ethics - ecological ethics

Rosemary Radford Ruether has introduced a specific ecological ethics, which she calls an ecological-feminist theology of nature. This theology has to rethink the entire Western theological tradition of a hierarchical chain of being, a chain of command. Therefore it must challenge:

- the hierarchy of human over non-human nature as a relationship of ontological and moral value,

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- the right of the human to treat the non-human as private property and material wealth to be exploited,

- the structures of social domination, male over female, owner over worker, that mediate this domination over non-human nature (and to unmask them),

- the model of hierarchy that starts with non-material spirit (God) and continues down to non-spiritual 'matter' as the most inferior, valueless, and dominated point in the chain of command.

She points out that in the ecosystem, the most complex forms of life are not the source and foundations of less complex forms. They are in fact radically dependent on all stages of life that go before them.

A plant can carry out photosynthesis without human beings, but we cannot exist without the photosynthesis of plants.

"The privilege of intelligence, then, is not a privilege to alienate and dominate the world without concern for the welfare of other forms of life. On the contrary, it is the responsibility to become the caretaker and cultivator of the welfare of the whole ecological community upon which our own existence depends."(10)

Both ecophilosophers and feminist thinkers relate the social crisis with the ecological crisis. In their opinion, it is impossible to solve the environmental crisis unless the whole system of social domination is changed. It cannot succeed in conditions where a few topdogs can maintain their high profits by passing the costs of environmental damage to the majority of people in the form of low wages, high prices, poor working conditions, and toxic side effects to both human beings and nature.

According to Ruether, women and nature go hand in hand in liberation too. The liberation of women will entail the liberation of society and culture from suppressive masculine ethics, revolutionary changes both in national as well as international structures. Therefore, "women must be spokesmen for a new humanity arising out of the reconciliation of the spirit and the body."(11)

It is essential that the women's movement should not isolate itself from other movements of change - like environmentalists, nuclear power protesters, the peace movement, alternative development movements, etc. - but it should also not assimilate to the point of losing its genuinely authentic character. A horizontal, mutually considerate co-operation between the movements is part of the implementation and exercising of a new kind of politics which does not aim to dominate and suppress others.

Scientific and ethical revolution

Ecophilosophers and feminist thinkers are analyzing the techno-industrial revolution, which is based on the emergence of the natural sciences from the 17th and 18th centuries. Such founding fathers of modern science as

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Francis Bacon, William Harvey, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Isaac Newton are being sharply re-evaluated. These scientists re-conceptualized reality as a machine rather than a living organism, and thus created a new view of the world which sanctioned dominion over both nature and women. Only feminist thinkers, however, recognize the similarity of the consequences of this revolution to nature and women.

The scientific revolution seems to have promised the realization of one of man's ancient dreams (a male dream!). He would finally be able to control nature, to become "Master" of creation. The fathers of the scientific revolution really did combine in their minds women and nature in this respect. Their language leaves no doubt of that fact.

Frances Bacon and others of his time described nature in very sexist terms indeed. With the means of new science and technics, the scientists believed they would be able to unveil Mother Nature, to reveal "the secrets still locked in nature's bosom", that they would "have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations." They thought that "there are still laid up in the womb of nature many secrets of excellent use" to be discovered and penetrated.

Science and technology, the men believed, would enable them to recover man's "dominion over creation", which was lost in the Fall due to the temptation of a woman. But by "digging further into the mine of natural knowledge" could "the narrow limits of man's dominion over the universe" be stretched "to their promised bounds."

These are the colourful images used by Frances Bacon and later the members of the Royal Society of London as quoted by Carolyn Merchant in her impressive book The Death of Nature.(12) They reveal very little of Mother Nature, but a great deal about the attitudes of the founding fathers of science toward both nature and women.

Since the scientific revolution started with these attitudes and aspirations, it is no wonder that it has led to where we are today regarding women and nature. Paradoxically enough, the magnificent progress and applications of the natural sciences are leading us toward the destruction of nature and life, as well as toward the collective suicide of humanity. Scientific progress then implied quite a revolution indeed: politically, culturally, and even ethically.

Figure 1.

THE RELATIONSHIPS OF WOMEN AND MEN TO LIFE, DEATH AND NATURE

WOMEN MEN

LIFE:

Women’s life is part of the eternal cycle of birth, maturation, and death - a

Life is a problem!

