War is where the hearth is: gendered labor and the everyday reproduction of the geopolitical in the army reserves

Abstract

The feminized imaginary of "home and hearth" has long been central to the notion of soldiering as masculinist protection. Soldiering and war are not only materialized by gendered imaginaries of home and hearth though, but through everyday labors enacted within the home. Focusing on in-depth qualitative research with women partners and spouses of British Army reservists, we examine how women's everyday domestic and emotional labor enables reservists to serve, constituting "hearth and home" as a site through which war is made possible. As reservistswho are still overwhelmingly heterosexual menbecome increasingly called upon by the state, one must consider how the changing nature of the Army's procurement of soldiers is also changing demands on women's labor. Feminist IPE scholars have shown broader trends in the outsourcing of labor to women and its privatization. Our research similarly underscores the significance of everyday gendered labor to the geopolitical. Moreover, we highlight the fragility of military power, given that women can withdraw their labor at any time. The article concludes that paying attention to women's everyday labor in the home facilitates greater understanding of one of the key sites through which war is both materialized and challenged.

Reproductions of global security: accounting for the private security household

“…While women are seldom found working as security contractors (Eichler 2013), they are performing vital support labor within private security households. Indeed, feminist scholars show us, by locating the household, how militarism is diffused outside military institutions and permeates the everyday, including the unpaid reproductive labor of spouses (Enloe 1989(Enloe , 2000Gray 2016;Hyde 2016;Basham and Catignani 2018). Our article highlights the role of private security households in contemporary warfare waged through private/public security assemblages (Abrahamsen and Williams 2009).…”

“…The household is not a fixed or bounded space/temporality, but rather a site within which gender roles and enactments of nationalism (see e.g., Hedström 2017) as well as militarism and neoliberalism are reproduced. FSS scholars have convincingly located military families as integral to military operations and the reproduction of militarism (Fluri 2009;Williams and Massaro 2013;Gray 2016;Hedström 2017;Basham and Catignani 2018). By extension, the household as an analytical and geographic site has also been central for FGPE scholars concerned with broader economic processes of neoliberalism and capitalism (LeBaron and Roberts 2010; Safri and Graham 2010; Elias and Gunawardana 2013; Tepe-Belfrage and Montgomerie 2016).…”

“…The private security household then is a site for enactments and diffusion of both neoliberal markets and militarization. Just as Basham and Catignani (2018) show us how the labor of British military reserve households is a reflection of the broader outsourcing and flexibilization of the work model within the British military, so too are the private security households brought in to participate as gendered sites, in order to sustain the broader western military outsourcing of security work to PMSCs.…”

Militarized social reproduction: women’s labour and parastate armed conflict

“…Feminist research show how the female body is 'deemed useful to the war propaganda efforts' (Edwards 2013) and for 'legitimizing the ideology and practices of terrorism' (Sanyal 2008). The use of femininity to legitimize armed conflict emerges from the notion of women as 'beautiful souls' (Elshtain 1987) representing the 'home and hearth' (Basham and Catignani 2018) in need of protection (see above). In fact, information departments associated with non-state armed groups in Myanmar will often conscript women for propaganda work because of gender norms imbuing women's participation with a moral authority, this serving the dual purpose of shaming reluctant men and providing legitimacy for the cause (for European examples, see Lopez 2016;Fodor 2002).…”

“…How can attention to the household explain the longevity of insurgent warfare? Extant feminist analyses have demonstrated how women's everyday labour sustains both state militaries and militarization processes (Enloe 2000;Basham and Catignani 2018); manifested the household as an object of military strategy (Owens 2015;Parashar 2013); and revealed the gendered notions legitimizing and facilitating warfare (Shepherd 2006;Sjoberg 2014). These suggests that the household is a gendered and militarized space that is affected by and affects conflict.…”