Vandana Shiva's "Who Really Feeds the World": An Eco-Feminist Perspective

<p>Eco-feminism is a branch of feminism that deals with the relationship<br>between women and their environment. Mother Nature is essentially<br>feminine since it gives life and nurtures it, just like a mother. This<br>term was coined by French author and feminist, Francoise<br>d’Eaubonne. Eco-feminists draw parallels between the oppression of<br>women by men, and the oppression of Mother Nature by masculine<br>forces in the name of corporations which dominate the Anthropocene<br>era. Dr. Vandana Shiva is an eco-feminist, prolific writer and a<br>fearless advocate of anti-globalization and biodiversity. In Chapter 8<br>of her book, titled “Women Feed the World, Not Corporations”, she<br>effectively puts the message across that women are much better than<br>men in taking care of Mother Nature and her family. She writes about<br>the issues of livelihood for women, the advantages of women-centric<br>food systems, the reasons feminine skills are looked down upon, and<br>the evils of patriarchal economics in a candid manner together with<br>facts and figures to support her arguments. This paper seeks to ferret<br>out the main constituents of Eco-feminism as espoused by Vandana<br>Shiva in her book. The text’s tenets are bolstered by the viewpoints of<br>other prominent eco-feminists in their research work. However, this<br>paper is limited to eco-feminism in the realm of agriculture, and the<br>other aspects of eco-feminism have been covered in only a pithy<br>manner.</p>