MEDICINE
24
04
ADATO
7 Scales for an Ecofeminist Reading of the Coronavirus Pandemic Marta Catalan Eraso
Marta Catalan is an architect and urban designer, currently working at The University of Hong Kong in the Division of Landscape Architecture. She completed her PhD in the same institution. Her current research examines urban segregation, unequal living conditions, and gentrification, with a particular interest in transnational architectural and urban forms and norms. Her research, teaching and practice has taken place in Spain, Japan and Hong Kong.
Marta Catalan Eraso
While gender-sensitive urban planning has created more inclusive spaces for women in cities around the world over the past few decades, the recent coronavirus crisis has prompted more complex and nuanced dimensions to the discipline. To reflect upon this impact, this article draws from ecofeminist theories. These theories1, which depart from the critique of patriarchal science in combination with a concern for the environment, have illuminated the ways in which global structures have been biased, gendered, and unequal— allowing certain areas of the world to dominate others, men to dominate women, and the devastation of natural resources for the sake of uneven capital accumulation. Around the world, multiple initiatives have emerged to tackle the effects of the virus, prompting critical questions about the oppression of women and nature amidst this health crisis. This kind of oppression, which can be seen as a form of “slow violence�, is gradually destructive, out of sight, and often not registered as violence at all.2 Following, this text examines 7 planetary scales to illustrate the inherent gender and ecological inequalities currently existing in our world and to argue for a more environmentally sustainable approach that respects our biodiversity:
