June 8th, 1997
HAVE YOU COME A LONG WAY, BABY?
By Jackie Giuliano
We have forgotten who we are. We have sought only our own security We have exploited
simply for our own ends We have distorted our knowledge We have abused our power.
-- United Nations Environmental Sabbath Program
The ecological crisis is related to the systems of hatred of all that is natural and
female by the white, male, Western formulators of philosophy, technology, and death
inventions.
-- Ynestra King
These powerful, radical words suggest something that must be considered. Have women really
come so far in the way our culture perceives them? Is involving more women and people of
color in the workforce enough to insure equality? Or have the very ways we have been
taught to think and learn been affected by the lack of participation of these marginalized
people? Looking at how science has evolved without the full representation of women is
revealing.
King proposes that the systematic denigration of so many people in the world including
working-class people, people of color, women, and animals is the result of the basic
dualism that lies at the root of Western culture. Is this too extreme a view? History can
be interpreted to support this view. Our separation from nature is clear and easily
observable. The dualism between nature and culture is the foundation of the Western world.
It is not too great a leap to suggest that this dualism has as its model the domination of
men over women and other oppressed peoples.
Modern science represents itself as universal, value-free and able to arrive at objective
conclusions about life. Yet how can any endeavor be free of judgement and completely
objective? Studies have shown that a researcher will nearly always observe data and draw
conclusions that fit within the boundaries of her or his expectations. After all, humans
are thinking, feeling, subjective beings.
Vandana Shiva, a theoretical physicist and feminist scholar from India, observes that
modern science claims to be a liberating force for humanity as a whole. Yet worldwide
experiences do not support this claim. Science and technology are used throughout the
globe as a political and economic force to bring "third-world" countries up to
North American "standards." In these developing countries, in order to support
this new set of values brought about by these "improvements," the separation
from the natural world must, sadly, increase. Healthy, productive land is cleared for
cattle ranches, the consumption of meat increases, and the production of local food ceases
as production efforts are deflected to exportable goods.
Cancers that have been unknown until now in the lesser-developed countries are on the rise
as people's lifestyles shift towards high animal protein diets and substance abuse
(caffeine and tobacco). The increase in stress that accompanies a more consumer-oriented
lifestyle, the quest for the "American Dream," results in higher blood pressure
and an increase in circulatory diseases such as heart attacks and strokes which, together,
kill 15.3 million people a year. In a report released on May 2, 1997, the World Health
Organization (WHO) confirms that shifts in the lifestyles of the industrialized world,
made possible by scientific and technological advances, have dramatically impacted the
health of the world. Diseases of affluence are now rampant in developing countries, as
they are in the West, and WHO estimates that cancers from these diseases will rise a
remarkable 40% by the year 2020.
Scholar Sandra Harding wonders if science as practiced today is the liberator or the
subjugator, or is it a "Western, male-oriented and patriarchal projection that
necessarily entailed the subjugation of both nature and women?" These are important
questions to ask and they must be considered if learning about our world, in or out of the
classroom, is to be conducted in a connected and inclusive manner.
Have Women Been Excluded?
Have the fields of science been dominated by men and has the male or patriarchal mindset
influenced our culture and our connection to the natural world? The answer is clearly
"yes." The U.S. National Science Foundation's collection of data on the presence
of women in science says so much, just in the title. The volume is called "Women,
Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering." Women
continued to be classified as "other" along with the numerous disenfranchised
groups of our society.
The numbers below (from the 1994 report) are very revealing.
- Males are three times more likely to pursue a career in science, math, or engineering
than females.
- Although women constitute 51.2% of the population and about 46% of the workforce in all
occupations, only 22% are in science and engineering occupations.
- Women earned 29% of the science and engineering doctorates, yet the majority were in
positions that have been traditionally accepted as "appropriate" for women.
Fifty nine percent were awarded in psychology, 38% in biological sciences, 35% in social
sciences, 19% in mathematics, and 9% in engineering.
