CALL Women & Education 1/2025

Ecofeminism, Pedagogy and Decolonial Thought. New Relationships Between Green Policies and Civil Rights

The feminist movement of the 1970s partly merged politically with the Green Lists, where a new female ruling class was created at the administrative level through the Green Women’s Forum. This somewhat separatist movement hoped for a new political representation of women and the debate on genetic manipulation, abortion, peace, destruction of nature, and ecofeminist environmentalism. In Italy, ecofeminism operated at a political level, especially from 1985 to 2008, but not with the strength it had in Germany and other Northern European countries. This is probably because the forces of the feminist movements merged more with the traditional parties of the historical left.

Today, the founding reasons for the environmental movement are more visible because of the destruction caused by climate change and the widespread knowledge, thanks to the mass media and social media, of the causes that provoke them. Currently, many European countries implement green policies, but in the field of industrial production, especially automotive, the reasons in defence of nature and climate clash with the difficulty of dismantling a historically given business system that would lead to the loss of significant jobs. Yet a new world is possible, even if slowly and with second thoughts, we are moving towards using clean energy and towards the era of recyclables.

Environmental and feminist associations have been in contact and collaborating since the 1980s. The term ecofeminism from the French écoféminisme dates back to a work by Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974: Feminism or Death.

Some feminist elaborations have radically questioned the project of male domination over nature through the contemporary support of science and technology.

International and Italian scholars of eco-feminism claim the affirmation of feminine specificity and the alternative to male chauvinist culture. Ecofeminism highlights how it is necessary to focus on the education of new generations to re-evaluate, celebrate and defend everything that patriarchal society has devalued. We know well that in Western knowledge, the feminine is underestimated because it is associated with corporeality, emotions, cooperation, care, intuitive and empathic abilities. Laura Conti, Grazia Francescato, Rosa Filippini, Renata Ingrao, and Laura Cima have debated these issues. Especially after the disaster and tragedy of Chornobyl (April 1986), various feminist groups opened an in-depth reflection on which direction science should take concerning nature and the protection of life on earth; these reflections gave rise to the birth of Italian ecofeminism, constituting a period defined at a political level as “green matriarchy”. From there, a more significant commitment against nuclear power is seen as a real possibility of humanity's self-destruction.

The death of nature passes through the killing of the mother; an education about Nature and life must necessarily imply the rebirth in men and women of the feminine and maternal principles. A principle that brings values of peace and care for humanity, a principle of giving, tenderness and preservation of life, even in its most fragile forms.

Regarding pedagogical research, the 1980s marked a turning point in studies on the environment, the ecological mind and education with respect for nature. Translated into school at a didactic level, this new attention to nature is transformed into the valorisation of living in the open air and into teaching children to understand the multiple dependencies that regulate life, making evident the network of relationships that connect the human species to the animal and vegetal otherness on which life on the entire planet depends and whose balance must therefore be taken care of. Observation and contact with nature must thus be encouraged with new forms of teaching that lead to the rediscovery of green spaces in cities and, where possible, to more extensive and more prosperous natural parks, woods and natural oases. The new green pedagogical research emphasises the value of nature education, giving a concrete and practical sense, for example, through the cataloguing of leaves, flowers, and berries according to the season, to forms of cognitive and emotional learning of the surrounding environment and the various forms of life, micro and macro, that inhabit it.

This rediscovery and valorisation of nature, even in classrooms, has its epicentre in the many studies that Franco Frabboni dedicates to environmental education, alone and together with numerous scholars who in the Bologna headquarters have investigated the problem from a historical (Mirella D’Ascenzo), theoretical (Silvia Demozzi) and more strictly didactic (Zucchini, Bonfanti, Guerra, Sorlini) point of view.

