Growing up in the 1950s in the U.S. I was deeply immersed, trapped like so many girls and women, in capitalist, colonizing, patriarchy. I rescued myself in the 1970s when I jumped head first into the Women’s Liberation movement. I found that the currents pushing communities of women were wild at times, yet taking me where I wanted to go. At that time, it was possible to live one’s life, as I did, largely within this subculture and its women’s dances, bookstores, battered women’s shelters, women of color organizations, festivals, land groups and more. These female-centered and female-only spaces gave women a gut level knowledge of what a world without patriarchy could be like. We could imagine a female-centered world because we were, in many respects, living in one.
Thanks to a decades long assault by the right wing and other anti-feminist forces, women’s spaces became difficult to access. Now the grassroots women’s movement is making a comeback. Over 50 years of second wave feminist thought, research and organizing inform our work. Women’s communities are on the rise. These communities have the potential to become the base for an earth- and female-centered future, as I’ll discuss below.
In “Mountain Mother: Symbol from the Past, Beacon for the Future” I suggested that Mountain Mother’s three aspects, Earth, Woman, and Goddess, could serve as a guide for creating earth- and female centered communities and societies. Here, I’ll put some of our 50 years’ worth of feminist tools and research to work to see how Mountain Mother can help us to do just that. Part 1 will explore Earth and Woman (as female-centered societies) Part 2 will look at Woman (as woman-centered subsistence and gift economies) and Goddess.
Earth
The Earth can still recover as she is the Original Creatrix, genius at self healing. She will not be the same, as too much long-lasting damage has been done. People can stop the assaults on her and help her recover. Those who wish to return to Mountain Mother can learn to work with nature instead of against her.
Tending the Earth. Let’s send our imaginations out for a run. Visualizing the healing of the Earth can be difficult. Believing that people can assist in that healing is an even greater stretch. Yet, numerous Indigenous societies on Turtle Island and Abya Yala tended and continue to tend Nature, helping nature create a world of abundance. As Lyla June Johnston, Diné and Tsétsêhéstâhesc (Cheyenne) scholar, explains:
“Indigenous Nations the world over have intentionally and successfully managed vast marine and terrestrial systems for thousands of years to support both themselves as well as the surrounding biota and natural elements, whom they often view as their own kin. These systems are often millennial scale, regional-scale, and highly biodiverse. ” (p. 275, Architects of Abundance: Indigenous Regenerative Food and Land Management Systems and the Excavation of Hidden History)
Knowing Our Place, Becoming Aware. Tending the Earth requires letting go of the worldview and many practices of the dominant society, especially domination and taking. To help Earth recover, people must know the natural world well, especially the places that are our home. The learning process can be humbling, as many of us do not know much about nature and lack a deep sensory awareness of her. Women needed a deep knowledge of Earth to invent horticulture, as Carol Christ described:
“As primary gatherers of plants and the primary preparers of plant foods, women would have been the ones to notice that seeds dropped after the harvest sometimes sprouted up around the campsites. Over a long process of observation and experimentation, women would have learned when and how to plant, how to nurture young plants, how to water and weed, and when and how to harvest and preserve seeds. This information, understood as an aspect of the mysteries of birth, death, and regeneration would have been passed down the female line through story, song, dance, and ritual.”[1]
These foremothers were, almost certainly, exercising more of their brain power than those in the dominant society do: both logical thought and, as Tewa scholar Gregory Cajete describes, an ancient consciousness based in “a lived and storied participation with a natural landscape.”[2]
Woman
Female-Centered Societies. If we are to come back to Mountain Mother, we need societies that honor women and prevent male dominance. Female-centered societies ensure a balance of power by placing women at the center, not the top of society, as Heide Goettner-Abendroth has pointed out.[3] This way women have enough power, but there is no hierarchy.
Based on her research with living matriarchal societies, Goettner-Abendroth has identified the structure of matriarchal societies . For example, matrilineal clans are central in these societies.[4] Female-centered societies do not have to be matriarchies though. There are Indigenous cultures that center women (or did prior to colonization), but aren’t matrilineal. Some do not have clans.[5]
How can new female-centered small scale societies form today? The women’s communities that form with grassroots women’s movements may be the key.
In the women’s communities of the 70s and early 80s we felt we were building a women’s world. The dominant society was and continues to be a big obstacle, but the power of the Earth’s resistance is forcing a paradigm change. What if today’s women’s communities expand and, both organically and intentionally, begin planning and creating earth- and female-centered societies?
Thus far, women’s communities[6] have existed within the dominant society. Women depended on the dominant society to fill many of our needs and desires. I expect small scale societies to become far more self sufficient, though deeply connected to compatible societies. The dominant society does a poor job of feeding much of the world. In moving toward becoming small scale societies, today’s women’s communities will need to emphasize providing for basic needs, such as food and medical care. Women’s lands and female-centered economies will become extremely important.
Footnotes
1. Carol Christ, “A Working Hypothesis for the Study of Religion in a Minoan Village: The Theories of Harriet Boyd Hawes, Marija Gimbutas, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and Jan Driessen”. Presented at International Symposium for the Study of Women and Mythology, 2021.
