RHN 111/2025 | Call
Organisers: TELEMMe (UMR 7303), IRHiS (UMR 8529), and SADAPT (UMR 1048)
10 – 12 June 2026, Aix-en-Provence France
Deadline for Submissions: 15 December 2025
Gender and Environment
RUCHE International Conference
Both environmental history and women’s history, along with gender history later on, were institutionalised in the United States in the early 1970s. Paradoxically, however, there has been little dialogue between these two fields until recently, as has been pointed out more generally with regard to environmental history and social history (Mosley 2006). Yet these two fields of historical scholarship have shared a common goal from the outset: giving a voice and agency to those forgotten by official history. Their aim was to take on new subjects of study (women, non-humans) or, more ambitiously, to re-interpret the past in terms of gender power relations or environmental issues (Fressoz et al. 2014; Quenet 2014; Mathis 2018). Against the backdrop of struggles for civil rights and gender equality, as well as the development of environmental movements, a sometimes militant academic commitment was another feature these two currents had in common. Some 30 years later, environmental historians sought to provide their field with a theoretical framework to demonstrate its centrality to history as a discipline and to the social sciences more broadly. Gender history then provided a template for those who wanted to treat the environment as a category of analysis comparable to race, class and gender in order to uncover power relations and asymmetries (Scott 1986; Steinberg 2002; Stroud 2003; Quenet 2014).
However, the intersection between gender history and environmental history has remained relatively limited to date, particularly outside the English-speaking world and beyond Indian historiography, despite repeated calls to integrate gender perspectives into the conceptual apparatus of environmental history (Guha 1989, 2000; Merchant 1990; Leach and Green 1997; Scharff 2003; Unger 2014; Holmes and Morgan 2021; Morgan and Cook 2021). Work in this area over the past 20 years has mainly focused on North America, reflecting the dual American tradition in these two fields of history, and on India, where the convergence of social and environmental issues has been central to subaltern studies. This research has largely prioritised the contemporary era. Furthermore, in the English-speaking world, a significant proportion of these studies have centred on the experiences and concerns of the Western male elite in line with the specificities of US history (e.g. the conquest of the American West, masculinity and wilderness), to the detriment of considering the roles of women, Indigenous peoples and enslaved populations. Concerning the latter, academic accounts have often focused on environmental struggles (Unger 2012; Barca and Guidi 2013) and the preservation of botanical or agricultural knowledge that colonisation would have dispossessed them of (Carney 2001;
Morgan 2004; Carney and Rosomoff 2009; O’Leary 2024).
Beyond the historical discipline, the use of gender as an analytical tool cannot be considered in isolation from other relationships of domination (social or cultural) and other modes of assignment (such as race or class). Research on environmental injustices has amply demonstrated the intersections and convergences between environmental and social inequalities, including gender discrimination (Massard-Guilbaud and Rodger 2011), and has highlighted discrepancies in access to and control of natural resources, as well as related environmental changes, in various contexts (Elmhirst 2015).
Numerous studies in the humanities and social sciences have also revealed antagonistic forms of relationship with the environment, based on different conceptions of nature (Haraway 1989). The following opposition has been particularly emphasised: on the one hand, white Western male elites tend to view nature as an appropriable resource and/or an enclosed space in need of protection; on the other hand, exploited minorities, especially women in poorer countries, see it as a common good and an integrated whole of which the human species is merely a part (Laugier, Falquet and Molinier 2015). At the crossroads of ecological struggles and the fight for women’s rights, ecofeminism has, for half a century, sought to deconstruct the interconnected dominations of women and nature (d’Eaubonne 1974; Merchant 1980; Warren 1990; Plumwood 1993; Federici 2004; MacGregor 2017; Benquet and Pruvost 2019; Larrère 2023; Hache 2024, 2026), while seeking to avoid the pitfall of essentialism (Shiva 1988; Agarwal 1992, 1994; Mies and Shiva 1993; Leach and Green 1997). Recent gendered re-interpretations of the Anthropocene encourage us to make visible marginalised groups, including women, excluded from positions of power and therefore often reduced, at best, to mere victims of environmental damage. Another approach is to examine the causes of the environmental crisis to highlight the patriarchal determinants of the degradation of the living world (Ruault et al. 2021).
