Often when we think about women and the oceans we think of mermaids; we think of Circe’s sirens luring Odysseus’ crew or Disney’s Ariel trading her voice for human love (Probyn 2016). If it’s not the image of a half-naked woman with fins, then we often think of the fisherman’s wife pacing back and forth wringing her hands and waiting for her husband to return. The film, The Perfect Storm, comes immediately to mind. These images of passive women pervade popular culture and, as I argue here, contribute to the erasure of women in ocean studies. A rising tide of sociological studies, however, demonstrate how a feminist approach to oceans can create a more equitable approach to marine management today.
In her book, Eating the Ocean, Elsbeth Probyn writes that there has been a long-standing and far-reaching “gender myopia” (2016, p.105) in ocean studies. She identifies a few sources of this myopia. First, she writes that concerns over climate change seem to supersede issues of race, class, gender. Within the academic literature and in the public discourse, she identifies a growing consensus that claims the threats of climate change are so urgent and ubiquitous that considering their potentially uneven effects for women would only stall adaptation efforts.
In conjunction, however, there is increasing evidence that women are more vulnerable to climate change than men, in large part, because of cultural norms and the inequitable distribution of household roles, financial resources, and social capital, especially in developing nations. Because of their increased vulnerability to disasters and extreme weather events, women tend to be more concerned about climate change. Finally, Probyn points out that embedded in these discussions of women and the environment is the gendered assumption that women are “closer to nature” and “natural caretakers”. This myopic treatment of women is harmful in so far that it “naturalizes” the excessive harm that women experience from declining fish stocks and storm water surges, for instance, and puts the onus of recovery on women’s bodies, time, and labor. Thus, despite growing awareness of women’s disproportionate exposure to climate change and environmental bads more generally, there is continued inaction on behalf of policy-makers to put into practice gender-aware initiatives.
In response to the dual (not dueling) concerns of gender inequality and declining ocean health (it is estimated that 90% of excess heat generated by greenhouse gases is absorbed by the world’s oceans), scholars in sociology and beyond have begun to articulate a feminist approach to studying oceans.
To begin, this means deconstructing traditionally held notions of what gender is and is not. Andrea Nightingale writes, “gender is not constant and predetermined materially or symbolically but rather becomes salient in environmental issues through work, discourses of gender, and the performance of subjectivities. Not only are inequalities between men and women a consequence of environmental issues, gender is a cause of environmental change in the sense that gender is inextricably linked to how environments are produced” (2006, p.166).
As a launching off point, this quote demonstrates the need to push back against the binary construction of gender and the singular treatment of the ways in which women can and do relate to the ocean. In so doing, sociologists can show that the same socio-economic systems that oppress women and non-binary individuals also exploit the world’s oceans.
In an effort to deconstruct traditional understandings of women (away from the hand-wringing and temptress motifs) or undo the complete erasure of women in the first place, and, at the same time, demonstrate the co-production of gender and the environment, several sociologists have adopted a “more-than-human” approach to studying oceans. This means “listening to the material” (Keller 1995) and paying attention to “the kinds of embodied engagement, the lived relatedness of stuff that matters” (Probyn 2016, p. 110). With a focus on the agency of nonhumans (anchovies, mollusks, whales, kelp, and deep-sea oil rigs), feminist sociologists demonstrate the dynamic webs of interaction between land-based humans and ocean-based ecosystems and technologies.
In addition, by drawing upon feminist sociological methodologies, like situated knowledges, that emphasize emotions and subjective experiences (Haraway 1988), scholars illustrate a wider spectrum of gendered interactions and, arguably, develop a richer scientific understanding of climate change-related crises. The oceans are also laden with legacies of colonial exploitation that multiply forms of oppression for some over others. As such, intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989), a cornerstone in the feminist sociological literature, has increasingly become a framework for understanding how Black and brown women, especially those in the Global South, bear the brunt of rising tides, marine biodiversity loss, and stormwater surges.
