Abstract
This chapter seeks to contribute to the eco-feminist dialogue concerning the still present need for global advances in the status of both women and nature. Beginning with a cross-cultural (East-West) comparative analysis of ancient myth, I propose to revive a dynamic “biophilic” ethics of interconnectedness and eco-justice. An examination of modern relationships between women and land leads us to conclude that our institutions and practices are woefully destructive. This situation is symptomatic of the fundamental oppression inherent to the dominant patriarchal paradigm. Practices imbedded and deeply rooted within societal customs, traditions and attitudes frequently prevent women from equal access to land and deny women the right of being recognized as producers. By reclaiming our ancient goddess myths and indigenous sense of sacredness, we can heal some of the schisms of planetary oppression. Respecting women’s rights to land and their relationships with the earth, and encouraging women’s ownership of land, is a pragmatic, double-pronged step towards changing destructive thinking patterns about women and our planet. Women’s access and title tenure to land is a solution towards empowering women, adjusting ideologies and promoting global and ecological sustainability.
I want to live in a world where everyone gets to eat.
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Notes
- 1.
Marija Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974).
- 2.
Mary Daly, Quintessence…Realizing the Archaic Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 7. According to Daly, “I am Now declaring that the intentions, motives, and views of Radical Elemental Feminists are focused on one central cause: the expansion of Biophilia, which means ‘the Original Lust for Life that is at the core of all Elemental E-motion; Pure Lust, which is the Nemesis of patriarchy, the necrophilic state.’ In simpler words biophilia means love of life. …The absence of the word biophilia from the dictionary is significant. It is related to the absence of love of life from the patriarchal world.”
- 3.
W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), 30. “[The] two main types of religion which appear among the classical Greeks, and so often give an air of paradox to their expressed beliefs, are represented by the Olympians of Homer on the one hand, and on the other, by the kind of cult of which we have an example… in the Eleusinian mysteries.”
- 4.
Richard John Cunliffe, A Lexicon of Homeric Dialect (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). Justice, in its earliest religious-mythical origins was one of the faces of the great Goddess. The oldest “recorded” appearance of justice in ancient Greece is found in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. Homer uses the Greek words dike and themis to designate “custom” or “way of behavior,” which accords with what is ordained by law, with an emphasis on human decrees. Thus, there is to be found in Homeric mythology, the notion of justice as a regulative principle or law, which encompasses the social and moral order of human affairs. At the same time, however, Homer preserves the tradition of the primal Mother-Goddess under the guise of “Fate.” It is she who rules the universe and whose power binds both humans and gods. Her power, if challenged, brings retribution. Thus, Themis/Dike represents a force higher than the law, and higher even than the decisions of the gods.
- 5.
Donna M. Giancola, “Justice in the Face of the Great Mother East and West” (Boston: 20th World Congress of Philosophy, Paideia: Philosophy Educating Humanity, 2001). “The first recorded appearance of justice as a divine personage occurred in Hesiod’s Theogony wherein, drawing not only in the socio-religious consciousness, but also on many of the earlier cult religions, he described the forces of the universe as cosmic divinities. Hesiod portrayed Dike as the daughter of Zeus and Themis (daughter of Uranus and Gaia). Dike executed the laws of judgments and sentencing and together with her mother Themis carried out the final decisions of Moira. For Hesiod, Justice is at the center of religious and moral life, is the embodiment of divine will. It is important to note that Hesiod Moira, Themis and Dike are the divine descendants of the great Mother-Goddess. This personification of Dike will stand in contrast to justice viewed as custom or law, as retribution or sentence.”
- 6.
Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers, 1989), xix–xx. “The main theme of the Goddess symbolism is the mystery of birth and death and the renewal of life, not only human but all life on earth and indeed in the whole cosmos. Symbols and images cluster around the parthenogenic (self-generating) Goddess and her basic functions as Giver of Life, Wielder of Death, and not less importantly, as Regeneratrix, … In no way could the philosophy that produced these images be mistaken for the pastoral Indo-European world with its horse-riding warrior gods of thundering and shining sky or of the swampy underworld, the ideology in which the female goddesses are not creatrixes but beauties- ‘Venuses,’ brides of the sky gods.”
