Whatever the result of the primary environmentalist, we can count the words, new or forgotten, that she will have brought to light. Alongside degrowth and radicalism, ecofeminism has imposed itself. Two candidates, Sandrine Rousseau and Delphine Batho, carried the concept as a banner. They gathered, together, nearly half of the votes in the first round (47.46%). But, by qualifying for the second round against Yannick Jadot and presenting himself as a “Ecofeminist” in the running for the Elysée, Mme Rousseau is in the process of becoming the new political face of this current of thought.
The concept was born in the early 1970s, in France, from the pen of the writer and feminist activist Françoise d’Eaubonne. Long confined to a circle of specialists, it is now essential in public debate, even on TV sets, where it is sometimes difficult to develop without caricaturing it. Its cornerstone: to link the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of women by the so-called patriarchal system. “The values of the feminine, so long flouted, since attributed to the inferior sex, remain the last chances of survival of the man himself”, wrote in 1972 Françoise d’Eaubonne. Will come, two years later, the test Feminism or death (P. Horay editions), in which she develops the word “ecofeminism”.
Born in 1920, member of the Communist Party until 1956, the Marxist-trained activist very quickly established a synthesis between class struggle and feminist struggle. But, during the 1970s, she remained isolated within the Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF). “She was fat, she spoke loudly, she did a bit of anything,” told me several people who had met her at the time of the MLF. And we didn’t really understand where she was going with ecofeminism. These witch delusions, it wasn’t really our thing, relates Elise Thiébaut, in The green Amazon (Charleston, 242 pages, 18 euros). In fact, it was not that of Françoise d’Eaubonne either. “
No unambiguous definition
Since its creation, ecofeminism has accumulated misunderstandings, despite the theoretical bases laid down by its founder. “We are not arguing at all for an illusory superiority of women over men, nor even for feminine ‘values’ which exist only on a cultural level and not at all metaphysically, we say: ‘Do you want to live or die?’ “, wrote Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 in Feminism or death, republished in 2020 by Editions du Passager clandestin. In France, the concept did not “catch on” as in the United States or India, and its subtleties have long been an obstacle to political translation.
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