Why is this so? The report has clues:
- Higher percentages of females than males reported having been advised not to take senior
mathematics in high school.
- Faculty who teach undergraduates are overwhelmingly male in civil, mechanical, and
electrical engineering, and sociology, geology, and physics. Female students find very few
role models.
- Math and science teachers treat girls and boys differently in the classroom. Boys get
more eye contact and attention from teachers than girls. When boys give the wrong answers,
teachers challenge them to find the correct one. Girls get sympathy. When there are lab
experiments, boys tend to operate the equipment and girls take data and write reports.
- Loss of self-confidence in girls seems to begin around the 7th grade and continue
through high school. Although males and females performed comparably in science and math
courses, females tended to underestimate their abilities. This lack of confidence
accelerates and females begin taking fewer and fewer math and science courses.
It is evident that women have not had a full role either in participating in the
practice of science or, as history shows, in the development of its methods and
ideologies. The worldview that provides the basis for science as it is practiced today is
a male one. How science might have evolved if there had been full female participation is
unknown. However, it is vital to realize that science, and our view of the natural world,
has been formed with a male perspective and is based on the male experience.
Whether or not the dominance of a male perspective in science has been a negative
influence is more difficult to "prove," at least by traditional, patriarchal
methodologies. Certain factors do suggest that the disconnected worldview may have come
from the patriarchal influence.
Can We Really Be "Objective"
Speculation abounds about the affect that the lack of participation of women in the
development and practice of science has had. Since so many of our behaviors have evolved
in an atmosphere of cultural influences, it is difficult to say what is really male and
what is really female. This is an important context to understand, since our subjugation
of nature and the parallel to the treatment of women can illuminate the path toward
healing. The challenge may be to demonstrate that the way we treat nature and women are
really, as feminist scholars Alison Jaggar and Paula Rothenberg have said, acts of
systematic subordination and not just the results of coincidental misfortune.
If one assumes that the experiences of women are different from the experiences of men and
that the major systems of thought in our culture are based on men's experiences, then the
fundamental assumptions that have been made about how the world works should be
challenged.
In general, modern culture assumes that males possess natural intelligence, are logical,
objective, active, independent, forceful, and courageous. Women have been assumed to be
emotionally responsive, obedient, kind, dependent, timid, self-sacrificing, and incapable
of abstract thought.
These assumptions are so ingrained in culture that it is difficult for children and their
parents to escape the subtle and insidious indoctrination from film, literature,
television, advertising, and the very language we use every day.
Modern science was founded those traits assumed to be male. It claims to be dispassionate
and objective. While those who practice this form of science see these traits as
admirable, others feel that objectification is a root cause of our disconnection from the
natural world and each other.
Shiva classifies modern science as "fragmented" and "reductionist"
because it allows us to know nature only by excluding other "knowers and other ways
of knowing" and it removes nature's capacity for creative regeneration and renewal by
speaking of it only in terms of fragmented and inert matter. The very terminology we use
to speak of our "use" of the natural world is revealing. We enter "virgin
territory" and "rape" the land.
Francis Bacon, an instrumental leader in the Scientific Revolution, said that nature had
to be "hounded in her wanderings" and "bound into service" and made a
"slave." She was to be "put in constraint" and it was the job of the
scientist to "torture nature's secrets from her."
This field of study is enormous, but the presentation of some key principles will help
provide clues as to how environmental education must be adjusted to take these biases into
account. No one idea is probably the cause for the oppression of either women or nature,
but provocative insights can come from an examination of these thoughts. Below are some of
these key principles.
Women are often identified with nature. Feminists who believe that the fundamental cause
of oppression is the biologically based domination of women by men feel that men have
sought to enlist women and nature in the service of, as Ynestra King says, "male
projects designed to make men safe from feared nature and mortality."