- 7.
Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, 19.
- 8.
Swami Muktananda, Play of Consciousness (New York: Syda Foundation, 1978), 208. “Maya screening the true divine reality, screening the self … and under the display of the universe is somehow that self, that very Absolute … Maya is simply the dynamic aspect of the Absolute.”
- 9.
Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (New York: Parthenon Books, 1963), 183–221.
- 10.
Jean Ziegler, Third Annual Report of U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, General Assembly, 58th Sess., Provisional Agenda Item 119(b), at par. 13, U.N. Doc. A/58/330 (2003).
- 11.
Rural Development Institute, The Problem and the Opportunity, 2010, http://www.rdiland.org/OURWORK/OurWork_India.html.
- 12.
Norah Matovu-Winyi, Executive Director, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), in an interview by the United Nationals Non-governmental Liaison Service, reprinted on the Association for Women’s Rights website, 2010, http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/NGLS-Interviews-Norah-Matovu-Winyi-Executive-Director-African-Women-s-Development-and-Communication-Network-FEMNET.
- 13.
Rural Development Institute, The Problem and the Opportunity, 2010, http://www.rdiland.org/OURWORK/OurWork_India.html.
- 14.
“Gender Equity in agriculture and rural development. A quick guide to gender mainstreaming in FAO’s new strategic framework.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009, ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/i1240e/i1240e00.pdf.
- 15.
“Gender Equity in agriculture and rural development. A quick guide to gender mainstreaming in FAO’s new strategic framework.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2009,ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/i1240e/i1240e00.pdf.
- 16.
http://www.dar.gov.ph/darwomencenter/index.html.
The Philippine government maintains a Department of Agrarian Reform and that department has within it its own National Women’s Center, highlighting the recognition that gender disparity must be addressed in conjunction with any productive redistribution or reform program.
- 17.
The Land Workers Movement: Towards Social Transformation (May 19, 1999), 2010, http://isla.igc.org/Features/Brazil/braz1.html.
The Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurai Sem Terra) began as a grassroots organization of landless rural working families in Brazil who mobilized together for the goal of getting work but then organized to pressure the government to distribute unproductive, or idle, land. The 1988 Constitution has within it a provision that “land property must fulfill a social function,” which their representative interprets as meaning “first, that it must be productive, second, the owner must respect the environment; third, there has to be a friendly and fair relationship between landowners and farmworkers; and fourth, it has to contribute to the region’s sustainable development.” See Information Services Latin America.
- 18.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, SD Dimensions, “Rural Women’s Access to Land in Latin America.” (June 1, 2001), 2010, http://www.fao.org/sd/2001/PE0601a_en.htm.
- 19.
Common law dictates are quite typical road blocks to women’s equality even in the face of a constitutional claim of equality in Africa, India, Latin America as well as Muslim nations. Property and contract rights, for instance, do fall within the first generation of human rights; they are civil rights. However, where customary law or religious law trump constitutional guarantees, or are used to interpret constitutional and statutory guarantees, civil equality is meaningless.
- 20.
Land Research Action Network, Backgrounder Part II: Land Reform in India Issues and Challenges (January 21, 2003), 2010, http://www.landaction.org/display.php?article=59.
- 21.
Land Research Action Network, Backgrounder Part II: Land Reform in India Issues and Challenges (January 21, 2003), 2010, http://www.landaction.org/display.php?article=59.
- 22.
Land Research Action Network, Backgrounder Part II: Land Reform in India Issues and Challenges (January 21, 2003), 2010, http://www.landaction.org/display.php?article=59.
- 23.
Reuther, Rosemary Radford, Integrating Eco-feminism Globalization and World Religions (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 123. Her survey included content “from North America, including neo-pagans, a Christian theologian, and a historian of science, to Indians, Africans, and Latin Americans.”
- 24.
Reuther, Integrating Eco-feminism Globalization and World Religions, 1.
- 25.
Reuther, Integrating Eco-feminism Globalization and World Religions, 124.
- 26.
Reuther, Integrating Eco-feminism Globalization and World Religions, 124.
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Giancola, D.M. (2018). Women, Land and Eco-Justice. In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93907-0_55
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