Written by Fatima Leal, April 15, 2026

Picture a careful hand trimming the wild, thriving foliage of new growth in a tree. Picture said hand harnessing the extent of its growth, guiding the space it occupies, defining its future shape, tending all of the tree's necessities, nurturing all of its needs. The caregiver is making calculated choices that determine what's to come for this tree. When we imagine who might be connected to this hand, do we conjure the image of a woman?

It is an intriguing answer to explore and compare with what others picture. It mostly reveals personal societal assumptions rather than strict associations. However, it must be revealed that our shared understanding of a nurturing role might be tainted from the beginning. When one looks up synonyms for “Nurturing”, adjectives such as feminine, maternal, and womanly, all show up as valid interchangeable words.

Now, if we think of the same list of acts mentioned above, and add a sentence with the verb: ‘to mother’, it does not seem exceedingly out of place. Could all actions then be applicable beyond the natural realm and be cast onto human bodies? A woman as the guide of the described negotiation between nurture and control; for both the natural and the human world. Are both land and body expected to be nurtured, shaped, and balanced by a feminine influence?

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And, what happens when one wants to engage and nurture a natural space and this one is threatened? Ecofeminism rises in the middle of this discourse and has positioned itself as one of the most visible and rapidly circulating frameworks in today’s cultural dialogue.

For the past three decades, scholars have warned of an “extinction of experience” (Robert M. Pyle, The Thunder Tree, 1993): a growing detachment from the natural world marked not only by the disappearance of green spaces, but by a fading desire to engage with them at all. Ecofeminist thought engages with this awareness of the detachment and subsequent human responsibility in the disappearance of green spaces. In recent years, as ecofeminism gains momentum and visibility, it is not only claiming the attention of the world, but also influencing artists practices in original ways. Take for instance the recorded search trends by Google over the past 5 years:

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