The "women's spirituality" movement embraces the concept of the Earth as a
living system where cooperation was a stronger force in evolution than competition. This
is a very different view of the world than that offered by mainstream "modern"
biology. Competition for resources is usually the main theme in discussions of the
evolution of life. Virtually all species are discussed in terms of the "survival of
the fittest." Our language is filled with references to this belief, such as
"only the strong survive" and "it's a dog-eat-dog world." Nature films
on the Public Broadcasting Service, a very popular form of entertainment in the 1990's,
invariably will show animals fighting, eating each other, or suffering from lack of
resources. Rarely do they show the cooperation and compassion that takes place in the
system. Here are some examples:
- The many forms of plants whose seeds cannot germinate unless they first pass through the
digestive tract of an animal who eats them.
- The powerful social forces at work in an elephant herd, including the way that the young
are cared for and the concern for the individual. Entire herds of elephants will slow down
for an ailing youngster and they will all grieve for a dead comrade.
- The anguished cry of a female harp seal that watches as her baby is clubbed by a fur
hunter with a spiked stick and skinned alive on the ice flows of the Arctic. The mother
will cry over the skinned carcass for hours. Ecological feminism calls for a dynamic
theory of the person, both for males and females, where the self is a larger entity that
includes the non-human and natural world. If one defines one's self as being part of the
non-human world as well as the human one, then the thought of harming an ecosystem or a
river or even a tree would be as unthinkable as cutting off one's own limb. Women have
been at the forefront of virtually every political and social movement to reclaim the
Earth. Women will often feel the effects of degradation of the Earth before men. This
connection is seen most dramatically in the lesser-developed countries, but the phenomenon
exists worldwide.
- Women do almost all of the world's domestic work and child care, mostly without pay.
- Women do more than half the work associated with growing food, gathering fuelwood, and
hauling water.
- Women provide more health care with little or no pay than all the world's organized
health services combined (they also do 60% of the world's work in general, yet own only
10% of the world's property and earn 1% of the world's income).
The worldwide economic value of women's domestic work is estimated at $4 trillion
annually, an amount which is not figured into any country's gross national product. Women
are most likely to come into contact with toxins in the form of pesticides and toxic
wastes than men. Even in Southern California, I have witnessed this spectacle unfold. In
Beverly Hills and Sherman Oaks, two very affluent areas, a veritable "army" of
nannies, usually always Hispanic females, take the rich, white babies out for walks in
their strollers. At the same time, hundreds of gardeners, usually always Hispanic (or
sometimes Asian) males, are gardening using gasoline-powered leaf-blowers, cutting lawns
with gas-powered lawn mowers, and spraying pesticides on lawns. These women, and the
children in their care, are exposed to this onslaught of toxic pollution every day.
We must stop allowing women's voice to go unheard. We must all accept the responsibility
to invite women to tell of their experience in the world. We all have to learn of the
female experience and create a new experience that includes women. Inclusive programs must
be developed that invite women to participate and that heal the breach that has been
created. If science continues to speak in terms of "mankind's" quest for
dispassionate, objective views of the universe that remove all sensory expression, then
the world will continue to appear as a separate, isolated place. Neither men nor women
will feel wholly included in the discussion or the analysis. We must insist that all
fields include women in discussions from which they have been excluded for far too long.
And we must stop accepting the propaganda that suggests that "you have come a long
way, baby."
RESOURCES
1. Check out the work of Vandana Shiva in her new book, Biopiracy.
2. For an ecofeminism bibliography, visit http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~jdingler/ecofem.html
3. Check out the ecofeminism web site at http://envirolink.org/orgs/eve/
4. Read definitions of ecofeminism at http://envirolink.org/elib/enviroethics/ecofemindex.html
5. You can see the statistics for yourself in the National Science Foundation document
called Women, Minorities, and Persons With Disabilities in Science and Engineering at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf96311/start.htm
6. The World Health Organization can be found at http://www.who.ch/
7. Visit a women's bookstore in your town. You will find amazing resources.
8. For a comprehensive list of links to "women and science" sites, visit http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/Gender/wom_and_min.html
9. For a good list of feminist and woman's resources, check out http://www.ocs.mq.edu.au/~korman/feminism/general.html |