Physical life is uncontrollable,

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continuum.

Life is delivered and nurtured by woman and then disappears back into the womb of the Mother Earth.

threatening.Continuation is uncertain.

Eternal life - true life - transcendental - spiritual - scientific life?

Alienation from the physical?

DEATH:

Offsprings transcent death -life continues.

The protection and caring of life, children, and nature is a way of conquering death.

Death = final extinction.Therefore, conquest of death is a paramount concern.

The quest for transcendence though spiritual, material, physical (offsprings?), scientific, etc. means: “To have a place in history”.

Deep, subconscious fear of death leads to denial of one’s mortality.

NATURE:

Nature = manifestation and sustenance of life.

Mutual nurturance and utilization, women and nature.

Nothing to fear, suppress, or fight against.

Nature (and woman!) = a constant challenge to the desire to control and rule, to be a “Master”.

Therefore, a constant fight to conquer, exploit, and mould nature.

To build ‘a monument’, to leave one’s mark behind!

This diagram is based on the suggestions of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Hazel Henderson, and others about the relationships of women and men to Life, Death and Nature. It may help to discuss what these differences might be and to what extent they may explain distant and contemporary history. Could the subconscious fear of death bear an ideology leading to destruction and death?------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sex roles reversed to a new dualism

The church had for centuries had both spiritual and political power. But it was gradually diminished to the spiritual dominion only. Religion and religious life was privatized, which also meant the beginning of dual morality. Religious virtues were attached to women and family, to be

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cherished primarily in the homes, private life and churches - by women. They were no longer to concern public life, secularized science, and expanding industry, trade, and commerce, which was the dominion of men and regarded as the real life of power and importance.

A new dualism was created: on one hand, feminized religion; on the other, the masculine world of secular power where religious morality had no place.

The life of women was turned upside down in many ways. Motherhood, childcare, and housekeeping became the full-time, life-long task of women, which was unknown to the previous agrarian societies. Marriage became a moral pillar of society, contrary to the outside, masculine world of egoism, competition, and technical rationality.

To the qualitative demands on women, like unselfishness and morality, were added sexual innocence and sexual purity. Sexuality was primarily considered a male characteristic, and courtly love was expected to be asexual.

However, the earlier images of women as physical and sexual beings did not disappear; myths of the Virgin and the Whore merely took another shape. The middle-class housewife was an adored but repressed decorum of her home and husband; working women were exploited both for work and sexuality.

Women were isolated from public life and power as being too pure and noble. Earlier they were considered too stupid and trivial. Both views were equally efficient methods of depriving women of the opportunity to obtain higher education and preventing them from participating in decision making in their societies.

Here is but a glimpse of the extensive research and analysis made in recent decades by Rosemary Radford Ruether and other women researchers about the historical process which ecologists have analyzed from the point of view of nature. Hopefully it offers also a glimpse of the impact that the scientific and industrial revolution has had on women.

It is obvious that women have received their share of today's material improvements and technical advancement. But even for these advantages, they have often paid a high price. Many of the improvements have implied an extra burden elsewhere. The average work burden of women has not in fact decreased; often it is just the opposite. Also, the possibilities of influencing their lives and societies in which they live has declined. Women have been led from one trap to another, from the curtailment and persecution of the religious patriarchy to the silver cages of consumerist societies.

Today's new dualities manifest themselves in ways which have both ecological and economic implications, and which attempt to confuse women, so that they find it difficult to recognize their real challenge.

Rosemary Radford Ruether wrote:

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The ideology which splits private morality from public business will try to put the burden of ecological morality on the private sector. To compensate for the follies of the system, the individual consumers will be asked to tighten their belts: the system itself will not be challenged to change... Reforms directed at the private sphere can only be tokenism. Women will naturally be pressed into becoming the self-help ecologists in band-aid remedies that increase the dissipation of their energies in trivia, but have minimal effects on the ecological imbalances.(13)

And she concludes:

Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and so solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement to envision a radical reshaping of the basic socioeconomic relations and the underlying values of this society.(14)

Male self-criticism

Ecophilosophy is the study of what has happened to nature and to Western science and thinking, especially the philosophy of recent centuries. It is no wonder that it has much in common with feminist thinking and philosophy, though ecophilosophers themselves do not yet realize this.

