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This chapter is born out of concern about the perception of the physical and symbolic place of the live-in housekeeper, both in socioeconomic, and historical terms, as well as the architectural and social dynamics of the home. An intersectional and teleological analysis of the intrinsic devaluation of paid social reproduction work is carried out, based mainly on gender, race, and class inequalities. Ultimately, the chapter tries to locate the position in which the maid finds herself in the domestic environment, both in family relationships and in the symbolism inherent to the concept of the maid’s room. Based on sociological, philosophical, and anthropological analysis, the ambiguous place of domestic workers becomes clearer, promoting a reflection on the very concept of family and household. Thus, the chapter proposes to achieve a hermeneutic dive into the experience of this working class, revealing a hierarchical system beyond the socioeconomic, but above all, of their subjectivities.

This study used phenomenological narrative methodology to get insights into lived experiences of 10 Asian immigrant woman scholars in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in US institutions of higher learning. A feminist research approach overall guided the study. The concepts and theories of intersectionality, cultures of the academy, mindset, and mind tools framed the examination of the impacts of gender and work–family–community environments on the career pipeline of this group of women. The data were from two sources: (1) 48 documents on the participants and their institutions and (2) in-depth semi-structured interviews with these 10 participants. The findings show that gender and environment impacted the Asian women scholars’ career pipeline and advancement differently. On the negative side, barriers separately or jointly rooted in gender-based, racial, and hierarchical biases at stages of their career pipeline, from professional education to faculty appointment and leadership, challenged them. On the positive side, other gender-based and environmental agents and interventions supported them to overcome obstacles to their upward career mobility. This chapter has implications for how higher education institutions can improve their gender-based and environmental policies and praxis and facilitate the advancement of Asian immigrant women in STEM. It also has implications for how Asian women can prepare themselves to be successful in academic STEM careers.

This chapter approaches issues of ecospirituality through Gender and the Environment analytical lenses. We propose the need to actively queer human/Nature relations and understandings by exploring studies related to ecospirituality, Earth relations, and gender dynamics. The chapter considers ecospirituality as ritual practices, material cultures, codified ethics, and/or cosmological structures related to a category of “the sacred,” which influence how various gendered and sexed bodies interact with the non-human world. Here, we propose that ecospiritual categories can shape the ways that humans conceive of their humanness and their sexed and gendered bodies. Within the context of religion/Nature interactions white evangelical masculinist subcultures in the United States are considered as an example that demonstrates the paradoxical characteristics of the gender binary and human/Nature dualisms. The chapter proceeds to offer queered ecologies as alternative narratives that can assist the larger Gender and Environment discourse in better understanding ecospiritual practices and worldviews, and how the latter can contribute to prosustainable lifeways as a viable alternative to masculinist hegemonies that are continuing to predominate the ways that many humans – especially those in the Global North – understand and relate to the natural world at great cost to life on the planet.