While race and class are regularly addressed in environmental justice studies, scant attention has been paid to gender. The environmental justice movement formally recognized in the 1980s in no way, however, marks the beginning of the central role played by women in the long history of its concerns.' Abuses based in gender as well as race and class have subjected women to a variety of environmental injustices. However, women's responses to the ever-shifting responsibilities prescribed to their gender, as well as to their particular race and class, have consistently shaped their abilities to affect the environment in positive ways. Especially they have used their unique strengths and experiences based on their gendered identities (frequently but not always maternal) to the benefit of themselves and oppressed others. Through a sampling of women's contributions, the relationships among gender, race, class, and environmental justice activism prove to be not just occasionally and peripherally a part of recent American history , but rather a varied yet pervasive force from the pre-Columbian period to the present.