In my opinion, both ecophilosophy and feminist research also relate to the same recent trend of scientific approach, as do peace research and development research. They all deviate from the positivist-empirical trend of past centuries by clearly being value and goal oriented research. Their common goal is to promote change toward better development from the point of view human beings and nature.

Also typical of these sciences is an interdisciplinary and holistic approach. The underlying emphasis seems to be an attempt to bring about a synthesis after the long tradition of 'pure' analysis and objectivity of the e.g. social and political sciences. Typical to feminist research is a so-called participatory approach, which integrates both the researchers and those researched, and recognizes the subjective experiences of both as part of the acquisition of scientific data.

One can say that feminism and ecophilosophy also belong to the hermeneutic approach to research. They both question the meaning of things and phenomena. Both aspire to explain historical events rather than only describe and register them. They try to penetrate the concepts and expressions of language in a new way and to understand the behaviour and actions of individuals and societies more profoundly than has been understood before.

In his book, "Eco-philosophy", Henryk Skolimowski analyzes exactly the same process as Rosemary Radford Ruether, namely the period of

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prominence of the natural sciences from the 17th century onwards, which then developed into a mechanistic-empirical cosmology dominating all science and culture.(15)

Skolimowski also points out the profound dualism of Western science, which divides the man himself, separates his knowledge from his being, his values, his transcendental issues. The connection between man and his knowledge was lost and the whole situation became lopsided when knowledge no longer provided enlightenment, but the quest for power; an increasing amount of information has led to increasing alienation.

According to Skolimowski, this process already reached its peak in the 19th century, when an attempt was made to conceptualize the world and science free of values. Underlying the valuefree quest of science, one value persisted, the value of controlling and manipulating nature and other human beings, says Skolimowski.

He also maintains that claims of scientific objectivity have no objective basis. In my opinion this is because human beings simply cannot study their surroundings as objective observers, since all their observations are possible only by means of the ability of their subjective senses to register, and their minds to interpret.

Skolimowski, as all men, speaks throughout about 'man' and 'mankind' meaning all of humanity, though the scientific and other developments which he analyzes and criticizes are produced solely by males. Until this century, women had hardly any chance to participate, to contribute to the scientific world of the universities. They were not even allowed to study at these institutions.

It can therefore be considered a historical fact that, until recent decades, both the honour and the responsibility for scientific progress and its implications to culture and society belong to men. Skolimowski's and other male philosophers' and scientists' criticism of past and present science and its consequences are in fact male self-criticism.

"The warp and the weft"

One of the very basic common goals of both eco-philosophy and feminism is to eliminate the pervasive dualism of Western culture. Both Skolimowski and Ruether are very concerned about this, but Skolimowski does not go into the substance of this issue as deeply as Ruether does. Ruether wrote about "the reconciliation of the spirit and the body" and about "humanization and reconciliation with the earth". Skolimowski means about the same thing when he speaks about the abolition of "the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter and regards the various states (or orders) of being as parts of the same physico-mental-spiritual spectrum".

Feminist researchers speak about the relationality of women's existence, ethics, and world view. It means that women's world is based on relationships between people, between people and other creation, and on the relationship between nature and divinity. Skolimowski expresses his

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view when he writes that "we live all the time in a multitude of webs signifying different orders of being and spelling out the complexity of our relationships with the world". A Norwegian eco-philosopher, Sigmund Kvaloy also stresses that human life implies existence in constant relationships with other people, environment, animals, etc.(16)

Rosemary Radford Ruether emphasizes the connections between social and ecological crises and between the situation of women and the conditions of nature. Skolimowski believes the plight of the environment and the plight of man have the same cause. According to Kvaloy, the ecological crisis and the break-down of social structures go hand in hand.

Eco-philosophy and feminism also both speak about the recognition of the real necessities of life, though they often use a different vocabulary. Ruether speaks about "the realm of necessity"; Kvaloy about "the life necessities society" (LNS). Development researchers speak about basic needs; and the women's movement about unpaid labour, caring, nurturing.

