Coal, Identity, and the Gendering of Environmental Justice Activism in Central Appalachia

Abstract

Women generally initiate, lead, and constitute the rank and file of environmental justice activism. However, there is little research on why there are comparatively so few men involved in these movements. Using the environmental justice movement in the Central Appalachian coalfields as a case study, we examine the ways that environmental justice activism is gendered, with a focus on how women’s and men’s identities both shape and constrain their involvement in gendered ways. The analysis relies on 20 interviews with women and men grassroots activists working for environmental justice in the coalfields of Appalachia. We find that women draw on their identities as “mothers” and “Appalachians” to justify their activism, while the hegemonic masculinity of the region, which is tied to the coal industry, has the opposite effect on men, deterring their movement involvement. We explore the implications of these findings for understanding the relationship of gender to environmental justice activism.

Gendered Representations in Hawai‘i's Anti-Gmo Activism

“…' perceived lack of male participation in Native Hawaiian sovereignty movements as directly related to their focus on fulfilling colonial notions of the male breadwinner and emphasis on obtaining paid work. In another area, Braun and Bell (2010) argued that Appalachian men's historic work in coal industries tied their identities to notions of toughness and stoicism that made it difficult for them to participate in anti-coal activism. In this way, racialised and classed ideas about masculinity can shape and limit movement participation and identification in relation to environmental struggles (Kuumba, 2001;Bella and Braun, 2010).…”

“…This is also true for green and environmental movements. Bell and Braun (2010;Alkon, 2011) have argued that representations of working class miner masculinities specifically constrained Appalachian men's participation in coal mining activism, while ideas about femininity and caring facilitated women's roles as movement leaders. Their work demonstrates the need for relational accounts of how gender, race, class and other axes of difference influence mixed-gender movements, including food movements (Brown and Ferguson, 1995;DeLind and Ferguson, 1999).…”

“…Food justice scholars emphasise the ways in which social inequalities shape food and farming (Gottlieb and Joshi, 2010;Harper, 2010;Agarwal, 2014;Redmond and Porter, 2014;), technologies and science (Haraway, 1989(Haraway, , 2008Acero, 2012), and analyse the gender, race and class dimensions of environmental justice activism (Seager, 1994(Seager, , 2003Di Chiro, 1998;Stein, 2004;Bell and Braun, 2010;Perkins, 2012) and food and farming movements (Guthman 2008a(Guthman , 2008b(Guthman , 2011Slocum, 2006;Alkon, 2011;Kimura, 2011;Sachs and Alston, 2014).…”

“…Critiquing certain ecofeminist conceptions that uncritically feminise the environment ('mother earth'), some scholars have analysed the role of motherhood identities in environmental justice activism, often referred to as 'maternalist' or 'motherist' tropes (Kuumba, 2001, p. 92;Bell and Braun, 2010). Some argue that women's roles as carers for children and the health of others mean that they are often amongst the first to notice and respond to environmental issues (Seager, 2003), and that women of colour are also leaders within environmental justice organising in part because poor communities of colour are disproportionately burdened by toxicity and pollution (i.e.…”

“…'environmental racism') (Stein, 2004;Redmond and Porter, 2014). In particular, scholars analyse the use of motherhood themes in environmental justice and anti-GMO activism as an explicit legitimising tactic and movement motivation strategy intended to emotively appeal to and reach potential audiences (Brown and Ferguson, 1995;Bell and Braun, 2010) and downplay the political and threatening nature of movements (Bouvard, 2002).…”