Gender, War and Militarism: Making and Questioning the Links

Abstract

The gender dynamics of militarism have traditionally been seen as straightforward, given the cultural mythologies of warfare and the disciplining of 'masculinity' that occurs in the training and use of men's capacity for violence in the armed services. However, women's relation to both war and peace has been varied and complex. It is women who have often been most prominent in working for peace, although there are no necessary links between women and opposition to militarism. In addition, more women than ever are serving in many of today's armies, with feminists rather uncertain how to relate to this phenomenon. In this article I explore some of the complexities of applying gender analyses to militarism and peace work in sites of conflict today, looking most closely at the Israeli feminist group, New Profile, and their insistence upon the costs of the militarized nature of Israeli society. They expose the very permeable boundaries between the military and the civil society, as violence seeps into the fears and practices of everyday life in Israel. I place their work in the context of broader feminist analysis offered by researchers such as Cynthia Enloe and Cynthia Cockburn, who have for decades been writing about the 'masculinist' postures and practices of warfare, as well as the situation of women caught up in them. Finally, I suggest that rethinking the gendered nature of warfare must also encompass the costs of war to men, whose fundamental vulnerability to psychological abuse and physical injury is often downplayed, whether in mainstream accounts of warfare or in more specific gender analysis. Feminists need to pay careful attention to masculinity and its fragmentations in addressing the topic of gender, war and militarism.

Exploring the Intersection of Violence Against Women and Girls With Post-Conflict Statebuilding and Peacebuilding Processes: A New Analytical Framework

“…Feminist scholars analyse the global political system, militarism, and social orders in which armed conflict, statebuilding, and peacebuilding take place (Enloe, 2014;Runyan & Peterson, 2014;Segal, 2008;Sjoberg & Via, 2010). Feminist scholars find that gender "hierarchically structure [s] relationships among different categories of people, and human activities symbolically associated with masculinity or femininity" (Cohn, 2013, p. 4).…”

Feminist Peace Activism 1915 and 2010: Are We Nearly There Yet?

“…Not only are there now many women in combat roles and positions of political power, but a belief in fixed gender characteristics has been superseded by an understanding of gender identity as unstable and contingent and a more nuanced understanding of women's capacity for aggression and the vulnerability of men in war. 66 As we have seen, too, the association of peace with femininity and violence with masculinity makes men more reluctant to associate with pacifist ideas and can be used to justify women's exclusion from the peace table. 67 However, it is worth noting that Addams herself was less prone to make any claims upon gender lines, and although she used maternalist rhetoric in her writing and speeches, she did not believe that the potential for motherhood gave women a monopoly on working for internationalism, peace, and social justice.…”

Reproducing the national family: kinship claims, development discourse and migrant caregivers in Palestine/Israel

“…State rhetoric advocating women's labour participation has arisen alongside the growing use of gender equality rhetoric since the 1970s, as evidenced in policies encouraging a dual-earner model (Ajzenstadt and Gal, 2001), representations of the Israeli military as a bastion of gender equality (Sasson-Levy, 2007) and constructions of the nation as an exemplar of what Gonalons-Pons terms 'gender modernity' (2015: 40), in relation to its Arab neighbours. Despite this rhetoric, however, constructions of Jewish-Israeli women as national reproducers persist (Segal, 2008;Rom and Benjamin, 2011). In addition to the sizeable wage and occupational disparities between Jewish-Israeli men and women, and among Mizrahi, Ashkenazi and Palestinian women, many Jewish-Israeli women occupy 'mommy-track' jobs and are still expected to bear children, be primary care providers and uphold their role as military mothers (Izraeli, 1992, cited in Rom andBenjamin, 2011: 52;Berkovitch, 1997;Ajzenstadt and Gal, 2001;Swirski et al, 2001;Sasson-Levy, 2007).…”