The history of campaigning for the environment was forged at the same time as for women's equality. Millicent Fawcett became the president of the Suffrage Movement, the first International Women's Day was held in March 1911 and Charles Rothschild founded The Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves in 1912, which became The Wildlife Trusts.  

As with the Women’s Suffrage movement, Rothschild's ideas about nature conservation were outside of mainstream opinion at the time. The concept of women having the vote and nature reserves being protected were not widely accepted or understood. 

A recent exhibition at the Barbican, Re/Sisters: A Lens on Gender and Ecology drew together feminism and environmentalism. The exhibition represented the patriarchal order organised around the exploitation of natural resources. Direct links were made between the oppression of women, Black, queer, trans, and Indigenous communities, and the degradation of our seas, deforestation, planetary toxicity and species extinction.  

In the past, women, like nature, did not have a voice and had to rely upon men to speak for them. Nature can only be represented by those who speak for it too, whatever their motivation, whether it is to plunder or protect. 

Feminism and environmentalism share the same history of activism too with acts of civil disobedience and disruption. After the Suffragettes, the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp became one of the largest women's protests since the suffragettes in the late 1990s. They wanted to protect nature and the living world. A view shared by supporters of environmental activism groups today.  

Increasingly, feminist theorists recognise that there can be no gender justice without environmental justice. The United Nations (UN) Women shares this view and is drawing direct links between climate change, environmental degradation and women’s equality. It is calling for a care society that amplifies women’s voices and an alternative economic model for a healthy planet.    

So, what can we learn from this for conservation? This year International Women’s Day is celebrating inclusion. We would benefit from more inclusion of nature too, in decision-making, in government, the economy, town planning, academia, the workplace, schools, and many other areas of life.  

The current state of the environment suggests that gender and nature discrimination is still not adequately addressed. Many sectors remain male-dominated in the UK, particularly in leadership positions, and we live in one the most nature depleted countries on earth.  

It is time for change and just as society is now challenging gender discrimination, we should equally challenge nature discrimination. But we can’t wait as long as we have for gender equality, as the clock is ticking on climate change and nature loss.