11
Feminism and Environmental Ethics: A
Materialist Perspective^1
Mary Mellor
Feminism and Environmental Ethics
An important starting point for the development of an environmental ethics must
perforce lie in the experience and situation of women (Gruen, 1994). This is, how-
ever, not the only starting point. Human society has many other divisions besides
gender, but this paper is specifically concerned with a feminist perspective on eth-
ics. The core of my argument, one that has been made many times by feminists, is
that women’s lives in a gendered society are grounded in the materiality of exist-
ence, in the cycles of birth and death and bodily needs (Ruddick, 1990). However,
in stressing the importance of a feminist analysis to environmental ethics, I would
not want women to be seen as the solution to environmental damage and injustice
and thereby deflect attention from the problem of male domination and exploita-
tion of women and the natural world (Mellor, 1992a, p81). I wish to argue that a
solution to the questions of environmental justice and environmental ethics needs
to start from an understanding of the social relations underpinning current pat-
terns of unsustainability together with an understanding of the material relations
between humanity and nature. This involves a three-fold relationship between
human and human and nature and a double dialectic, between human and human
(patriarchy, capitalism, racism), and between humanity and nature.
This complex relationship requires a breadth and depth of analysis that can
integrate an analysis of social relations with ecological relations. In such a context
all parts contain active elements. The relationship between humanity and nature is
heavily circumscribed by relations between human and human. In turn, the
dynamic between humanity and its natural context limits or constrains choices or
brings unwelcome consequences. For this reason I would argue that a ‘deep’ analy-
sis is needed, which I have called deep materialism. This analysis has three starting
Reprinted from Ethics and the Environment 5(1), Mellor M. Feminism and environmental ethics: A
materialist approach, 107–123, Copyright © [2000] Indiana University Press. Reprinted with permis-
sion. All right reserved.