Carolyn Merchant â€å“earthcare Women and the Environment Review

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Earthcare

Women and the Surround

by Carolyn Merchant

280 pages, paperback, Routledge, 1995

Earthcare explores the clan of women with nature in Western culture. Part one raises theoretical issues concerning women, the earth, and female symbols of nature. Part ii looks at the history of associations between women and nature, the ways women accept interacted with the earth, and the means they have conserved its resources. Part three examines women's participation in the gimmicky ecology motility in the United states, Sweden and Australia.

Quotes from Earthcare

"The post-Ceremonious State of war resurgence of loftier fashion for ladies had, by the end of the century, taken an immense price on American bird-life in the cosmos of exotic styles in millinery. Bird feathers and whole birds nestled atop the heads of society's upper- and middle-grade women. Bonnets of 'sapphire blue-velvet trimmed with flowers and a gay colored bird', hats of carmine velvet trimmed with lace, birds, and aigrette; and 'coquettishly aptitude hat(south) of white leghorn, with trimmings of white plumes and chiffon' were idea to lend a chic, elegant air to milady.

"Past the decade of the 1880s, hundreds of thousands of song birds, swallows, Baltimore orioles, egrets, and terns had been sacrificed to the whims of fashion and the pockets of milliners. Editorials in Field and Stream during the years 1883-1884 called attending to the national tragedy and recommended laws for bird protection. Responding to the urgent demand, the American Ornithologists' Union in 1886 prepared a bulletin, published every bit a supplement to Science with 100,000 copies issued separately, presenting a 'Model Law' for the protection of birds and a collection of articles documenting the wholesale destruction of birds, highly-seasoned on their behalf to the ladies of the country.

"The first Audubon societies, organized in 1886, protested the 'abominable' addiction of wearing feather fashions. Growing speedily to thirty,000 members in half dozen months and encouraged past the passage of laws in New York and Pennsylvania, the Societies' founders began publication of Audubon Magazine in 1887. Women who sought to educate their sisters to the peril of birds formed Audubon clubs, such equally the one at Smith College where two immature students developed a programme to protect plume birds.

'Go to it,' said they. 'We volition start an Audubon Society. The birds must be protected; we must persuade the girls not to habiliment feathers in their hats.' 'We won't say too much about the hats, though,' these plotters went on. 'We'll take the girls afield, and let them get acquainted with the birds. Then of inborn necessity they volition wear feathers never more than.'

" Birding rapidly defenseless on at Smith with early on morning field trips led by luminaries such as John Burroughs, or by educatee observers who aroused enthusiasm for living rather than dead plume. . . . Within 3 years Audubon Clubs and state societies sprang spontaneously into existence in Massachusetts-- where the vice-presidents included Mrs. Louis Agassiz, president of Radcliffe Higher, and Mrs. Julia J. Irving, president of Wellesley--in Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. In 1898, a score of ladies met in Fairfield, Connecticut to form the Audubon society of the State of Connecticut, electing as president Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, popular author of The Friendship of Nature (1894), Birdcraft (1895), Birds of Village and Field (1898), numerous articles in the New York Times and Evening Postal service, and nature stories for children. . . .

"In 1900, Mrs. Lovell White of San Francisco, the brilliant, dynamic founder and president of the women's California Club, took up the cause of forestry. Founded at the home of Mrs. White on a cold rainy evening in 1896 in the wake of the starting time and abortive California suffrage campaign--a campaign 'brilliant, rich in experience' with a 'spirit of wholesome comradeship,'--the California Guild merged in January of 1900 with women'due south clubs throughout the state to form the California Federation of Women'due south Clubs. With Mrs. Robert Burdette of Pasadena as president and Mrs. White equally vice-president-at-large, the first meeting was steeped in conservation ideals.

" 'The preservation of the forests of this state is a matter that should appeal to women,' declared Mrs. Burdette in her opening accost. 'While the women of New Jersey are saving the palisades of the Hudson from utter destruction by men to whose greedy souls Mountain Sinai in simply a stone quarry, and the women of Colorado are saving the cliff dwellings and pueblo ruins of their country from vandal devastation, the give-and-take comes to the women of California that men whose souls are gang-saws are meditating the turning of our world-famous Sequoias into planks and fencing worth so many dollars.' The forests of the state, she went on, are the source of the land's waters and together they made possible the home and wellness of the people of California. 'Ameliorate one living tree in California, than 50 acres of lumberyard, Preserve and replant them and the State will be blessed a thousandfold in the development of its natural resources.' "

"In the years that followed, Mrs. White, every bit President of the California Club's Outdoor Art League, President of the Sempervirens Club, and later Chair of the Forestry Commission of the Full general Federation of Women'south Clubs fabricated a national reputation 'working unceasingly in behalf of forestry.' "

"In 1900 Mrs. White became alarmed by a report that the Calaveras Grove of Big Trees in the Stanislaus watershed of the western Sierra, discovered in 1850 and of world renown, was scheduled for cutting past an eastern lumber house. The Big Trees, (Sequoia gigantea), were the largest known redwoods in existence, many measuring over 12 feet in bore with bark up to two feet thick.

"In February of that twelvemonth, Mrs. White asked Mrs. A. D. Sharon, a guild fellow member who was in Washington, to asking the introduction of a joint resolution in congress calling for the acquisition of the grove on behalf of the public. Success was immediate, and too skillful to exist true! In March Mrs. White received a telegram from Mrs. Sharon: 'Neb passed House Fri, Senate Monday, President signed Tuesday.'

"Mrs. White soon realized that the pecker had only authorized negotiation to purchase. No funds had been appropriated. Simply with cutting delayed owing to the owner's cooperation with the police, Mrs. White as president of the Outdoor Art League began a nationwide campaign for buy of the trees as a national park.

