Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism that focuses on the intersection of feminism and ecology. Ecofeminists argue that economic development and the destruction of ecosystems have profound and negative repercussions for women — especially women of the global South. Furthermore, they argue that capitalism is grounded in both the exploitation of women's reproductive labor and the exploitation of nature. For example, when large corporations impose an agro-industrial model on communities in the global South, many women have the natural resources that they once harvested freely and locally taken away from them and privatized by large corporations. Moreover, the destructive effects that these companies have on biodiversity, as well as the waste they generate, have a dramatic impact on women's bodies, as well as on their children, if they have any, if only by making their water sources undrinkable. Ecofeminists are generally highly critical of states (which they call "Father States" in order to emphasize their patriarchal aspect) because states support the capitalist appropriation of everything that Mother Earth has to offer. We believe that it is important to be careful when associating nature with women, because such associations risk essentializing women, or falsely reducing feminity to motherhood. However, we believe that the struggle to protect biodiversity is a feminist issue and that it is important to highlight the fact that women and children — for whom women are often responsible — bear the brunt of the burden of biodiversity decline. Ecofeminist perspectives allow us to remain critical of half-solutions that do not challenge the economic and political systems that allow Northern states to offload all of the ecological consequences of capitalism onto those in the South. For example, simply replacing oil with nuclear power would itself have major environmental consequences — all while failing to address the lifestyles of the rich, who generate monstrous amounts of waste comapred to the rest of us.