This conference integrates gender history and environmental history to achieve two objectives. Firstly, it aims to highlight approaches that have remained relatively marginal in France, despite having been debated for several decades elsewhere, particularly in the English-speaking world. Secondly, it aims to empirically investigate these approaches through case studies ranging from antiquity to the present day, given that contemporary history still dominates the historiography of gender–environment relations.
The value of such an approach lies not only in reintegrating women as environmental actors in their own right into historical analysis. It also raises the issue of the sources required to access silenced voices and to bring to light forms of knowledge and practices that have been largely overlooked. Most importantly, it involves considering gender as an essential lens – composed of habits, social norms and behaviours related to sex, which vary across time and space –through which individuals’ relationships with the rest of nature are constructed (Scharff 2003; Morgan and Cook 2021). At the same time, it is crucial not to ignore the diversity of gender categories and the complex interweaving of elements that make up identity.
Mobilising concepts that are important to both fields, such as agency (both human and non-human) (Thomas 2016), allows us to question, in a dialectical way, the impact of gender –understood as the social construction of sex differences and the associated power relations – on the environment. It also enables us to consider the reverse: the effect of the relationship with ‘nature’ on social gender relations. From this perspective, gender history can inform environmental history, encouraging us to re-examine, from the margins, grand narratives such as those concerning domestication, slavery, colonisation, scientific ‘revolutions’, the rise of capitalism and industrialisation. This approach also invites us to take a fresh look at classic themes that have recently been revisited, such as labour, the commons, or environmental protection, and even to explore new areas of research. Reflections will focus on both the materiality of the relationships that historical actors maintain with their environment (e.g. access to natural resources and the effects of their actions on environments and socio-environmental dynamics) and the gender norms that shape these relationships or that these relationships, in turn, help to construct or transform.
Conference Themes
1. Labour, (Re)production, Subsistence
Since at least the Middle Ages (Charpentier and Lett 2024), the gendered division of labour (whether described as ‘subsistence’ or professional labour) has been accompanied by disparities in access to land (Agarwal 1994), tools (Tabet 1979; Cockburn 2004), resources (water, minerals, forest products, animals etc.), as well as to environmental knowledge and governance (Morera and Le Roux 2018). Contributions may consider these inequalities in the light of broader historical dynamics of resource commodification and appropriation, notably the enclosure of the commons (Elmhirst 2015), and in relation to the rise of industrial capitalism and colonial expansion. Contributions may also address differentiated responsibilities in the management, exploitation and protection of the environment, along with the resulting ecological consequences. Case studies might serve to historicise or critically reassess concepts introduced by ecofeminist perspectives, such as ‘subsistence work’ and the process of ‘housewifization’ (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 1997), or to propose narratives that reconceptualise categories of labour and reproduction (Barca 2024) by integrating activities related to care and environmental restoration, which are still often overlooked.
2. Vernacular Knowledge, Expertise and Professionalisation
Carolyn Merchant has analysed the impact of the scientific ‘revolution’ and the resulting nature/culture divide through the lens of the (mechanistic) understanding of living beings and (utilitarian) conception of resources (Merchant 1980). Numerous studies have highlighted how, from the early modern period onwards, processes of professionalisation and the scientification of disciplines contributed to the marginalisation of feminine, vernacular knowledge (Pépy 2018; Benharrech 2020). These works also shed light on the strategies women developed to preserve or gain access to environmental knowledge, including in colonial contexts (Schiebinger 2004). These strategies included autodidactic learning, participation in public and private education, involvement in amateur, learned and agricultural societies, the production of natural history publications, the development of networks and intellectual circles and the founding of institutions and enterprises. Women’s marginal positions also enable them to develop critical perspectives on dominant epistemologies and scientific practices, from challenging the centrality of botanical extraction and hunting in natural history culture (Beinart and Hughes 2007) to opposing vivisection, which became increasingly central to physiology from the 19th century onwards (Finn 2012). This section seeks to explore both these critiques and the alternative epistemologies and human–nature relations advocated by women. It will also examine the growing role of women in institutionalised environmental sciences from the 20th century, as well as their role in shaping and transforming these disciplines (Haraway 1989).