Some examples of recent sociological work that both reclaim the central role of women in the history of the oceans and, simultaneously, upend quaint notions of womanhood include Margaret Willson’s (2019) work on seawomen in Iceland’s commercial and recreational fisheries. She draws from ethnographic fieldwork and archival data on Icelandic sagas to trace the centuries-long legacy of butch, queer, and female fishers. In so doing, Willson erodes the hegemonic hetero-masculine archetype of the fishing industry in the North Atlantic. Instead, she shows that the fishery is and always has been a queer and feminist space.
This feminist sociological approach to studying the oceans has tangible implications for a more equitable approach to contemporary and future ocean management and policy-making. I’ve listed some examples below:
- Zoe Todd (2016) shows that the ontological turn towards “more-than-human” feminist approaches in sociology and ocean studies ignores the fact that Indigenous peoples have been using a “more-than-human” approach to oceans for centuries. As a result, she advocates for giving power back to Indigenous groups in managing fish stocks and setting climate change adaptation agendas.
- Because of women’s vulnerability to extreme weather events, Alyssa Battistoni argues that the care economy, traditionally considered “pink-collar” jobs, need to be considered when developing climate change adaption policies, such as the Blue (or Green) New Deal.
- Recently, negotiations between developed and developing nations were able to overcome gridlock as policy-makers wrote new language about a holistic, ecosystem-based approach to marine-protected areas in the high seas. This new framework is rooted in feminist critiques of mainstream conservation efforts.
Today, women are more present than ever before in ocean-centered spaces. There are increasing numbers of female recreational fishers; more female surfers, and a deliberate effort to build a Brown girl surf movement; a majority of aquaculture workers are female; and a growing number of women in fisheries biology and marine sciences—both in academia and public-facing research institutions. (In fact, Rachel Carson is often remembered for her landmark book, Silent Spring (1962), which launched the mainstream environmental movement in the 1970s and is considered a seminal piece of environmental sociological writing. Though less remembered, Carson was a marine biologist who also wrote The Sea Around Us (1951), which assessed the state of marine ecosystems and put forth potential solutions for protecting the world’s oceans.)
The increased visibility of women in and around the ocean reflects women’s central role in producing knowledge about the ocean and developing equitable approaches to engaging with and protecting the ocean. Despite this visibility, though, inequality and discrimination still persist, suppressing female voices and upholding toxic tropes of women as silent, passive, or invisible.
So, is it time to get rid of mermaids all together?
Absolutely not. Despite some of their negative associations, mermaids have always been a form of cultural survival for women in coastal regions—from Nigeria to the North Atlantic. They can also be a “catalyst for future evolution” and, I argue, should be embraced as such.
In Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2016), the main character, Adaora is a marine biologist who turns into a mermaid at one point, saying, “I am a marine witch” (280). In becoming a marine witch, she is able to blend her marine biological knowledge with the experience of living and breathing underwater. Here we see a feminist sociological approach to the oceans depicted in sci-fi: using subjective experiences to enhance science and, in so doing, “confront the alien and the fantastic with curiosity” (Jue 2017, p.181).
Although Ariel traded away her voice, she eventually got it back. Adaora found a new voice as a mermaid. As we go forward into an alien and uncertain future for our world’s oceans, it’s incumbent upon us as scholars and practitioners to amplify the voices of those who have been made silent. A more equitable future depends on it.
References
Carson, R. 1951. The Sea Around Us. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Crenshaw, K. 1989. “Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black Feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(1):139-167.
Haraway, D. 1989. “Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective.” Feminist Studies 14(3):575-599.
Jue, M. 2017. “Intimate Objectivity: On Nnedi Okorafor’s Oceanic Afrofuturism” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 45(1&2):171-188.
Keller, E. 1995. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Nightingale, A. 2006. “The Nature of Gender: work, gender and environment.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(2):165-185.
Okorafor, N. Lagoon. New York, NY: Saga Press.
Probyn, E. 2016. Eating the Ocean. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.
Todd, Z. 2016. “An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the ontological turn: ‘Ontology’ is just another word for colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 29(1)Willson, M. 2019. Seawomen of Iceland: Survival on the Edge. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.