What kind of feminist are you?
Laetitia@Work #7
Hi everyone,
This week I am fully immersed in deep work, writing a lengthy ebook about women in the energy industries. Only a few hours before this newsletter was due to be sent have I finally been able to take the time to write it. In other words Laetitiaatwork #7 was the first test of my determination to abide by this weekly constraint. Writing a weekly newsletter proves even more challenging than I anticipated!
Immersed as I am in the history of energy and the world of (male) engineers who create our infrastructures, extract fossil fuels, lobby for tax loopholes, control our energy and run our power plants, I’ve come to realise it is no coincidence that the word POWER refers both to the ability to control and influence somebody’s behaviour, and to the energy used to operate a device. Power and energy are closely intertwined ⚡
In my ebook, I had fun mentioning Naomi Alderman’s novel, The Power (2016), which elaborates on this connection between power and energy, quite literally. In short the central premise of this sci fi novel is that women have developed the ability to release electricity from their fingers (and brains) and are thus in a position to become the dominant gender. Men get scared, lobby for single-sex schools to protect their boys from female attacks. And women decide that God is female (why not?). Men get assaulted more often and women use (abuse) their powers whenever they feel like it. Some women don’t hesitate to electrocute whoever bothers them.
Interestingly this novel’s feminist message is not that women are inherently better and naturally more gentle than men. The message is that power corrupts, and systems that empower a group of individuals to dominate another will always lead to abuse and tyranny. The book was a huge best-seller and will be adapted into a TV series (as it should be). Barack Obama said The Power was one of his favourite books of 2017 📚 The guy knows a few things about power.
Also in my ebook I mention the parallel established by some feminists between feminism and environmentalism. This movement, referred to as “ecofeminism”, is not a movement I fully identify with (even though I am both a feminist and an environmentalist). Nevertheless it provides interesting questions. That’s why I’ll make it the subject of this week’s newsletter. Ecofeminism presents us with a dilemma that is fundamentally the dilemma for all feminists. Read on.
What is ecofeminism exactly?
Our gendered imagery surrounding energy (notably fossil fuels) is built on an opposition between (manly) brute force engaged to forcibly extract Earth’s resources, and good, loving Mother Earth whose job it is to reproduce those resources. Of course somebody had to make a parallel between feminism and environmentalism!
Ecofeminism is a movement (and a philosophy) that draws on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was first used in the 1970s by French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne in a book titled Le Féminisme ou la mort (which I must say I have not read, but FYI the Kindle version is free). However, its principles preexisted d’Eaubonne’s book. As early as in the 1960s, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, a book of environmental science to fight the use of pesticides and the lobbies behind it (which worked because DDT was eventually banned in the US in 1972).
The ecofeminist movement is said to have really gained momentum in India around the figure of Vandana Shiva who is convinced that women should play a bigger role in protecting biodiversity. She believes feminism and environmentalism should join forces because the oppression of women and the exploitation and maltreatment of Mother Earth follow the same mechanisms and are really the same thing. But ecofeminism was also particularly strong in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s: there was a big ecofeminist conference in March 1980, a few months after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the ecofeminists present published a Manifest that drew a parallel between the destruction of nature, militarism and the domination of women.
Today, ecofeminism is increasingly popular (though still quite marginal). It’s influencing the feminists who want to rehabilitate the persecuted witches of times past (notably Silvia Federici, who’s also mentioned in Mona Chollet’s Sorcières), and it’s influencing the women who claim they are witches (in particular the famous Starhawk).
One thinker I find particularly interesting is historian Carolyn Merchant, whose Death of Nature examines the Scientific Revolution in a fascinating way. It shows that the mechanistic world view typical of modern science made the exploitation of nature possible, as well as unrestrained commercial expansion, and a socioeconomic order that subordinates women.
In her book she explains that the analogy between women and nature dates back to classical Antiquity. Back then, there was a “vitalist” imagery that associated Earth to a nurturing, kind, loving female figure, which had the advantage of creating an ethical constraint: personifying Earth as a kind person makes it harder to mistreat and exploit it.
According to Merchant, this ethical constraint disappeared after the Renaissance. When Europeans discovered America and started colonising the rest of the world, they developed new sciences and a determination to control and master Earth’s resources through science. Technology and knowledge became instruments of domination… in the hands of men. Earth which used to be seen as something sacred and alive suddenly became this devitalised thing that had to be exploited.
From then on either Earth was no longer personified or it was personified as a dark figure with secrets, fomenting plots to destroy Man. These enemy plots had to be foiled and the dark secrets unveiled. The dualist system of thinking permeates all Western rational thought. It relies on the opposition between women, nature and indigenous peoples on the one hand, and men, culture and colons, on the other.
Woman is accused of preventing Man from liberating himself from Nature (which she is said to remain a prisoner of). This dualism establishes a clear hierarchy: Man/Culture is meant to dominate Woman/Nature. And there are only two approaches to counter it: either you argue that women too are on the side of culture (and can dominate nature), or you argue that Nature should dominate culture because our rationalist way of thinking will cause our downfall (but then you say Woman is on the side of Nature). There you have it: this is the feminist dilemma.