All these concepts cover the realm of life that women have always been responsible for, and still are. From the point of view of survival and bearability of life, this realm is irreplaceable. If the necessities of life - cleaning and organizing the home, supplying and preparing food, caring for and nurturing both children and adults - are not attended to, existence very quickly becomes unbearable.

All these functions are still more or less invisible to economic, scientific, and political life. Even if they are recognized, they are called 'reproduction' or 'informal economics' and considered secondary, auxiliary, to society's so-called productive activities. In fact, this so-called 'free economy', (17) the work done outside the monetary economy, is a prerequisite for everything else, for the whole national economy and the existence of the society. If the 'labour' were not 'reproduced' in homes and families day to day, generation to generation, society would not survive.

The thrust on values and the awareness of them is also common ground to eco-philosophy and feminism. For instance, Kvaloy stresses the value of "the relationship of love binding parents and children together, without this relationship in fresh bloom human society could not survive."

When Skolimowski criticizes the lack of awareness of values, he writes of an "eclipse of values". He has not realized what Ruether discovered when she analyzed the changes in women's lives during the industrial revolution: positivist-empiristic science was not after all capable of totally destroying the essential values of human existence, since they were preserved in the realm of home and women. In this realm they have been valid all along, and they remain the elements which give meaning and purpose to life. The more alienated and frustrated life and work outside the home has become, the more importance and meaning is expected from life in the private sphere. The family is still the place, perhaps even more than before, where we are somebody, where we are irreplaceable.

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Both feminism and eco-philosophy are becoming increasingly oriented towards profound change of the whole society and culture. Skolimowski stresses that eco-philosophy is politically involved and aware: "Life not based on qualitative criteria is meaningless. We make political statements not so much by the way we vote but by the way we live." Kvaloy defines the concept of eco-philosophy as "much more than an academic discipline in the traditional sense - it is a total engagement" and it implies an imperative to act.

The understanding of feminism until recently, even among women, has been extremely diverse. During the decades, however, there has emerged signs of feminism being transformed from traditional, statistical, and technical notions of equality towards a more comprehensive, authentic vision of life and society. Feminism is becoming a philosophy of its own with indigenous perspectives of society and politics, encompassing a 'holy trinity' of equality, ecology, and peace.

Matching eco-philosophy with feminism

Hazel Henderson suggests that eco-philosophy and eco-feminism (18) could and should go together like "warp and weft" to make the fabric of liveable, viable life. The problem is, however, that eco-philosophers never seem to read anything that eco-feminists have written, nor listen to the women's movement. A glance at the references in their books reveals that most of them have read hardly anything that feminist thinkers and researchers have published. Perhaps even they still associate women closely with nature, which does not articulate itself in writing or speaking!

Hazel Henderson wonders why eco-philosophy and feminism have thus far developed almost totally apart from each other, though they document the same insights. According to her "up to now there has been almost no communication between eco-philosophy and eco-feminism, because they have approached the same phenomena from different directions."

Eco-feminists have arrived at their conclusions experientially - "feeling that in their bones" - and therefore often found the abstract, mathematical, rational, patriarchal constructions of eco-philosophic thinking somewhat strange. Eco-philosophy searches for new insights mainly through theoretical, logical considerations in the traditional male manner.

Still, they speak about the same techno-scientific transformation. Hazel Henderson is merciless in her critique: "In fact, Cartesian science's search for certainty, equilibrium, predictability, and control is a good definition of death." She explores "the paradoxes of today", in terms of the global breakdown of a clearly unsustainable industrial order, with its competitive, expansionist, 'machismo', militaristic and patriarchal nation states.(19) But she sees good signs emerging "as a new planetary culture is struggling to be born, with ethics and politics more fitted for human survival in the rising Solar Age."(20)

She also gives due credit to men who are bold enough to deviate from the prevailing political and economic culture and thus are able to transform

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themselves 'from a chrysalis into a butterfly'. In her view the change taking place in the world today is comparable to this biological process. Typical of this change is acceleration, and inability to infer the future state of the system from any of its existing states.

Her optimism is also based on her belief that the two separate streams, eco-philosophy and eco-feminism, are now beginning to approach each other, providing a glimmer of hope that they will become parallel streams toward common goals.

