“In the beginning, was a very female sea…”
And so begins the seminal book "The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth” by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor.
Described by a Goodreads reader as “a feminist book for spiritual people,” The Great Cosmic Mother is an exploration of the Female origins of Creation and of women as creators and catalysts in the evolution of humanity.
I’ve had this book since 2017 but have to admit that it was difficult for me to start back then, perhaps because the repression of the feminine aspect has been so complete in my conditioning that I found myself being immediately skeptical of any kind of scientific or archaeological evidence to the contrary.
I picked up the book again because just this last weekend, I convened the first sessions of a women’s book club. We are covering a different book - Women Who Run with the Wolves by Jungian psychologist Dr. Clarisa Pinkola Estes, but the conversations we had during our circle made me reminisce about my own journey as an environmental scientist, conservationist, and women’s advocate, and the intersections (and interconnectedness) between these three spaces.
According to Sjoo and Mor and their contemporaries, women are the basis for social life and human culture.
“For its first year the human child is virtually an “embryo” outside the womb, extremely vulnerable and totally dependent. Female group behavior - the cooperative care-sharing among mothers and children, older and younger women, in the tasks of daily life - emerges from the fact of this prolonged dependence of the human child on the human female for its survival.”
“The female animal is always on the alert, for on her rests the responsibility not only of feeding the young, but of keeping the young from being food for others. She is the giver and also the sustainer of beginning life. Among humans, males help with protection and food acquisition; but it is the communal group of females that surrounds the child, in its first four to six years of life, with a strong physical, emotional, traditional, and linguistic presence.”
So it remains today. And yet, women are disproportionally affected by the impacts of climate change:
“In developing countries, majority of women are reliant on climate-sensitive resources and livelihoods, and tend to havelower levels of meaningful participation in climate change adaptation processes (Engelmann, 2014). These gender inequities result from competing care, food and resources inequities, gender-based violence and lack of reproductive health care that beset women and children (Pernia, 2013). As an example of their traditional roles, women have higher levels of malnutrition due to their roles as providers who only eat after their husbands, children and family members (WECAN, 2013). In other communities, young women must walk farther to collect water and work harder to produce crops from dry soil (COP16 Policy Statement, undated). Along with their own health issues which include the possibility of unintended pregnancy, they have to care for their children (Bathala et al., 2014).”
- A Scoping Study Linking Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Population, Health, Environment and Climate Change Initiatives: A Scoping Study on Women and Fishers in the Philippines, Path Foundation, 2015.
Once upon a time, I worked for grassroots conservation organizations that sought to protect reef and ocean ecosystems. One of the biggest things I learned from that experience was that people could not care for Nature until their immediate needs were met, and until they saw and understood their interconnectedness to and with Nature.
Women and women’s groups are a natural ally for conservation work, because they understand this. (Indigenous women, in particular, are some of the staunches environmental defenders. But who’s defending them?)
Conservation movements are still largely lacking in amount of support they provide for women and their communities: and there’s a ton of things that need to be addressed i.e. reproductive health, indigenous people’s rights, education for girls, and mental health support (ie. repercussions of decision to bear and raise children in light of heightening eco-anxiety)
As for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, one target under SDG 13: Climate Action relates to women in particular, and it’s about raising capacity for climate change related management and planning focusing on women, youth, and local and marginalized communities. Quite broad, and makes me wonder: what are some small-scale but definitive ways we can take action to support women and uplift them as critical allies for climate action?
Until next week,
Further reading:
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