Universalist vs essentialist feminism: choose your side
There are basically two forms of feminism (I know there are many things in between, but bear with me): universalist feminism and essentialist feminism. And it all boils down to the old nature vs nurture debate.
For a long time I believed that universalist feminism was the real thing. Universalist feminism argues that women and men are fundamentally the same (and they are, they’re people!). It’s so hard to disentangle the nature/nurture conundrum and when it comes to human beings we can safely assume everything is culture. Everything we do, each single one of our behaviours, is a social and cultural construct.
Look at food! Humans can basically eat anything but the way they eat is a social, cultural, political statement that aims to say who they are (or who they want to be). It’s quite funny how people with different diets will always try to proselytize by using arguments about human nature. Vegans do it. Paleo-diet aficionados do it. Religious people do it. They all use nature to justify cultural choices.
Universalist feminists in the mould of Simone de Beauvoir (I read Le Deuxième Sexe as a teenager and was so impressed I can safely say it is the most impressive book I have ever read) had a big job to do: they had to convince men that women are people. (They used to be seen as beings just marginally superior to dogs). They had to prove that women can think, do math, play chess, make corporate decisions, etc. To some extent they succeeded in that task.
As a young woman I felt I had this mission. Each thing I achieved I achieved for all women. Best in class. Fast runner. Etc. I started doing jujitsu at age 19. My dojo was entirely dominated by men and the few women who did train weren’t very good. But I loved it. And my mission was to prove that women can fight. And fight I did! I went as far as Second Dan (that’s me on the picture above during my second Dan kata!). And I was sooo tough (and frankly, no fun).
The fundamental problem with universalist feminism is that “universal” was built by men and for men. It means there’s little you can do to change the system that excludes you. You’re not allowed to count men and women in an organisation (because they’re all people and you’re not allowed to distinguish between them) so you can’t set quotas (quotas are so taboo among universalist feminists). You can’t question the myth of meritocracy (even though meritocracy is actually a “trap” and the people who claim they believe in meritocracy are even more biased than others). As a woman all you can do is play a man’s game. Margaret Thatcher played that game. More recently, Christine Lagarde. These are tough women who play a man’s game. And because they made it in this world, they really don’t see why other women don’t…
So you can guess I moved a bit on the universalist / essentialist feminist spectrum. Essentialist feminism, by contrast, contends that women are essentially different but that essential difference doesn’t mean they should be dominated and not have a say in anything. They make quotas possible. They make it possible to question the universalist system. To do things differently.
Alas I’m not fully at ease with the essentialist approach either. I don’t believe it is in my nature to do the laundry, to be nicer, and to raise children. I don’t believe I am essentially different from my brother or my husband. And I don’t believe men do not have a gentle, nurturing side that wishes it could live in the open.
But it’s not just that I’ve become more mellow with age, it’s also that I’m a pragmatist. The universalist approach has failed. If a bit more essentialism can help save women, men and the planet, let’s use whatever tools we have at our disposal! Ecofeminism is fundamentally an essentialist approach that draws a parallel between women and nature. You may disagree that women are more on the side of nature than men, but it’s true that more women in positions of power would not do nature any harm (and that’s a very English understatement).
My new Welcome to the Jungle ebook about scaling culture has now been published in English: “How to scale your culture as your company grows”.
I’ll be in Paris next Thursday (February 20) for a debate at the Fondation Jean Jaurès “QUE VA DEVENIR LE TRAVAIL ?” with Jérôme Giusti. Do come!
And I recently interviewed an osteopath about the modern workspace. It turns out we have it all wrong! No wonder back pain is so common! “Réunion debout, travail allongé… l’avis d’une ostéopathe sur les pires (et les meilleurs) aménagements au bureau” (in French).
Content related to this week’s newsletter:
🗞️ “Feminist Environmental Philosophy”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, August 2014.
🗞️ “The Power by Naomi Alderman review – if girls ruled the world”, Justine Jordan, The Guardian, November 2016.
📚 The Power, Naomi Alderman, Penguin, 2016.
🗞️ “How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition”, Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic, September 2019.
🗞️ “The Essential Interconnectedness of Ecofeminism”, HuffPost, July 2017.
🗞️ “Reading The Second Sex in the Age of #MeToo”, Hannah Leffingwell, Public Seminar, March 2018.
📚 The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 (in English, Vintage Classic).
Miscellaneous
🗞️ “How 'reading the air' keeps Japan running”, Bryan Lufkin, BBC Worklife , January 2020: In "high-context" countries where communication is indirect and messages are inferred - like Japan - situational awareness is king. The Japanese have an expression for being able to navigate “high context” situations: to “read the air”.
🗞️ “South Korea’s population paradox”, Miriam Quick, BBC Worklife, October 2019: there’s a rising social phenomenon in South Korea, it’s called the “Sampo Generation”. And the word ‘sampo’ means to give up three things: relationships, marriage and children.
🗞️ “The Forgotten life of Einstein’s First Wife”, Pauline Gagnon, Scientific American, December 2016: “She was a physicist, too—and there is evidence that she contributed significantly to his groundbreaking science”.
🗞️”How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class”, Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic, February 2020: fascinating article about the role of consultants and technocratic management in the rise of structural inequalities.
That’s all for this week. I wish you all a great weekend, essentialists and universalists alike! 🤗