Edited by Fall Sokhna
A friend, a colleague and an Ecofeminism expert. That’s what Caterina is. With a bachelor degree from the University of Pisa, she is pursuing a master in international relations in Florence. During these years, she started working with Oxfam, supporting its activities in communicating ecofeminism concepts everywhere. Not only in classes, during corteges, and in this article: she gained concrete experience in Sao Tome, learning from the native community how to commute these theories with practice.
In this article she will expand these concepts, trying to create a challenging space for our minds.
“Maria Mies’ Iceberg model illustrates that capitalism accumulation is only possible because it submerges the labour of women, the global south and nature. But if capital actually had to pay for the full replacement cost of the environment and domestic care, what would be the consequences for capitalism?”
Caterina Mazzantini
“If the capitalist system were forced to pay the full cost of environmental restoration and domestic care work, it would face a terminal structural crisis, as its very capacity for accumulation depends on treating these spheres as devalued “free gifts“. According to Maria Mies’s “Iceberg Model”, the visible economy—consisting of capital and waged labor—is merely the tip of a system that relies on a massive, submerged base of unpaid reproductive work and natural processes. This invisible labor constitutes the “indispensable basis” for industrial production; without it, the workforce could not be maintained or reproduced, and the system would functionally cease to exist.
Internalizing these costs would dissolve the “structure of separation” that currently isolates the monetized economy from the economy of socio-ecological provisioning, effectively erasing the profit margins that enable capital to expand. As capital’s drive for unlimited accumulation tends to destabilize the social and ecological conditions it requires to survive, the system would find itself in a fatal contradiction where it “eats its own tail“. Furthermore, because nature and care possess intrinsic values that are often incommensurable, attempting to fully monetize them within a market logic would lead to the further degradation of the “sustainability of life” rather than its restoration. Consequently, forcing capital to pay its full debt to nature and women would necessitate a radical transition toward a post-capitalist or degrowth society where care and environmental integrity are recognized as fundamental political entitlements rather than externalized resources.”
“Johanna Oksala argues that capitalism has moved towards a phase where biological life itself is manipulated via biotechnology to be more profitable. How does the commercialisation of assisted reproductive technologies ARTs represent the ultimate capitalization of women’s bodies and a new dangerous phase of the logic of domination?”
Caterina Mazzantini
“Johanna Oksala argues that capitalism has moved from the mere extraction of external natural resources to a phase of “real subsumption,” in which it intervenes directly in biological processes to improve their productivity and profitability. This shift is reflected in the realm of human reproduction, where capital is no longer limited to “exploiting” women’s unpaid labor, but actively manages and intensifies biological productivity through biotechnology. According to Oksala, the commercialization of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), represents a crucial moment in this process, decoupling biological reproduction from sexual acts and genetic motherhood from pregnancy. By disabling these processes, capital was able to enter the reproductive cycle, creating a huge global fertility market estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year. According to Oksala’s view in practices such as commercial surrogacy, the female body is effectively “produced as an exploitable nature” and subsumed into a sophisticated biotech chain designed for capital accumulation. Unlike traditional care work, which often remains invisible or external to the market, the bodies and abilities of surrogates become “fully capitalized” components within the circuits of capitalist valorization. According to Oksala, this represents a new “dangerous” phase in the logic of domination as it subjects the most intimate biological functions to a market-driven logic of efficiency, often forcing women to take on significant medical risks, such as ovarian hyperstimulation, for profit. According to the author, this biotechnological manipulation raises urgent political and ethical questions regarding the limits of commodification and the need to defend the intrinsic and unmonetizable value of biological life from its total absorption into the value circuits of capital.
