Zhang, Nini. “Towards a Whiteheadian Ecofeminism.” In Whitehead and China: Relevance and Relationship, eds. Wenyu Xie, Zhihe Wang, and George E. Derfer. (Frankfurt, Germany: Ontos Verlag, 2005), 205-13.

Abstract

Ecofeminism represents the union of the deep ecology and feminism.  'Ecology' is a science that deals with the mutual relations and actions between creatures and their environments.  It examines how these natural communities function to sustain a healthy web of life and how they become disrupted.  Since human intervention is obviously one of the main causes of such disruption, ecology began to combine with socio-economic study from the late 1960's.  It is the very orientation that deep ecology has taken.  Deep ecology, however, examines the symbolic psychological and ethical patterns of destructive relations of humans with nature and how to replace this with a life-affirming culture.  As to 'feminism', it is a complex movement with many layers.  It could mean only a movement trying to gain political and economical right for women in a democratic society, an ideology that aims at transforming the patriarchal socio-economic system, or a cultual study of male monopoloization of resources and controlling power.  The last layer of feminism connects closely with deep ecology, and it may be said what they think and express are just the things that deep ecology want to say.  Ecofeminism, emerging in the 1970's, is a reasonable union of these two trends.  Many of them assert that there is a historical, political and symbolic relation between inferiority of women and nature.