2. Gregory Cajete, “Native Science and Sustaining Indigenous Communities.” In Traditional Ecological Practices for Environmental Sustainability, edited by Melissa Nelson and Dan Shilling, 2018, p. 16.
3. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy: West Asia and Europe, 2022. p. 87.
4. Matrilineal means ancestry based in the female line. Clans are large, closely-knit kinship groups that include several generations who may live together.
5. For example, gathering-hunting societies living in small bands typically do not have clans. They are usually egalitarian and may center women. Another example: Goettner-Abendroth posits that paleolithic societies were mother-centered, but did not have clans, so were not matriarchal. (p. 87, Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy: West Asia and Europe).
6. Community: group of people who share a common interest and who may or may not live in the same area. Society: large group of people who live in the same area and who share traditions, institutions, and a way of life.
Bio: Jeanne F. Neath Mountain Mother will not let me rest! I cannot help but advocate and explore possibilities for a return to earth and woman-centered communities and societies. “The Earth is the body of the Goddess,” as Carol Christ wrote, and so the feminist spiritual practice informing my writing is one of sitting and walking in awareness of nature. In the 1990s I edited and published the feminist journal, At the Crossroads: Feminism, Spirituality and New Paradigm Science. I have published many scholarly articles on disability and employment. I’ve been a radical Lesbian feminist organizer and activist since the 1970s, working on many grassroots projects from Spinsters Books and Webbery to Radical Lesbian Feminist Uprisings. See more of my ecofeminist writings at ecofeminismblog.org
feminismandreligion.com 
Jeanne, I love this! I love how you begin by invoking memories of the women’s movement in the early 1980s: ‘this subculture and its women’s dances, bookstores, battered women’s shelters, women of color organizations, festivals, land groups and more.’ As you know, that was my world too in the US at that time, and I agree completely, ‘These female-centered and female-only spaces gave women a gut level knowledge of what a world without patriarchy could be like.’ (The experience of this subculture also enabled me to recognise remnants of female-centred society when I came across them in my worldwide travels researching women’s ritual dance, beginning in the late 80s and continuing ever since.)
I also love your optimism and practical positivity. You acknowledge that ‘The dominant society was and continues to be a big obstacle’, yet you affirm that ‘The Earth can still recover as she is the Original Creatrix, genius at self healing’ (even if) ‘She will not be the same, as too much long-lasting damage has been done’. Your emphasis on hope rooted in pragmatic steps based on lived experience – to ‘organically and intentionally begin planning and creating earth- and female-centered societies’ is a powerful antidote to the disempowering despair which many women may be prone to feeling in this day and age. Brava!
I can’t wait to read Part 2… and I would like to hear much more from you, cherished elder with so much experience, understanding, knowledge AND the impulse to offer practical solutions.
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Thank you so much, Laura! I love thinking about you taking your experiences in the U.S. women’s communities of the early ‘8os along with you on your decades of worldwide travels researching women’s ritual dance. Thinking that this gut level knowledge of a women’s subculture enabled you to see the remnants of female-centered societies in so many parts of the world gives me the shivers!
I spent quite a few years immersing myself in learning about the climate emergency. At first (circa 2009) I believed that the industrialized nations would recognize the need to make the deep social and economic changes needed. Over time it’s become very clear to me that these nations will not let go of capitalism or the belief that infinite growth is possible. I am able to be optimistic only because I no longer look to the dominant society for change. I recognize the power of the Earth and of the women (and men) who can build and rebuild female-centered communities and societies where there is no domination.
One of the most exciting developments I am seeing in the Lesbian and feminist women’s communities I am part of here in the U.S. is the increasing number of young Lesbians who are finding radical feminist writings and who want to connect with the earlier generations radical feminists. Lesbian lands and women’s gatherings are starting to draw more and more young women to them. This is great cause for celebration and optimism!
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Wonderful article, thank you!!! I have shared on the divine feminine app (and linked here.)
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Thank you, Caryn!
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A wonderful and thought-provoking post. Thank you! As I was reading, I began to get an image in my mind of a matrix of many different kinds of communities with common elements, but not exactly the same to meet a diversity of needs, but all connected and sharing ideas and practices with each other. I am thinking of, for example, multigenerational intentional housing communities, women’s agricultural organizations of small farmers throughout the globe, all the goddess imagery I see emerging in feminist art, and so many other expressions of people finding new ways of doing things that are sustainable and nourishing to the Earth, humans, and non-human living beings. I’m excited to read your upcoming posts!
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Thanks, Carolyn! What you are describing makes me want to see a feminist version of the book, Pluriverse. That book highlghts several dozen different authors’ ideas about creating new worlds that would eliminate the horrors of the dominant society. The editors of Pluriverse see all these different approaches co-existing and building on one another. I would love to see a similar book with all women writing about their feminist and ecofeminist approaches to building a multiplicity of projects and communities that could move us toward creating a multiplicity of earth- and female-centered societies. The lands where contributors live (and, as you say, the diversity of needs) would help to shape the women’s visions, just as the lands and the needs of the people have always shaped Indigenous societies.
