War and militarism are highly gendered phenomena—they are difficult if not impossible to understand without reference to gender.
In the first place, national leaders who want to shape our ideas so that we favour fighting a war often address us in gendered terms. They appeal to the nation's manhood to stiffen its spine, recall its heroic past and protect its women-and-children. They represent warriors as manly; draft resisters as wimps and sissies. The technologies of war fighting…
Cyprus isn't in the headlines much these days but, 26 years on from the nationalist-inspired fighting that resulted in its partition, it remains a sharply divided country. The UN-guarded Green Line is all but impenetrable, except by tourists and other internationals.
South of the Line is the actual Republic of Cyprus, now monoculturally Greek. North of the Line is an unrecognised entity known as the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, remote-controlled from Ankara.
Heavy…
During the last ten years, the Dutch Armed Forces have seen dramatic change, of two kinds. First, instead of an army of conscripts, it has become a professional army. Second, like its counterparts in other European countries, it is no longer supposed to be defending the “free world” from a communist/Russian threat, but to be a peace-keeping army. Taken together, these two changes are seen as requiring a mobile and highly trained professional army, ready to go and perform peace-keeping…
In this article we present the conjecture that Zapatismo is a feminine movement. It is not feminist: it was not organised mainly, exclusively or expressly for the defence of women's rights, nor was it based on the conventional claims of many feminist traditions. In describing it as feminine we want to suggest not only that women had and have a decisive role in its conception and realisation, but also that they gave it colour and meaning. The orientation and practices of Zapatismo openly…
Just three years ago my son Yinnon approached me and told me that he could not serve in the military on moral grounds. He said he knew with growing certainty that pacifism was his ideal. He was sixteen years old.
The soul-searching that followed this declaration was not just my son's. It became mine as well, and that of the entire family. The process was deep and often painful. It forced us to question our core values, demanding a re-evaluation of ourselves as parents, siblings, as…
When Peace News asked me to write this essay, I found myself in a strange position. Here I am, a conscientious objector to military service, and a feminist, asked to write about the connection between conscientious objection and gender identity from my particular personal perspective, and not knowing where to begin. After all, strange as it may seem, I had never thought of this connection in this respect before.
I would like to begin by explaining why I never thought of my…
These thoughts prompted twenty of us to get together for a weekend workshop in Amsterdam at the end of January, an opportunity for in-depth discussion of women's current and future anti-militarist and anti-war strategies.
Some of the women at the Amsterdam workshop came from women-only groups. Some were active, as feminists, in groups with men. While some of us were more “specialised” in one kind of activism or another, women were commonly doing a bit of several kinds of things: non-…
Over recent years, writings on gender in the Middle East have tended to focus on the status of women under Islam. The contributors to this volume, by contrast, explore the manner in which male identities are created and reproduced in different societies and settings within the Middle East.
What the contributors share is the basic assumption that masculinity is socially constructed, there is no fixed determinant of “male-ness”. What surprised me in reading some of the accounts of how…
Cynthia Cockburn's book draws on three case studies to examine how women of differing ethnicities, living in conflict zones, work together within an NGO setting, to achieve better conditions for women within their communities.
The three case studies she uses are: the Women's Support Network, Belfast, Northern Ireland; Bat Shalom of Megiddo, Nazareth and the Valleys, Israel and Palestine; and Medica Women's Therapy Centre, Zenica, central Bosnia.
In her introductory chapter “…
Here's the short review – read this book! And just in case you need more persuasion, here are some reasons why.
Cynthia Enloe has probably been the most consistent analyst of gender and militarism over the past decade; the scope of her analysis is wide-ranging, yet her argument is focused and powerful; and unlike many other writers, she really does address gender, rather than merely documenting women's experience.
Though the subjects of each chapter – the mothers buying a can…
