Blurred Lines of EJ

This weeks readings discussed and highlighted women in the Environmental Justice movement as well as the gendered nature of the private/public sphere in which this activism is generated. In the article, Beyond Natures Housekeepers, the themes of maternalism and intersectionality are very prevalent. The author highlights how early women activists like Dolores Huerta challenged rather than emphasized women's traditional values and priorities. Activists emphasized intersectionality as they fought for marginalized communities. In the article, Gender and Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Blurring the boundaries of public and private spheres, the author aimed to show how "activists performances of environmental justice both challenged and reproduced sedimented forms of gendered social practices as they negotiate the ideological dichotomy of the so-called public/private sphere" (Kurtz 410).

All of this weeks readings were clear about a women's role in the environmental justice movement. Women take on the role of caretakers and use this caretaker, maternal nature in their protests. In Hurtz article she even went as far to interview women a part of a grassroots environmental organization and their answers were very clear about their purpose and reason for protesting was because of the children. This leads to me question, well if women are participating and fighting for environmental justice for the benefit of the children that it will affect, do men care about the children? I guess that question would lead me to the State of Diversity article which places emphasis on the lack of diversity within environmental organizations and concluded that men are still more likely than females to occupy the most powerful positions in environmental organizations. 

A few key terms that I picked out from the readings were pesticide drift, performance/performativity, and public sphere. Pesticide drift occurs when breeze causes pesticides dropped from crop dusting aircraft or sprayed in certain areas to land on workers in nearby fields. Performance is an enactment of social identities. The theory of performativity "foregrounds the way in which social discourses that constitute social norms enable and constrain the social performance of identities in particular ways".

Bibliography

Kurtz, H. (2007). Gender and Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Blurring the boundaries of public and private spheres. Gender, Place & Culture, 14(4), 409-426.

Sayer, K. (2014). Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American women in environmental history. NANCY C. UNGER. Women's History Review, 24(1), 1-2.