by Alanna Hartzok, UN NGO Representative for the International Union for Land Value Taxation (theIU.org) and Co-Director, Earth Rights Institute
Women once enjoyed a special relationship to the land when nomadic tribes shifted to an agricultural way of life. Plants and children were gifts from the gods and woman was the medium for both. Women seemed to have the ability to cause fruits and grain to spring from planted fields. In a mystical sense, the earth belonged to the women and they had a religious and legal hold on the land and its fruits.
As women’s role in procreation was demystified, so were our ties to the earth cut. Ending this age of militarism and environmental rape requires that the male and female forces find a new balance and harmony. Neither nature as “omnipotent” nor the superiority of individual human beings dominating nature can be a legitimate worldview. We need to affirm the human species as partner with nature.
The various equal rights movements have yet to affirm the most essential right of all — the equal right of all people to the earth. This is the “equal right” that furthers human unity and acknowledges our interconnectedness not only with each other but also with the earth from which we come and to which we return.
Read the rest here: https://alannahartzok.substack.com/p/women-earth-and-economic-power-eee