Considering ecofeminism: Subsistence feminism and vernacular ecofeminism

In order to highlight how some ecofeminist theoreticians conceptualize work in a capitalist regime, whether salaried, agricultural, or domestic, the term subsistence feminism refers to a group of theoreticians including Francoise d’Eaubonne, Marie Mies, Silvia Federici, Vandana Shiva, and Starhawk, who all link feminism, activism, and the implementation of ecological alternatives that relate to a form of vernacular ecofeminism. This materialistic, but also spiritual, approach to ecofeminism is based on anthropological and historical research that distinguishes work producing goods for self-consumption by both genders and female domestic work preparing industrialized goods in economic and political terms. Environmental destructions caused by the industrialization of needs are correlated with the end of the last peasant societies of the Global South and the inequitable international division of labor in the production of vital resources, of which women are the primary victims.