Henderson characterizes her definition of eco-feminism:

"Eco-feminism once more views Nature as sacred... Eco-feminism also values motherhood and the parenting and raising of children and the maintaining of comfortable habitats and cohesive communities as the most highly productive work of society - rather than the most devalued, as under patriarchal values and economics where these tasks are ignored and unpaid."(21)

Finally, Henderson contemplates whether we face breakdown or breakthrough. She views stress as a tool of evolution. Thus the growing awareness of the limits of resources, increasing environmental damage, and other challenges are good news. "They are stressing us to grow up - to become all that we can be - to discover 'the possible humans' that we are."

Sisterhood embraces brothers too!

It is very important to make it clear that this kind of critical and innovative thinking is by no means directed against men in general. We have to be able to enter into a genuine dialogue between men and women on these issues which are of the utmost concern to both sexes - they are issues of life and death to the whole of humanity.

The American writer Marilyn French stresses that 'his story' has not been and is not the history of men and their deeds in general, but the history of the "power wielded by men", in other words, the story of those men who have had a lot of power in their hands whether it be political, economic, scientific, religious, ideological, etc. She strongly points out that the majority of both men and women "have been denied knowledge of their past, but for different reasons: women's history has been expunged in order to obliterate the record of female power; men's history has been censored in order to cloud the record of male powerlessness."(22)

An altruistic humanity of feminism is very well expressed in the definition of sisterhood made by the first professor of feminist theology in Europe, Catharina Halkes of the Netherlands:

"The concept of 'brotherhood' has always been important in the Churches...If we now like to speak of 'sisterhood' it is not only as a protest against it, neither is it meant as a polarization and apartheid; but it is a new symbol for those women who are in the process of

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growing awareness and for all women and men who, wherever and whoever, live in curtailment and non-freedom. Sisterhood is an alliance of women having common interests, showing an accepting, unconditional love and solidarity. It opposes the dual morality which condemns women and exonerates men, a superior power which crushes, a technology which dehumanizes and depersonalizes, sexual libertinism which makes women again an object and sees her only as a body, the exploitation by the supermen and then the Capital, of slaves, blacks, the powerless, but also the rape of mother earth, of nature and the whole creation which is becoming unlivable and exhausted."(23)

Masculine-feminine liberation

According to Henryk Skolimowski, ecology as a movement has predominantly focused on devastated nature. Humanism, on the other hand, has mainly focused on the devastated human being. He states that both of these are the outcome of the same underlying reasons. But neither he, nor ecologists and humanists have been able to see that women - female human beings - have been and are living in such a relationship with nature and humanity where both of these processes are interwoven in their own life experiences.

I maintain that women are the largest alternative movement in the world, a hidden, subversive, invisible counterculture to this overt masterculture of our time, which has brought us to the brink of disaster. Feminine culture could provide an untapped source of tradition, values, skills, and insights to the service of humanity - to reconstruct a sustainable way of life and economy for the future."(24)

On the opposite side of the globe, another woman, Ariel Salleh of Australia, has come to the same conclusion:

"...if women's lived experience were recognized as meaningful and were given legitimation in our culture, it could provide an immediate 'living' social basis for the alternative consciousness... The traditional feminine role runs counter to the exploitative technical rationality which is currently the requisite masculine norm. In place of the distain that feminine role receives from all quarters, 'the separate reality' of this role could well be taken seriously by ecologists and re-examined as a legitimate source of alternative values."(25)

Feminine culture has also been called a concrete utopia.(26) It is a concrete, existing culture and alternative lifestyle which has always existed. But since it has not been allowed a substantial component of the prevailing mode of society, it is also still a utopia. To transform this utopia into a practical model for the development of society, to make the invisible visible, could, together with the constructive ideas of eco-philosophy, provide the solution, a master plan, which is now needed for a sustainable future.

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There are two main obstacles to the utilization of these untapped sources of feminine culture. One is women's unawareness of their own potential, the other is the attitudes of men.

Most women themselves are not yet aware of the value and importance of the culture they represent consciously or unconsciously. Only after they have become aware of their womanhood and of the intrinsic value of being woman will they be able to make their authentic contribution toward a change in politics and culture.

Subjugated men of a patriarchal culture, have the attitudes and values of that culture deeply ingrained in their subconscious. They do not even rebel as women have always done. A long process of male liberation is needed before they can rid themselves of their 'masculine mystique' in order to meet feminine culture without prejudices.

