Beyond Nature's Housekeepers

From pre-Columbian times to the environmental justice movements of the present women and men frequently responded to the environment and environmental issues in profoundly different ways. Although both environmental history and women''s history are flourishing fields explorations of the synergy produced by the interplay between environment and sex sexuality and gender are just beginning. Offering more than biographies of great women in environmental history Beyond Nature''s Housekeepers examines the intersections that shaped women''s unique environmental concerns and activism and that framed the way the larger culture responded. Women featured include Native Americans colonists enslaved field workers pioneers homemakers municipal housekeepers immigrants hunters nature writers soil conservationists scientists migrant laborers nuclear protestors and environmental justice activists. As women they fared thought and acted in ways complicated by social political and economic norms as well as issues of sexuality and childbearing. Nancy C. Unger reveals how women have played a unique role for better and sometimes for worse in the shaping of the American environment.