Whose doing the community service? A gender question.

I will be the first to say I haven’t read a lot of feminist pieces (especially ones discussing environmental issues). It isn’t that I try to shy away from these pieces — but because these lenses aren’t at the root of my current research studies, so I haven’t been exposed to many of these ideas. Additionally, in my undergrad and master’s, I don’t think we read a single feminist piece. That being said, I REALLY enjoyed Warren (1997) piece, and it has me contemplating about how this translates into my own classroom and life.

So before I go on gushing about Warren’s piece, I will say, I wish there was more reference to the empirical data that she mentioned. Her focus on empirical data seems to be more of a side note, but I think the idea of empirical data should be discussed more in depth. Okay, tangent over.

One of the first points that Warren really mentioned is that many ecofeminists view nature as feminist issues because of the issue of dominance in society not paying attention to environmental issues. Then she goes on to give examples about how women are doing the work and have this specialized knowledge (such as the indigenous technical knowledge (ITK)) that is usually vastly under-appreciated by males. I was super surprised that women could identify 31 species whereas men could only recognize 8. While this may just say something to their different speciality, it still surprised me that men were the ones make the decisions about felling the trees. Another point Warren made that I didn’t know about was that women grow 59-80% of the world’s food. It took me a while to comprehend this because it is so different from where I am from (rural midwest Missouri), but on a global scale, it starts to make more sense (especially from her examples). This point reminded me of women’s work in general, and how it is usually vastly under appreciated. Those “feminine” roles/jobs such as housework, teaching, and others are usually vastly underpaid than more masculine roles. This point also helped me connect why ecofeminism is truly a feminist topic.

The point that hooked me….

But, I think the point that really interested me, and the point that I want to spend a little more time discussing is the quote by Cynthia Hamilton that “Women often play a primary role in community action because it is about things they know best.” I try to question blanket statements like this, but the more I really think about it, and the more I compare it to experiences I have had, the more it makes sense….and the more frustrated I become.

If I take a look at just my own service and community engagement, I can think on the week-long service projects I took in undergrad. Many were to work with children, and the vast amount of us were girls. If I think about the bereavement camp my husband goes to during the summer has a substantial lack in male volunteers, and because it is a camp for children, many times they have to turn away many male campers because they don’t have enough male volunteers to stay in the cabins. But, the example that really hit me hard was my own classes when I incorporate community engagement components.

Last semester, I let my students choose to work with a client or community partner for their large collaborative project. They could either choose from the list of community partners I selected, choose their own, or pitch their own client. Out of 19 students, I had roughly half and half female to male students. Out of these students only ONE MALE decided to work with a community partner, whereas all but two females worked with community partners. Additionally, two females pitched their own ideas for community partners because they were heavily involved in those communities. Additionally, those projects were the best because they were invested and really cared about the site. I could go on and on about this finding — such as possible implications about where men/women  place value, etc….but I won’t (except for that last line) for brevity’s sake.

I think in reading Warren’s piece, it has helped shape how I also want to study my community projects in the future. It would be interesting to see how/who pick the community versus the client-based projects.

References:

Warren, K. J. (1997). Taking Empirical Data Seriously: An Ecofeminist Philosophical Perspective. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Indiana University Press.