Ariel Salleh still anticipates a new ally within the personality of men, and it is "the original androgynous natural unity... the feminine aspects of men's own constitution" within the man himself. The men within whose personality this unity will start growing stronger are, in the words of Hazel Henderson, that "new breed of gentlemen, who are throwing off the shackles of industrial 'machismo', the need to compete with each other and the fearful need to control, dominate and 'own' not only each other, but women, children, animals, plants and all of Mother Nature."

Human beings possess the unique potentiality of developing their humanness, of growing humanly - of realizing their full potential as male and female human beings. That is what is now needed from all of us, men and women. Only then will we be able to take the responsibility which is upon us at this turning point in history. A more harmonious interplay between the sexes will also grow out of this. But it "will not truly happen", as Ariel Salleh says, "until men are brave enough to rediscover and to love the woman inside themselves. And we women, too, have to be allowed to love what we are, if we are to make a better world." (27)

NOTES

1 Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio. United Nations, 1992, New York, Sales Section, Room DC2-0853, NY 10017.

2 The St. Andrew Animal Fund, Chief Seattle's Testimony, (10 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh EHZ, Scotland).

3 Lin Pugh and Moniek van der Kroef, "Before we die...", ISIS Journal, No. 15 (1980).

4 In The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1987) Riane Eisler gives a lot of new information about the ancient high cultures, which prevailed in Europe around 7000-3500 B.C.

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5 Many thanks to Elina Vuola for allowing me to draw from her M.A. Thesis "Uusi nainen - uusi maa" (New Woman - New Earth), Helsinki University, 1985) which is an analysis and synthesis of the thinking and works of Rosemary Radford Ruether.

6 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Liberation Theology (1972), (Cited from Elina Vuola's "Uusi nainen - uusi maa").

7 Vuola, "Uusi nainen - uusi maa".

8 In Sexism and God-Talk: Toward Feminist Theology (Boston, 1983), pp. 79-80, Rosemary Radford Ruether states: "All that sustains physical life - sex, eating, reproduction, even sleep - comes to be seen as sustaining the realm of 'death', against which a mental realm of consciousness has been abstracted as the realm of 'true life'. Women as representatives of sexual reproduction and motherhood are the bearers of death from which male spirit must flee to 'light and life'.

9 In "The Warp and the Weft - The Coming Synthesis of Eco-philosophy and Eco-Feminism" Development (Journal of SID, Rome), No. 4 (1984), hazel Henderson wrote: "Any separate, egoistic consciousness, to the extend that it feels separated from all life, will fear its individual death as a final extinction, a total loss of meaning that must led to existential anxiety... These same fears of death and loss of meaning led to the neurotic notion of scientific objectivity... We see it in the long saga of patriarchal literature, from the Greek myths of the hero and the hero's journey to the angst and alienation from Nature echoed from Hegel, Marx and the Frankfurt School to Herman Hesse, the existentialists and Sigmund Freud and his followers."

10 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, pp. 87-88.

11 In Liberation Theology (1972) (Cited from Vuola, "Uusi nainen - uusi maa"), Rosemary Radford Ruether tells that: "Such a revolution entails nothing less than a transformation of all the social structures of civilization... It entails literally a global struggle to overthrow and transform the character of power structures... its salvation myth will not be one of divinization and flight from the body but of humanization and reconciliation with the earth."

12 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (Harper & Row, 1980).

13 Rosemary Radford Ruether, New Women . New Earth , pp. 200-201, (Cited from Elina Vuola's "Uusi nainen - uusi maa".)

14 Ibid., p. 204.

15 Henryk Skolimowski, Eco-Philosophy, (London, 1981), p. 46.

16 Sigmund Kvaloy, "Complexity, Life Strength and Well-Balanced Society", (a mimeograph).

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17 Hilkka Pietilä, "Tomorrow Begins Today: Alternative Development with Women in the North", (Paper for ICDA/ISIS Workshop in Forum 1985 Nairobi).

18 Hazel Henderson uses the term "eco-feminism", which is, after all about to become internally tautologic, as is indicated e.g. by her definition of feminism and the whole process of feminist thinking described in this article - a matured feminism is ecological.

