Making a Case for Ecofeminist Popular Education in Times of Covid-19

Shirley Walters; Astrid von Kotze

doi:10.4312/as/9665

Authors

Shirley Walters University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Astrid von Kotze University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/as/9665

Keywords:

ecofeminism, popular education, Covid-19, transformative action

Abstract

Ecofeminism offers a framework that brings together patriarchy, capitalism, and the degradation of the environment, and helps to make sense of and address a world in desperate need of radical transformation. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified existing fault lines of inequality, poverty, gender-based violence, and turbulence in the biosphere. This paper uses an ecofeminist lens to critically investigate the case of a woman’s health course that employs a popular education approach. As imbedded activist researchers, we question how the curriculum should change so that the knowledge generated really becomes useful for transformative action. Thus, the paper brings together popular education theory and ecofeminism. After an overview of ecofeminist principles, we introduce a case study to apply these principles. We conclude that elements which relate to the participants’ lives in immediate ways, like food security and water, are entry points for challenging the perception of Nature as a “thing” rather than as a complex interrelated ecosystem. We argue that ecofeminist principles have widespread relevance for popular education and its transformative impulses beyond Covid-19.

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