Personally, I believe this view has often been used as a justification for policies that restrict women’s freedoms. Bandelli argues that dominant feminist critiques of gestational surrogacy, centred on commodification and exploitation, tend to assume that surrogates are primarily poor, vulnerable women coerced by economic need into selling their reproductive labour, and therefore erase their capacity for decision-making and ethical reflection. In contrast, she reconstructs strands of feminist thought that defend surrogacy as a practice through which women can enact sisterhood, solidarity and altruism, positioning themselves as subjects who choose to support others’ reproductive projects rather than as mere objects of a global market. In this perspective, gestational surrogacy appears not only as a space of risk and inequality but also as a site where women can build relationships of mutual help and mutual benefit that complicate the simple victim–client dichotomy often mobilised in abolitionist discourses. Bandelli notes that, for these feminists, the key issue is not the suppression of surrogacy as such, but its regulation in ways that recognise women’s autonomy over their bodies and reproductive capacities, while preventing abuses and guaranteeing fair conditions of reproductive labour. She therefore invites a shift from a moral panic around the supposed “uniqueness” of pregnancy toward an analysis of concrete social relations, power asymmetries and institutional safeguards. In this sense, surrogates can be treated as workers and citizens whose choices deserve to be taken seriously, even when they do not conform to traditional norms of motherhood.
Drawing on Amrita Pande’s ethnographic work on commercial surrogacy in India, Bandelli further shows how surrogate women themselves actively construct meanings around their participation in this market, resisting representations that reduce them to “wombs for rent” or passive victims of neoliberal capitalism. Pande documents how Indian surrogates frame their engagement as a moral and relational project. They often insist that they “are not selling their own children”, but helping another family to have a child, and in doing so, they seek to secure a better future for their daughters and household. This narrative of care and responsibility highlights a form of collective subjectivity, in which women understand surrogacy simultaneously as labour, kinship work and moral action embedded in class, gender and global inequalities. Rather than denying exploitation, Pande’s analysis – as read by Bandelli – suggests that the language of labour and workers’ rights may offer a more adequate framework than a blanket prohibition, because it recognises surrogates as social actors capable of organising, protesting and demanding protections. From this angle, calls to ban surrogacy in the name of women’s dignity risk silencing the very women whose lives are at stake, by ignoring how they negotiate constraints, exercise agency and mobilise surrogacy as a resource to transform their own and their children’s life chances.
In sum, by engaging with Pande, Bandelli argues for a feminist politics that acknowledges both the structural conditions that channel poor women into reproductive labour and the ways in which these women craft solidaristic, future-oriented projects that cannot be captured by the language of pure victimhood.”
“Coming to your own personal experience, how did you come in contact with the concept of ecofeminism for the first time?”
Caterina Mazzantini
“The Ecoality project served as my primary entry point into the concept of feminism. It is a three-year initiative co-funded by the European Union, specifically designed to raise awareness among young people regarding ecofeminism issues. The project engaged middle and secondary schools across ten European countries (represented by Oxfam in Italy) to implement training cycles for educators. The objective was to define ecofeminism and explore the intersections of climate and gender justice.
Beyond the educational phase for schools and activists like myself, the project included an active component that demonstrated the practical applications of ecofeminism. As I noted in my article, the beauty of ecofeminism lies in its universal relevance, it concerns society as a whole. We are not simply discussing funding for coral reef protection, rather, we are advocating for a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses legality, the eradication of petty crime, women’s empowerment, and gender equality. All of these elements contribute to a healthier planet. This is also deeply connected to speciesism, a philosophical theory asserting that animals should not be exploited, not out of mere sentimentality, but because they are currently trapped in a systemic logic of exploitation. To me, addressing this is the essence of true sustainability.
We also conducted an in-depth analysis of the Conference of the Parties COP. We examined the necessity of addressing these issues on a global scale, particularly in nations where unsustainable markets for, the backbone of the national economy. In Brazil, for instance – the host of the most recent COP– a significant portion of the workforce is employed in the logging industry.