19 In "The Warp and the Weft" Hazel Henderson states: "But if we are to prescribe for our almost terminal illness, we must dig deeply for our diagnoses. We can no longer skate around observing surface manifestations, such as those offered by economists: 'unemployment'; 'inflation; 'declining productivity': 'the need for national security'; 'supply' to meet 'demand', and all the rest of the psychotic language of alienation, fear and insecurity."

20 Hazel Henderson, The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics, (New York, 1981), and in "The Warp and the Weft" Hazel Henderson says: "Today we see these alternatives emerging from the world's ethnic and indigenous peoples, from subsistence cultures and traditional wisdom; from the world's women and from the rising female principle, whose energies can be seen in the new breed of gentlemen. They are throwing off the shackles of industrial 'machismo', the need to compete with each other and the fearful need to control, dominate and 'own' not only each other, but women, children, plants and all the Mother Nature."

21 Hazel Henderson: "The Warp and the Weft".

22 Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women, Men and Morals, (London, 1985), p. 264.

23 Catherina Halkes, "To a New Image of Man based on Feminist Theology", An international meeting, Groningen, 1977.

24 Hilkka Pietilä, "Women as an Alternative Culture Here and Now", Development No. 4 (1984), and

Hilkka Pietilä, "Kvinnoperspektiv på nuet och framtiden", in Alternativen, ed. Friberg & Galtung (Stockholm, 1986).

25 Ariel Salleh, "Deeper Than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection", Environmental Ethics, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1984).

26 Doris Norrgård, "Äidillisyys femimismin konkreettisena utopiana" (Motherliness as the concrete utopia of feminism), Naiset ja Valta (Women and Power). ed. Saarinen, Hänninen-Salmelin and Keränen, (Jyväskylä, 1987).

27 Ariel Salleh, "Deeper than Deep Ecology", and

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Hilkka Pietilä, "The Right to Be Oneself", Sisterhood is Global, ed. Robin Morgan (New York, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action from Rio. United Nations, New York, Sales Section, Room dc2-0853, NY 10017. 1993.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our history, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987

French, Marilyn. Beyond Power: On Women, Men & Morals. London: 1985.

Halkes, Catherina. "To a New Image of Man based on Feminist Theology". An international meeting, Groningen, 1977.Henderson, Hazel. The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics. New York, 1981.

Henderson, Hazel. "The Warp and the Weft - The Coming Synthesis of Eco-Philosophy and Eco-Feminism". Development (Journal of SID, Rome), No. 4, 1984.

Kvaloy, Sigmund. "Complexity, Life Strength and Well-Balanced Society". (A mimeograph; Sigmund Kvaloy, 7496 Kotsoy, Norway.)

Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. Harper & Row, 1980.

Norrgård, Doris. "Äidillisyys feminismin konkreettisena utopiana". Naiset ja Valta. Ed. Saarinen, Hänninen - Salmelin, and Keränen. Jyväskylä, 1987.

Pietilä, Hilkka. "Kvinnoperspektiv på nuet och framtiden". Alternativen. Ed. Friberg and Galtung. Stockholm: 1986.

Pietilä, Hilkka. "The Right To Be Oneself". Sisterhood is Global. Ed. Robin Morgan. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984.

Pietilä, Hilkka. "Tomorrow Begins Today: Alternative Development with Women in the North." Paper for ICDA/ISIS Workshop in Forum 1985 Nairobi. Published in IFDA Dossier 57/58, 1987.

Pietilä, Hilkka. "Women as an Alternative Culture Here and Now". Development. (Journal of SID, Rome), No. 4, 1984.

Pugh, Lin and van der Kroef, Moniek. "Before we die..." ISIS Journal No. 15, 1980.

Radford Ruether, Rosemary. Liberation Theology. 1972.

Radford Ruether, Rosemary. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward Feminist Theology. Boston, 1983.

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Salleh, Ariel. "Deeper than Deep Ecology: The Eco-Feminist Connection". Environmental Ethics. Vol. 6, No. 4, 1984.

Skolimowski, Henryk. Eco-Philosophy. London, 1981.

Chief Seattle's Testimony. The St. Andrew Animal Fund. 10 Queensberry Street, Edinburgh EHZ, Scotland.

Vuola, Elina. "Uusi nainen - uusi maa"(New Woman - New Earth). Helsinki: Helsinki University, 1985

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