Interlocking Crises, Intersectional Visions: Ecofeminist Political Economy in Conversation with Degrowth

This chapter discusses the theoretical and practical implications of bringing ecofeminist political economy together into critical engagement with degrowth. We demonstrate how insights from ecofeminist political economy (EPE), a field with a long but often overlooked and misrecognised history, can inform research into the concepts and practices that are necessary for comprehensive socio-ecological transformation. Our aim is to explain how overlooking questions of gender injustice and socially necessary reproductive labour in visions for alternative futures such as degrowth risks perpetuating the same racialised and gendered inequalities which prompted such visions in the first place. We begin by discussing what an ecofeminist approach to political economy looks like by introducing its key ideas and history. We then discuss four main areas where insights from EPE contribute to degrowth perspectives. Throughout, we return to the central argument that EPE scholars have been making for decades: environmental sustainability must not be achieved by exploiting feminised and racialised caring labour any more than gender equality should be achieved at the expense of ecological degradation or the exploitation of nature and other species.