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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses Women and the environment in rural Mexico Bain, Jennifer Helen How to cite: Bain, Jennifer Helen (1992) Women and the environment in rural Mexico, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/6111/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN RURAL MEXICO JENNIFER HELEN BAIN THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY 1992 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. "The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without her prior consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged". TABLE OF CONTENTS WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN RURAL MEXICO SECTION ONE: THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT CONTENTS PAGE I. - Introduction 1 II. - Ecofeminism 18 11.1 Introduction 18 11.2 Environmentalism and feminism 19 11.3 The history of environmentalism and feminism 21 11.4 Eco-feminism 24 11.5 General aims 32 11.6 Strategies 34 11.7 Authors 36 11.8 Critiques 36 11.9 Mother Earth 39 III.- Women and Nature 41 111.1 Introduction 41 111.2 The origins (history and prehistory) 45 111.3 Man:culture::woman:nature 53 IV.- Selected Writers on Women and Nature 58 IV.1 Susan Griffin 58 IV.2 Sherry B. Ortner 61 IV.3 Critiques of Ortner: Maria lepowsky, Henrietta Moore Carole Pateman, Bradd Shore 65 IV.4 Marilyn Strathern and Melissa Llewelyn- Jones 70 IV. 5 Carolyn Merchant 72 V. - Women discovered as saviours of the Third World 79 V.l Introduction 79 V.2 Vandana Shiva 80 V. 3 Joan Davidson and Irene Dankelman 84 8ECTION TWO: MEXICO Introduction 91 VI. - Silenced voices, or a literature without women 95 VI.1 Introduction 95 VI.2 Giving Mexican rural women a place in history 101 VI.3 Culture; self-image; cosmovision 108 VI. 4 Women's environmental perception 115 VII. - Mexican rural women 117 VII.l Introduction 117 VII.2 Women's work: health 120 VII.3 Women's knowledge on reproduction 125 VII.4 Women and agricultural production 130 VII.5 Agro-industrial units for (peasant) women: UAIM's 136 VII.6 Knowledge related to production 139 VII.7 Women and their struggle for land 144 VII. 8 Women in agriculture: Case studies 149 VIII. - Women's hidden knowledge 157 VIII.1 Introduction VIII.2 Proposed realms for women: VIII.2.1 Home gardens VIII.2.1 Agroforestry VIII.3 Case study. Women in the rainforest four communities VIII. 4 Individual opinions IX. - Conclusion Appendix A Bibliography WOMEN AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN RURAL MEXICO Jennifer Helen Bain ABSTRACT Rural women in Mexico live in deteriorating environmental conditions. Do they care? Are they more interested than men in helping to stop this degradation? What knowledge of the environment do rural Mexican women have? Section One analyses some Western views: the eco-feminist movement which sees women as equivalent to nature and both as subordinates of men, the Western historical and anthropological literature on women and nature and selected writers who see women as saviours of the Third World. In Section Two it is demonstrated that it is difficult to know if Mexican women care about the environment or even what they know, because there is little published information. A partial answer may be inferred from what is known about their work. Rural Mexican women's work is the best proof of their environmental knowledge; their roles and work are examined and the causes of their absence from the literature are discussed. The literature review was supplemented by field work in four communities of south-eastern Mexico. This established that these women vary in their approach to natural resources, and that this approach is much influenced by their culture and by themselves as individuals. Some have very substantial knowledge. The fieldwork supported the view that women's relationship with the environment is highly specific by place, time, culture, class and other factors, but there is still some continuity in attitudes to the environment among women, perhaps in their role as "carers". 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I first thought of doing research about women after reading a newspaper article on rural women in Mexico, which explained not only the poor social conditions they lived in but also the deteriorating environmental conditions they were facing. My training in Biology suggested to me as a Mexican, that the subject of Mexican rural women and their relation to the physical environment would help me to a better understanding of the origins of women's subordination. The question that this thesis seeks to answer is: are women related to the environment in a special way? Do they possess special knowledge that relates them to the environment in a different way from men? The first approach I tried was the eco-feminist (II). This approach has its foundations in a "special" relation, a "natural" relation, that eco-feminists suppose to exist between women and nature, a relation that they consider is not being respected by men in patriarchal societies. Men are then held responsible for the degradation and exploitation both of women and of 2 nature. This movement can be seen as basically mystical; although some of its members are academics like Vandana Shiva (V.2), its members are mainly feminists who hold strong biases against men. Some of these feminists, such as Vandana Shiva, Joan Davidson and Irene Dankelman (V.3), consider the relationship woman-nature and the subordination of both is clearly seen in Third World countries where women are "the poorest of the poor" but have in their hands, these authors consider, the potential to change the trend towards an environmental catastrophe. Women are considered in this context as "Saviours of the Third World" (V). In this respect, we see how women's work on the land renders them knowledgeable on natural resources. This knowledge, though, must be used within the right social and political context if it is to benefit the environment. This approach led me on to Western historical and anthropological work on women and nature (III). This includes different approaches. On the one hand there are those writers seeking to prove a universal nature-woman relationship combined with a universal subordination of women and nature to men (IV.1 and IV.2). On the other, there are those seeking an array of cultural and geographical variations upon the relation, by which they try to disprove any universal (IV.3, IV.4 and IV.5). 3 So women, at least in most societies influenced by Western culture, have become the Second Sex, and cannot be seen as equals by men. They will be regarded as "nature" and will be controlled, used and exploited. This, with the discussion of eco-feminism, constitutes Section One of the thesis. I limited my search to social science material, leaving aside the arts (literature, drama, painting, film, photography, television, sculpture), which might themselves give some answers. This is only a selective view of the theme; it does not try to present a general account of what has been produced on the subject of Women and Nature, but does demonstrate the variety. Section Two consists of an investigation into the literature on rural Mexico, to find out whether there has been research in this part of the world that either corroborates or disproves the positions mentioned above. This part turned out to be detective work rather than entirely academic; the computer searches in data banks, as will be explained (Appendix A) , did not prove very successful. Various key words were tried, but the results were not positive in the sense that not much was identified on 4 "Women and the environment in rural Mexico". This in itself is interesting. The literature searched consisted mainly of ethnobotanical, anthropological and a little geographical material. As with the data banks, it was again difficult to find material specifically on rural women and their relationship with and knowledge of the physical environment. Interviews with researchers (VIII.4) were revealing because of their reactions when asked about the research topic and the variety of their opinions. At this point then, I established that there is not much literature on "women and the environment in rural Mexico". This period of research was supplemented by field work in four communities of south-eastern Mexico (VIII.3), in which women were questioned on their views and their knowledge of the environment and about their condition as poor rural women. The field work established that these women vary in their approach to natural resources, and that this approach will be much influenced by their culture, and by themselves as individuals of one specific culture. In this context, then, it is relevant to relate the women from the Chipko movement in India who tied themselves to trees so that the trees should not be chopped down (Shiva, 1988) and to the women in Mexico who became involved in politics to be able to defend their 5 land (Arrillaga, 1988) .
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