Conservation and Gender

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Mia McElhatton ('26), a Philosophy major, investigated how conservation policy and its impacts raise moral questions surrounding our responsibility to nature and to other humans. Mia was mentored by Dr. Kok-Chor Tan (Department of Philosophy) through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program.

My research this summer centered around the conflict between our moral responsibilities towards nature and animals and our responsibilities to other humans. These two values come into conflict in conservation policy and its impacts. Conservation efforts tend to be focused on parts of the world that have not yet diminished their natural resources. For example, on the African continent, conservation efforts often used the national park model where the people living in the area were forced off of their ancestral lands and banned from entering into the space without permission. These communities, which rely on the land for economic support, food and cultural practices, are then criminalized during the process of conservation.

Dr. Tan encouraged me to develop my own research project that fit into his larger discussion, but also explored a niche concept. I decided to investigate how gender fits into the picture of conservation and its impacts and found that these efforts seem to disproportionately affect women. For example, in one village in India, researchers talked to women about the impacts of crop destruction due to animals from the nearby conservation site. They noted because of gendered roles in the community, women ate only after the men had eaten their fill.  Thus, rather than impacting everyone equally, the lack of food was a bigger burden for the women.

Beyond the research itself, this summer I was able to learn so much about the Penn community and academia more broadly. My mentor was amazing. I am interested in possibly going into academia post-grad, so having the chance to hear from a leader in the field about the process of making philosophy into a career was invaluable. 

Mia was interviewed by Katelyn Silva about her research for OMNIA and was also featured by PennToday! This image was taken by Ta'Liyah Thomas.

Being a part of PURM also gave me the opportunity to build relationships with my peers on campus in a new way. Though we were all doing very different types of research, PURM brought us together and encouraged us to learn from each other. My philosophy research tended to be very independent and could be conducted from almost anywhere. The same was true for some of my friends involved with social science research. So at least once a week we would get together in the library or a coffee shop in Philadelphia and work in the same space. We were able to hold each other accountable for staying focused and at the same time learn more about the research the other was doing. At times, these friends helped me to talk through the ideas I was having and asked questions that helped me to organize my thoughts.

This experience taught me a lot about myself. Academic research, especially philosophy research, requires the researcher to be incredibly internally motivated and focused. A lot of the research I did was individual and mainly consisted of finding articles, reading and taking notes. There were fewer set benchmarks or structures than any class or other work I’ve done in the past. This independence was a bit difficult for me at first. My past jobs have mostly been in the service industry where everything is very fast paced, interactive, and has a clear start and stop. This research was in some ways the opposite. I enjoyed learning how to structure my days and weeks so that I could best succeed. I learned that if there is no structure built in, I need to create that structure for myself.  All of these lessons I will take with me for possible future research and life more broadly.

This experience energized me for what my future may hold post my undergraduate time at Penn. I am excited by the possibility of creating knowledge, not just learning about it. I hope to continue to do research in some form during the next few years and beyond. - Mia McElhatton

Interested in reading more first-hand accounts about undergraduate research? Check out the other experiences featured on our Student News Page and Social Media!

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