This is a period in which in various Italian universities a strong attention is born to a new way of educating to love and respect for nature, these theses are found in Milan Bicocca in the fascinating analyses, between literary and philosophical reflection of Duccio Demetrio; in Padua in one of the most widespread studies written by Raffaella Semeraro, author in 1992 of the volume Environmental education, ecology, education and Director of a university specialization school on these themes; in Florence in relation to the concept of educational community, taken up by Raffaele Laporta and combined with environmental sustainability, developed by Paolo Orefice in collaboration with Giovanna Del Gobbo and Marisa Iavarone; in Bari where the theme of sustainable development is addressed by Luisa Santelli Beccegato, and an "Environmental Education Experience Center" is established, also proposing the new figure of the environmental educator, as a professional of and for the future with the contribution of Gabriella Calvano. In Catania, by Marinella Tomarchio, in collaboration with Gabriella D’Aprile and Viviana La Rosa, one of the most original analyses is born, which combines the defence of nature, the fight against the mafia and the political-social commitment of young Sicilians to contribute to the agricultural and productive rebirth of the lands taken away and confiscated from local crime.

A tremendous happy island of green thinking and environmental education to be promoted in the surrounding area, giving voice to teachers, schools and pupils in annual moments of meeting and discussion is the Free University of Bozen, and in particular the commitment carried out over the years by Liliana Dozza, now at her IX meeting on “Education, Earth, Nature”, a way to bring pedagogical reflection on environmental protection into contact with the territory itself, starting from the little ones and returning to them and their reflections, often naive, but authentic and uncontaminated.

Other pedagogical challenges of post-modernity are those that Anselmo R. Paolone of the University of Udine questions, addressing the comparative approach to globalisation, indicating ethnographic research as scientifically relevant elements of transculturality, asking questions about the validity of national curricula in schools, in this era of intense transformation.

We owe a highly reflective analysis of these themes to Luigina Mortari, who places care at the centre of her thought as an essential good for human life. According to a scholar from the University of Verona, to give shape to our possible being, we must take care of ourselves, others, and the world.

A significant contribution to the incredible connection between economic innovation, human resources and environmental sustainability is the one carried out in Brescia by PierLuigi Malavasi, who has dedicated numerous studies to ecological education; his volume Green Pedagogy was published in 2008. He currently teaches at the University "Pedagogy and Training for Ecological Transition" and is the promoter of numerous scientific researches, including international ones, in this field.

In this panorama, the research, both studies and practices, promoted by Franca Pinto Minerva since the 1980s, first in Bari and then in Foggia, remain fundamental and far-reaching, with a rich presence of scholars, from Isabella Loiodice to AnnaGrazia Lopez, from Barbara De Serio to Daniela Dato who combine Pedagogy and Gender, exponents of a new strong enrichment of Italian Pedagogy. It is a sacred valorisation of Nature, considered Mother Goddess, according to the ancient matriarchal civilisations of the Mediterranean, to be safeguarded because life is generated through procreation and motherhood according to the ancestral myth of Proserpina. At the centre is the possibility of founding a thought of difference that promotes plural and diverse identities, supporting the right to difference to enrich the welcome of migrant worlds and cultures, giving value to women and men, to different cultures, to various languages, looking at respect for the other, the different. Interesting and original in this context is the contribution of Laura Marchetti of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria to escape from the closed thought in walls and fences, going beyond the colonial mind from which we must emancipate ourselves, thinking and designing a new world in freedom. Coming from political-social experiences of the ecological left, Marchetti establishes cultured relationships between nature and the earth as a territory not only of fathers but also and above all of mothers, the Matria.

 

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Deadlines 

Submission of abstract (in Italian and English) to the email addresses w&e@pensamultimedia.it; simonetta.ulivieri@unifi.it: 15/01/2025

Reply to Authors for acceptance of contributions: 31/01/2025

Uploading by the Authors/Authors of the whole paper on the OJS platform of the journal in the journal area of PensaMultimedia to be followed by double-blind review: 31/03/2025

Languages accepted: French, English, Italian, Spanish, German

Publication by 30/06/2025

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