"After a pecker failed to laissez passer the house in 1904, she organized a petition bulldoze that nerveless 1,500,000 signatures and was endorsed by dozens of national organizations. Upon its presentation to President Theodore Roosevelt, the first special presidential message was sent to Congress 'at the request of an organization managed by women,' urging preservation of the groves. In addition, Mrs. White arranged to have big photographs of the well-nigh prominent trees, named after presidents and generals of the United States, sent to cardinal congressional committees.

"With Congress nonetheless refusing to act, Mrs. White embarked on a personal campaign to vestibule every senator and representative in Congress. Finally in 1909 a bill was passed and signed by Roosevelt that authorized exchange of the Calaveras Groves for lands of equal value in the U.Southward. Forest Reserves. Hailed every bit a great triumph by the Women'south Clubs, preservation of the Big Copse was not notwithstanding achieved. No lands satisfactory for the exchange could exist institute by the possessor, Mr. Whiteside. The situation remained in limbo until 1926, when announcement was made of plans to cut the Southward Grove. At that point the fight was taken up by Mrs. Harriet West Jackson who equally president of the Calaveras Grove Association adamant to printing for a state park in lieu of the national park originally authorized. With the assistance of the Calaveras Garden Club, the North Grove was finally set aside in 1931. But not until 1954, largely through a statewide didactics campaign conducted past Mrs. Owen Bradley, did the South Grove become part of the state park organisation."

. . .

"The first factor behind women's ecology leadership is their differing attitudes toward the environment from those of men. For case, a survey taken in Queensland shows that on a variety of ecology problems in which support by gender varied, 'females appeared to have greater back up for every environmental and political issue covered by the survey.' These issues included catastrophe uranium mining, logging on Fraser Island, World Heritage rainforest protection, concern that the government was not doing enough to protect the environs, voting as influenced by ecology policy, and voting for Green Political party candidates if available. On one consequence, the structure of a space base on the Cape York peninsula, men expressed greater support than women, and on two issues (initiating oil shipping controls along the Great Bulwark Reef and instituting ramble ability to protect the surroundings) in that location was no significant difference past gender. The report concluded that 'Queensland females were near twice equally likely to have high environmental scores than males. This gender-based attitudinal variation is quite marked and is highly statistically significant.'

"Nationwide, more than Australian women than men belong to environmental and conservation organizations. Surveys taken at the national level of individuals under fifty years of age, indicate that women are more concerned than men about environmental issues (54 to 46 percentage on pollution, 53 to 47 percent on nature conservation, and 42 to 29 percent on social and environmental problems), while men are more concerned about economical bug than women (61 percent to 48 per centum).

"The 2nd factor behind Australian women's activism is their differing economic and social situations from those of men. Women occupy different economic niches than practise men, and their human relationship to both social club and nature reflects different experiences of nature and differing approaches to resolving environmental problems. Their work is heavily full-bodied in caregiving, service, and volunteer activity. In 1991, women comprised 97 percent of all nurses, 75 percentage of the health manufacture, 66 percent of all educators outside of universities, and 65 percent of all service manufacture employees. Of the unpaid workforce 2-thirds was female, with women constituting 96 pct of those engaged in full-time childcare, 70 percent of those in the home workforce, and 67 percent of all volunteers. . . . Women make upward lxx percentage of those with incomes below the poverty line."

. . .

"Chaos theory challenges two basic assumptions of ecology as it developed in the 1960s and 1970s and formed the basis of ecology management--the ideas of the balance of nature and the diversity--stability hypothesis. The historical concept of a balance of nature which humans could disrupt unsaid that people could repair damaged ecosystems with better practices. The thought that biodiversity led to ecosystem stability meant that species conservation and ecological restoration could amend ecosystem health. Yet chaos theory suggests that natural disturbances and mosaic patches that do no exhibit regular or predictable patterns are the norm rather than aberration. Moreover, the seemingly stable world that is the object of socially-synthetic representations tin be destabilized by human social practices (as when pesticides produce mutant insects or antibiotics produce resistant bacteria). Such theories undercut assumptions of stability at the root of Leopold's land ethic and of holism as a foundation for ecocentrism. They reinforce the idea that predictability, while however useful, is more limited than previously assumed and that nature, while a human construct and a representation, is also a existent, cloth, autonomous agent. A postclassical, postmodern science is a science of limited noesis, of the primacy of process over parts, and of imbedded contexts within complex, open up ecological systems.

"This disorderly, ordered world of nonhuman nature must be acknowledged as a costless autonomous actor, simply as humans are free autonomous agents. But nature limits human freedom to totally boss and command it, only as human power limits nature's and other humans' freedom. Science and technology can tell us that an event such equally a hurricane, earthquake, flood, or burn is likely to happen in a certain locale, simply non when it will happen. Because nature is fundamentally chaotic, it must exist respected and related to as an agile partner through a partnership ethic."

Table of Contents of Earthcare

1. Gaia: Ecofeminism and the Earth
2. Eve: Nature and Narrative
3. Isis: Women and Science
4. The Death of Nature: Women and Ecology in the Scientific Revolution
5. Grade Corn Mothers to Moral Mothers: Changing Forms of Earthcare in New England
6. Preserving the Earth: Women and the Progressive Conservation Crusade
7. Earthcare: Women and the American Ecology Move
8. Peace with the Earth: Women and the Swedish Environs. With Abby Peterson
9. The Ecological Self: Women and the Environment in Australia
10. Conclusion. Partnership Ethics: Earthcare for a New Millennium

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