Chapter 23: Women's Leadership in the Environmental Movement

Cecilia M. Herles

Women's leadership in the environmental movement Despite numerous obstacles facing them, many ordinary women around the world have achieved extraordinary feats by tackling environmental problems. However, the countless contributions of women in the environmental movement have often been overlooked. Glenda Riley (1999) notes that customary accounts of early American environmentalism mistakenly equate visibility with significance and focus on policy shapers, such as John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and Theodore Roosevelt. Focus on such figures typically has discounted the ways in which women have been the center of grassroots environmental activism. Often to their detriment, women also historically have been associated with the realm of “Mother Nature.” This supposed connection has had some troubling tendencies. For example, nature has been feminized and women have been naturalized; both have been constructed as dangerous and unruly forces that need to be controlled and subjugated for man's needs. This supposed connection has sparked controversy that ...

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