My experience in São Tomé was a key component of this project. This small island, a former Portuguese colony, embodies the lasting negative impacts of colonialism within a capitalist framework – a system that has continued to exploit both the land and its people long after independence, which was gained in 1975. It serves as a stark example of the Anthropocene (the era of human-driven environmental alteration). Consider that cacao didn’t exist on the African continent prior to Portuguese colonization, and it was introduced solely for the purpose of exploitation. Fortunately, toward the late 1990s, a collectivist and cooperative system was established for cacao and coffee production. The communities surrounding these plantations created a network that provides significant social welfare and assistance. However, to bring their goods to market, they have to rely on corporations that profit at their expense, often failing to cover costs or provide fair wages. While Fair Trade and other international mechanisms now work to prevent such practices, the legacy of the past continues to weigh heavily on the present.
Currently, one-third of the island is under concession to a French company for oil palm cultivation. These plantations are ecologically devastating; they deplete the soil’s nutrients for 50 years, leaving the land essentially barren. This demonstrates that colonial logic persists. One might argue that the responsibility lies with the local government, which is true, but we must consider the context: in an island nation with one of the world’s lowest GDPs, this industry provides essential employment for many.
This logic of exploitation is also visible within our own borders. For example, through this project, we visited Cecina to learn about “Gran Pino,” part of a pan-European association that offers affordable holiday accommodations. Their mission is to ensure that travel is accessible to everyone, even in areas where costs become prohibitive during the summer. We are fortunate to have local organizations fighting poverty in this way. It is a community-based model where everyone shares responsibility: you wash your own dishes and maintain both private and communal spaces. Everyone takes care of the environment they inhabit.”
“Are there practical strategies and micro-political actions which with individuals enact the principles of ecofeminism and social reproduction theory in everyday life to challenge the commodity logic of financialized capitalism and foster a socio-ecological transformation?”
Caterina Mazzantini
“The primary strategy available to us as citizens is awareness—the ability to recognize that certain dynamics are, in fact, systems of exploitation. For instance, the spiking of trains’ prizes during holiday seasons is a form of exploitation that disproportionately affects the most fragile and vulnerable members of society. These exploitative patterns exist globally and must be consistently challenged. Consider the fundamental difference between natural reserves and zoos, where one pays to see an animal in a cage. Similarly, pursuing the lowest possible “budget” deals to travel to the Global South often fuels an economy of exploitation, ensuring that workers in those sectors are paid even less.
It is important to clarify that this is not a judgment of individuals. It is understandable that a worker who has labored all year deserves a vacation, or that someone surviving on a meager wage may feel compelled to order from notoriously unsustainable platforms like Amazon or Shein. The goal of ecofeminism is precisely this: to raise awareness and educate people on these dynamics so they can make informed choices and, where possible, avoid contributing to them.
Beyond individual awareness, the objective is to empower a citizen that can exert pressure on the political class to make mature and ethical decisions—unlike the agreements made by the Italian government in Libya or the French oil palm concessions in São Tomé. Furthermore, allowing a system to persist without equal parental leave or adequate maternity subsidies is a continuation of exploitation. In these cases, women bear the majority of these gaps, often being forced to stay home, which leads to severe economic and social consequences, including psychological and financial abuse. This highlights the urgency of taxing the wealthy, a core advocacy campaign led by Oxfam. It is a systemic failure when a billionaire falls into the same effective tax bracket as a self-employed professional. To touch upon another pillar of ecofeminist sociological theory: if someone who can afford a nanny pays them only a minimum wage, they are not “doing them a favor” by providing a job. Instead, they are perpetuating a logic of exploitation, forcing the worker to live in a country where the cost of living is drastically higher than their earnings. Society’s task is not only to make more conscious personal choices but also to demand fairer wages indexed to inflation.
Social struggles do not exist alone. Environmentalism, feminism, and socialism all move along the same track.“
We hope to have been clear, though we recognize through direct experience that these concepts are deeply complex. Our hope is that we have sparked your curiosity and inspired you to pause the frantic pace of daily life to explore these ideas further and find your own place within this compelling theory – Caterina and Arianna