Moving towards the Gynocene: exploring the life experiences of women environmentalists (Citation and Abstract only)
Creators: name: Siegel, Lisa Adine
Publisher: name: Southern Cross University
Year: 2022
Subjects: Environmental education
gender
Material feminism
Collective biography

description: A serious and multi-pronged effort by humankind is required to address the overwhelming environmental issues that are currently confronting the planet. Gynocenic voices are becoming more salient in this effort, and a deeper and more thorough understanding of what influences girls and women in becoming (or not becoming) agents of change is crucial. It is clear, however, that pro-environmental behaviour does not exist in a vacuum, and that individual actions alone can never be sufficient to address the enormity of our current challenges. Humans are part of an interconnected and constantly moving network of both humans and more-than-humans, in which entanglements create potentialities for other entanglements. The complexity of the factors involved in understanding pro-environmental behaviour in humans, particularly in women, must therefore be understood through the lived experience and told stories of the collective, rather than of the individual. The aim of this research is therefore to understand the ways in which environmental agency is understood, mediated, and/or inhibited in women who identify as environmentalists, through an exploration of their lived experiences and entangled stories.
description: In response to the complexities of this aim, a new theoro-methodological framework, &lt;em&gt;intra-connective inquiry&lt;/em&gt;, was established for this research. Intra-connective inquiry is defined through its grounding in material-discursive intra-actions – not only amongst the researched, but with and amongst the researcher/s, the stories, theories and methodologies enacted, and the timespace continuum itself. It is trans-disciplinary and acknowledges other ethico-onto-epistemological understandings of intra-connectedness as foundational. Two such theories of intra-connectedness, Barad’s (2007) agential realism and the Buddhist theory of mutual causality (Macy, 1991), were interwoven with an adapted &lt;em&gt;collective biography&lt;/em&gt; methodology. Collective biography is unique from other narrative forms of research in its insistence that, instead of looking at the particular details of individual lives, the memory stories of each individual become part of a collective re/storying. In this research, the collective biography process inquired into the lived experience of self-identified women environmentalists via two groups: a Pilot Study group of nine women, and a Main Study group of twelve women. An original process of &lt;em&gt;inter-learning&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;em&gt;intra-learning&lt;/em&gt; emerged from the Pilot Study and was enacted through the Main Study.
description: Powerful stories emerged from both studies: stories of finding kin, stories of making sense, stories of growing power, and stories of taking care. The collective stories of these particular groups of women were unique and notable for their eventual acknowledgement of privilege and the surprising backgrounding of gender due to this privilege. The stories also expressed, however, a more universal and urgent need for the understanding of intra-connectedness and the collective in all aspects of society, especially in education and most particularly in environmental education. The move towards the Gynocene is thus an acknowledgement of ultimate entanglement as well as ultimate potentiality for all beings and entities.