Eco-Femme and Ecofeminism: The Two Words in Our Name

A short history of eco-feminism and why it is the inspiring philosophy behind our company

Every so often, someone asks us where the name Eco-Femme comes from. It is an amalgamation of two broad ideas: Eco and Femme. Both have long and separate histories that became the idea behind our company. Through this blog, we attempt to break down:

that idea and share its origin,
its global and Indian contexts,
our company’s connection to these words,
and their relevance in the current world.What is Eco Feminism?

Ecofeminism integrates feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world.
In other words, Eco-Feminism comes from the observation that the exploitation of women and that of the earth are interconnected. They tend to run on the same fuel, and tend to be justified by the same logic.

Where did it begin?
The word itself was coined in 1974 by the French writer and activist Françoise d’Eaubonne, in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (Feminism or Death). D’Eaubonne argued that patriarchy and the global environmental crisis were two faces of the same hegemonic system, one that had been quietly destructive to both women and the planet for a very long time.
(Source: Françoise d’Eaubonne, Le Féminisme ou la Mort, 1974.)

Her word travelled fast, and it changed shape in its course. Through the late 1970s and the 1980s, women on several continents arrived at closely related conclusions from very different starting points, often without having known about D’Eaubonne at all.

Wangari Maathai : Founder of Greenbelt Movement

In Kenya, the environmentalist Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, mobilising rural women to plant trees in direct response to deforestation and the loss of firewood, clean water and fertile soil, all of which fell hardest on women’s daily lives. Decades later, in 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.(Source: The Green Belt Movement; Nobel Prize archives.)

In Germany, the sociologist Maria Mies spent much of her career studying how the unpaid labour of women, peasants and colonised economies quietly propped up global capitalism. In 1993 she co-wrote the book “Ecofeminism” with the Indian ecologist and activist, Vandana Shiva, and developed what she called the ‘subsistence perspective’: an economy organised around sustaining life in harmony with nature, rather than accumulating profit.
(Source: Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism, 1993.)

None of these women were from the same world or working from the same script. And that is rather the point. Eco-Feminism was never one theory handed down from a single source. It was, and continues to be, many women and people in many places, noticing the same pattern: that those who fall lower in the social hierarchy and have very little power over their own bodies also tend to have the least power over their land, water and forests around them.

Eco-Feminism in India

India has one of the oldest and most visible traditions and movements in the eco-feminist thought anywhere in the world. A great deal of it runs through one name: Vandana Shiva.

Shiva trained as a physicist before turning to ecology and activism. Her book “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India”, published in 1988, became foundational and travelled beyond the borders of India.

Maria Mies & Vandana ShivaHer central argument was that women in India, specifically rural women, through generations of farming, seed-saving and forest use, held a depth of ecological knowledge that industrial development consistently dismissed as backward, and that the model of ‘development’ being imposed on them amounted to a form of violence against both women and nature- carried out in the name of progress.
(Source: Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive, 1988.)

Gauri Devi and women from the Chipko Movement

In 1973, in the village of Mandal (now called Uttarakhand), a group of women led by Gauri Devi placed themselves between loggers and the trees the loggers had come to fell, wrapping their arms around the trunks and refusing to move. The loggers eventually turned back; the felling was called off. This became known as the Chipko Movement, from the Hindi word for ‘to cling.’
(Source: World Rainforest Movement, on the Chipko Movement.)

The women from the Chipko movement were determined to protect the forest that gave them firewood, fodder and water- the daily material for their survival. In doing so, they gave the world one of its clearest working examples of what Eco-feminism looks like in reality, outside theories and concepts in literature.

A related thread runs through the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the movement led by Medha Patkar, founded in 1985. This andolan or movement was aimed at opposing the Sardar Sarovar Dam and the displacement of the tribal and farming communities along the Narmada river. Patkar’s decades of hunger strikes and organising were never framed explicitly as feminist movements. However, the underlying pattern held that it was land, water and the people who depended most directly on both, disproportionately women, that were on the line (this sentence has to be improved).
(Source: Right Livelihood Foundation; Goldman Environmental Prize.)

Eco-Feminism in 2026

[caption id="attachment_37028" align="alignnone" width="2240"] All About Her Podcast with Dia Mirza on Eco-Feminism

Eco-feminism is not a lost battle and is relevant more so in today’s era of climate crisis, where the impact of global warming and climate related catastrophes is felt first by indigenous communities, and particularly women from these vulnerable communities.

Recently, in a podcast, Actor and UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, Dia Mirza, alongside environmental journalist Arati Kumar Rao, linked the ongoing destruction to patriarchal power structures. Mirza went ahead and said, “Patriarchy is the cause of climate change.” A line that went viral within days.

More details can be found here: All About Her podcast, June 2026, reported by GrowJust India.

The clip drew heavy criticism online, but Mirza did not take her statement back. In a follow up post, she stood by it, laying out the shared roots she saw between patriarchy and the climate crisis: economic systems that reward extraction over creation and care, domination over balance, short term gains over the kind of long term thinking the planet actually requires. When power and nature are treated as things to be controlled – who ultimately benefits and who bears the cost.

Eco-Femme and Eco-Feminism

Our company name too draws inspiration from the concept of Eco-Feminism and aims to analyze relationships between humans and the natural world.

Eco and Femme are two words this company was built on.

‘Eco’ is the environmental promise behind every pad we make. Organic certified cotton, biodegradable, produced by emitting low carbon emissions, designed to be washed and re-used for years and as an alternative to disposable pads that are made with plastic typically and take decades to decompose on earth.

‘Femme’,meaning “woman” in French,is about nurturing our femininity and approaching the world with warmth and care. The belief that confidence is one’s own body and the freedom to make decisions about it are not separate from the freedom to make decisions about the world around it.

That word does real work in our day to day, not just on the label. For the women who sew our pads, it means fair pay for skilled work, an income they can count on, and money that is theirs. For the girls and women who use them, it means bleeding without fear or embarrassment, and with dignity.

In summary, Eco-Femme as an enterprise aligns with the same argument Ecofeminism has been making since 1974. That caring for the body and caring for the earth were never two separate things.

EcoFeminism and You

If any of this has sparked your curiosity, we have prepared a small list of things you can check out to learn further on this topic:

TO READ

* Staying Alive, by Vandana Shiva. The foundational text on eco-feminism in India, built on the Chipko Movement and the case for taking rural women’s ecological knowledge seriously.

* Ecofeminism, by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva. A joint work by two of the movement’s most cited thinkers, connecting the global North and South.

* Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. Written before the word eco-feminism existed, and arguably one of the books that made the movement’s central argument possible in the first place.

* Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. A more recent, deeply personal look at indigenous knowledge, reciprocity and our relationship with the living world.

* Unbowed, by Wangari Maathai. Her own memoir, from a childhood in rural Kenya to the Nobel stage, and everything the Green Belt Movement cost and gave her in between.

TO FOLLOW

* The Ecofeminist Institute, on Substack. A newer voice in the space, run by researcher Dr. Asmae Ourkiya, working at the intersection of climate policy and gender justice. https://theecofeministinstitute.substack.com

TO WATCH

* Ecofeminism Now! A documentary weaving together interviews with eco-feminist scholars and activists, Vandana Shiva among them.

* Amazon Sisters. A documentary on Indigenous women’s collective organising in the Amazon, and its place in the wider eco-feminist traditions.