3. Nature(s) and Gender Categories: Femininities, Masculinities and Queer Ecologies
Nature plays a symbolic role in the construction of gender identities, from the naturalisation and animalisation of women to the association of so-called natural’ attributes, such as physical strength, with masculinity. Simultaneously, nature itself is metaphorically feminised: from Gaia to ‘Mother Nature’ (Gaard 1993). This section explores the cultural construction of gender identities, their material and symbolic implications in specific contexts (Girault 2022), and their strategic instrumentalisation, from so-called ‘fertility goddesses’ to contemporary narratives. It also considers how feminist movements have reclaimed, reworked or subverted historical associations between gender and nature: as seen, for example, in the analogies drawn between women and (laboratory) animals by 19th-century anti-vivisectionist activists (Carrié 2018) or in the ways environmentalist activists have invoked a gendered disposition towards care and consideration for others (Engels 2002; Porhel 2018). Furthermore, echoing the growing body of work on queer ecologies in the humanities and social sciences, which interrogate how non-heteronormative spaces challenge dominant (bio)power structures (Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010; Rimlinger 2024), this section aims to highlight the historical intersections between queer–environmental struggles (Unger 2021), as well as how they challenge binary categorisations of both gender and nature.
4. Environmental Exploitation and Gender Inequalities
Intersections between environmental, racial, social and gender inequalities have been widely studied. Scholarship has shown, across varied historical contexts, an increased burden of women’s domestic labour in polluted environments (Mosley 2001) and in economies based on the intensive exploitation of wildlife (Isenberg 2000). It has also documented women’s differential exposure to pollutants and, since the first third of the 20th century, to agrochemicals (Elmhirst 2015; Van Melkebeke 2020). Conversely, certain groups of women have been targeted for their involvement in environmentally destructive practices linked to appearance-focused consumer habits, such as the use of feathers or fur (Kean 1998). This section aims to analyse the intersections of gender, resource control and environmental exploitation, with particular attention to their impact on health and bodies.
5. Activism, Emancipation, Politicisation
Research has highlighted the central role played by women in animal and wildlife protection, as well as environmental advocacy, all of which gained momentum from the 19th century onwards. Their involvement took various forms, including the founding of environmental organisations (Winiwarter 2017), participation in environmental movements (Guha 2000) and whistleblowing, as exemplified by the work of Rachel Carson (Silent Spring, 1962) and Ruth Harrison (Animal Machines, 1964), as well as the theorisation of ecofeminism (Cambourakis 2018). These engagements often – though not always – coincided with broader aspirations towards emancipation, public participation, and even political influence (Unger 2012; Mathis 2018).
In connection with section 4, this section investigates the intersections between environmentalism, social reform, civil rights movements and political activism (Guha 2000). It further seeks to explore how women’s commitments were shaped by, and at times challenged, socially constructed gender norms, such as the defence of sentient beings, domestic spaces and family health (Engels 2002) while also recognising the specificities of activist struggles.
6. Sources, Methodologies, Historiography
Since antiquity, women, especially from lower social backgrounds, have left behind few written records. Modes of appropriation and preservation of writing have reproduced and amplified their invisibility in human–environment interactions. For instance, normative and statistical sources in both European and colonial contexts often fail to account for women’s agricultural labour and its economic significance (Gubin 1996; Likaka 1997; Benharrech 2020). However, recent research drawing on judicial, literary and practical sources has proposed methodological strategies to circumvent this invisibility (Montenach 2017).
This conference welcomes contributions that address the challenges and opportunities offered by historical sources in the context of gender and environmental history. It seeks to foster reflexive debate on the impact of source-related biases and gendered constructions on historical scholarship. For instance, as several historians have noted, the idealisation of women as custodians of rural life and key actors in (proto-)ecological practices has contributed to obscuring their role in agricultural and industrial modernisation (Gubin 1996). Finally, while scholars in political ecology have drawn attention to the pitfalls of gendered approaches that lead to the essentialisation of binary perspectives and, in practice, place the burden of environmental repair on women (Elmhirst 2015), this section also aims to explore the historical construction, mobilisation, transformation and potential transcendence of gender categories in relation to environmental issues.
Practical Information
Paper proposals (including a title, a summary of no more than 2,000 characters and a short CV) should be sent to genre.environnement@gmail.com by 15 December 2025. Notification of acceptance will be given by 15 February 2026.
The working languages of the conference are French and English. Submissions from early-career researchers are particularly encouraged. Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered in line with the available budget.
For the full Call for Papers in French and English, click here
Source: http://eseh.org/cfp-ruche-international-conference-gender-and-the-environment/