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Wonderful Article!
I was born KNOWING I was attached to earth and was always in tune with Her.I came to feminism late having raised two children. divorced etc under patriarchal dominations and shame – But when I returned to grad school all that changed when one of my professors told me who I was! An Eco – feminist! Already knowledgeable about Native mythology having studied on my own I now turned to women’s scholarship/mythology devouring it like a starving person – I knew I had found home – And so it has been ever since… only today I am without a genuine community – I live the patriarchal story and hate it – more and more every day – especially since i am a part of a privileged country that just doesn’t give a shit about what’s happening (except small groups – may of which are too new age for me) I advocate for the earth through my writings and my actions – create and celebrate my own ceremonies but not withstanding my years in NM the “community” around me is a word to describe different ‘clubs’ – nothing like the open spaces i experienced in the 80’s – the happiest years of my life – all this while i was living in a 8×12 camp without ANYTHING but a brook and forest around me…. developing ‘an ancient consciousness based in “a lived and storied participation with a natural landscape.” is in my mind the first hurdle because until we fall in love with the earth nothing will change – we’ll educate and have our groups but it is nature that will teach us – and as you say we have come too far….. the hope if there is any for humans comes only with the breakdown of patriarchy which we were unable to do then in the 70’s and 80’s though we surely got a taste…. but now? This is where I draw a blank – we learned how it could be – but now??? breakdown is ahead and perhaps therein lies our hope because women DO know there are other ways of being in the world unless they have been kidnapped by the system and oh so many have.
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Sara, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences! I agree it is difficult to find real community at this point in time, largely because so many women have been “kidnapped by the system.” As the Earth shakes up that system, the women who can see a way out will, hopefully, be able to create a path that more and more women will be ready to walk down. The dominant society is becoming harder and harder to live in. Why wouldn’t women choose an Earth- and female-centered way of life once they can see that this is possible? Some of us are going to have to get things started. Then we will see what happens. Reading your comment gives me hope, as I see you and I have much in common.
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I think fear of losing the comfort of our privileged lifestyle is a powerful deterrent to walking down that road – even for women – they gather in groups but buy expensive cars and clothes take vacations across the globe while most of the world is starving or on fore… Comfort is a powerful motivator -and a scary one as I age. Once I had no problem pulling water from a well – cutting down necessary dead trees, lugging everything with a wheelbarrow but these days I can’t. Add that to the a warming climate and me suffering from the heat though I live in the woods. I would not want to be without electricity now – and no matter how carefully I combine items I still use a car – hooked in to community solar helps a little but not much. I walk lightly on the land but this does not excuse me from taking responsibility for being part of the problem…. and yes, it is obvious, we have a whole lot in common! – I am so pleased with both of your articles – thank you.
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Sara, as I see it there is only so much we can do as individuals without seceding from this society. A small number of individuals may do that, but most will not. I live a relatively “simple” lifestyle out in the woods, but we have two vehicles and a 66 mile round trip to town. For me, it goes beyond comfort. I don’t have adequate skills to provide for even my most basic needs – like food. I grow some of my own food, but nowhere close to all of it.
Humans are a very social species. I think we are going to have to make changes together. That is why I am focusing on creating communities and, in time, small societies. Let’s do this together!
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That sounds like such a fun time, I am sorry I missed that, so electric! We are in a huge time now, rebalancing of feminine and masculine energies within us and culturally, as we move into the golden age and the universe has our back! What a healing and ascending time for all of us! Thanks for sharing great tools for us.
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Thanks, Cate! The 70s and 80s were certainly a transformative, wild ride in women’s communities. It sounds like you are ready for the next installment. Me too.
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You bet Jeanne, the time is now, it’s glorious to see women around the globe taking our power back, beautiful! Thanks so much for your wisdom, keep it coming, super food for the soul!
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I believe that tending the earth means tending our own bodies too! I remember the teachings from the 1970’s women’s spirituality movement. Z Budapest reminded us that our female bodies are a temple. Every shape, size and skin color of every girl and woman was a sacred manifestation of goddess energy.
This assertion that my body was a temple helped me to move away from the standard American diet I’d been raised on. Healthy foods raised in a non-toxic environment were treasured gifts at our women’s potluck meals. Learning to prepare nutritious meals to share was a goal we willingly embraced.
All the messages from the advertising world that women’s bodies were offensive jarred me to attention. Step-by step I was able to discard products and practices deemed essential for female acceptability.
Tending our bodies and the bodies of our loved ones, including the Earth, is a core part of healing ourselves and building strong communities.
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Paula, I love it that you have made the connection between caring for the Earth and caring for our own bodies. After all, we and are bodies are Earth. And if, as Carol Christ tells us, “the Earth is the body of the Goddess”, then so also are our own bodies.
Thank you for calling out all those advertising messages (compliments of capitalism) that make women feel bad about our bodies. Letting go of those countless (and expensive) body modification products was one of the gifts I received also from the Women’s Liberation movement and communities of the 70s and 80s.
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