From pre-Columbian times to the environmental justice movements of
the present, women and men frequently responded to the environment
and environmental issues in profoundly different ways. Although
both environmental history and women's history are flourishing,
explorations of the synergy produced by the interplay between
environment and sex, sexuality, and gender are just beginning.
Offering more than "great women in environmental history," this
book examines the intersections that shaped women's unique
environmental concerns and activism, and that framed the way the
larger culture responded. Women discussed include Native Americans,
colonists, enslaved field workers, pioneers, homemakers, municipal
housekeepers, immigrants, hunters, nature writers, soil
conservationists, scientists, migrant laborers, lesbians, nuclear
protestors, and environmental justice activists. As women, they
fared, thought, and acted in ways complicated by social, political,
and economic norms, as well as issues of sexuality and
childbearing. The housekeeping role assigned to women has long been
recognized as important in environmental history. But that emphasis
ignores the vast range of their influence and experiences. Enslaved
women, left to do the fieldwork in disproportionate numbers, used
their environmental knowledge to subtly undermine their masters,
hastening the coming of the Civil War. Many pregnant women, faced
with childbirth on the western trails, eyed frontier environments
with considerable apprehension. In more recent times, lesbians have
created alternative environments to resist homophobia and, in many
economically disadvantaged communities, women have been at the
forefront of the fight against environmental racism. Women are not
always the heroes in this story, as when the popularity of hats
lavishly decorated with feathers brought some bird species to near
extinction. For better, and sometimes for worse, women have played
a unique role in the shaping of the American environment. Their
stories feature vibrant characters and shine a light on an
underappreciated, often inspiring, and always complex history.
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