Peaceful Women/ If war is politics by other means, then the different experiences of women in war are gender politics by other means. Here Jane Kelly argues that these differences can be explained by looking at the roles men and women are expected to play in society, rather than by reference to any essentially female or male The newspaper and TV images of the American world of the home, determine both the kinds of woman soldier Private Jessica Lynch, wounded in work we do, and many stereotypes about us. And combat in Iraq, being 'rescued' by US troops after these affect all women, whether they have families days in an Iraqi hospital, raised several contradic- or not and whether they are single parents or not. tions. Such contradictions are inherent in the relation Women's responsibilities in the family are seen as between women and war, not least that of the active a priority. Though women now make up half the The roles women are expected to perform within the predicated on the need to fit in with child care and to support the 'cutting edge' ' The response by Republicans to public criticisms of the 'peace' strategy is often to say: 'do you want a gun?': as if the only alternative to the current strategy of the Republican leadership was a return to war. of the IRA. When the Adams leadership decided that the military stale- mate required a turn to parliamentary politics - ironically a lesson learned from the hunger strikes - the secretive military character of the Republi- can movement prevented any real discussion of the 'peace process' that involved joining a coalition gov- ernment with the Unionist ruling class and a whole- sale shift to the right. The current role of Republican militants appears to be to help Sinn Fein overtake the Catholic nationalists of the SDLP in the next election, and to police the grassroots against any dissent from the most recent (though increasingly faltering) efforts to stabilise British rule in Ireland - in other words, acquiesce in the 'modernisation' of British rule.! The Republicans' backward attitude to womens' rights or to economic and social strug- enemy 1s. Warring Men? characteristics. (female) soldier alongside the damsel in distress being saved by her knights in (khaki) armour. family, as carer, helpmate and centre of the private family roles. gles by workers in the South and its reliance on the 'Nationalist Family', that is on the main represent- atives of the Irish capital - Fianna Fail, have come back to haunt them. The Palestinians need similarly to beware of reliance on the Arab bourgeoisies or to succumb to the religious fundamentalism which has often acted as the instrument of these regimes. Advice is easy of course. And there is lots of it. You have only to look at the number of pamphlets, books and journals where the left disputes, refines and re- defines its attitudes to these struggles. Important though theoretical and political clarity are, the main way we can influence these forces is not by lectur- ing them from afar but by active solidarity work in the centres of imperial power. That's where the main workforce in Britain, the kinds of work we do and the hours and times of day we work are in the main
One of the stereotypes resulting from this situation is that women are peace-loving and passive in the face of violence. By contrast, men are stereotyped as naturally aggressive, with violence simmering just below the surface. It is true that in opinion polls both before and during the recent war against Iraq a larger proportion of women than men opposed it. But of course stereotypes are just that, partial reflec- tions of socially constructed gender roles which are then generalised to all women or all men. Reality is much more complex and ideology or dominant ideas are actively and consciously opposed by many. The 'peaceful woman' stereotype was also a pre- supposition behind the hugely successful Greenham Common protests in the 1980s. Organised and largely supported by women, they spread interna- tionally, protesting against the use of air bases for American cruise missiles in Britain and elsewhere, such as at Comiso in Italy. Slogans like 'Take the Toys from the Boys', and, 'In the past men have left home to go to war. Now women are leaving home for peace', summed up the largely essential- ist basis of the protest.? The irony that Britain elected had its first woman Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher in 1979, who had agreed these bases with Presi- dent Reagan in the first place, did not seem to worry those who argued that women alone could fight the male aggres- sion encapsulated in the missiles at Greenham. Their direct action tactics, their propaganda in raising the issue of cruise missiles, their mass dem- onstrations and links with others such as the women fighting pit closures in the 1984-5 miners' strike, were all very successful. But they lacked an analysis of imperialism and the role of Atlanticism and its political alternatives and thus could not develop a complex understanding of how to rid the world of nuclear weapons.? The Greenham protests did undermine stereotypes of women as passive, apolitical and domestic and the idea that different generations could not work together, and they had a very positive impact on the idea of direct action within the peace movement generally. While the cruise missiles were indeed eventually removed, the Americans still used British air bases to bomb Iraq in the recent war and it is not clear how much the protests contributed to their removal. While Greenham had all the hallmarks of a very successful single-issue campaign, its essentialist political framework in the end worked against it. For without a class and anti-imperialist analysis, the women blamed the wrong people for militarism and war. Indeed some of the best demonstrations at Greenham, such as the large one on 11 December 1983, were mixed, with men in attendance, proving immediately that men as a sex were not the main problem, even if some men were! Women and Violence It is of course true that women suffer in significantly different ways from men in violent situations. In general women are left having to deal with the lack of food and water, loss of shelter, pregnancy, child- birth and childcare. Rape is used as a weapon to terrify women and to demoralise men, for example, during the Vietnam War by the Americans and in ex-Yugoslavia only situation where this happens on a large scale. The recent court cases in the British Army are being charged with assault and gang rape of local tribal women over how militarism All these things mean that women's ence of war and violence is different to men's. But is this a result of innate female passivity love of peace, essentialists would have it, or is it the result of the way societies are organised? If the former then it would seem that women can never be part of what may some- times become violent, revolutions for example. But if the latter is the case, then women may sometimes behave in ways that make them seem more like men It is of course part of our oppression that our bio- logical capacity to reproduce the species leads in modern society to a division of labour where women are left literally 'holding the baby'. But this does not mean that we are incapable of defending our rights, including where necessary, with violence. There are many examples of women playing an active role in revolutions. In1789 and in 1848 women in France organised demonstrations and meetings; in 1871 during the Commune in Paris, women fought along- side men, and the one of its leaders, Louise Michel, was a female teacher; in Russia in 1917 a women's R7 issue_001 autumn, 2003 Socialist_Outlook 'Quoted in Lynne Segal, (1987) Is the Future Female? Troubled experi- Thoughts on Contempo- rary Feminism, London, Virago, p. 165 and 2 There was a minority as the of women protesters who adopted a more socialist feminist analysis, but what was then called radical feminism and its ideologies dominated. 3 CND was in some ways politically in advance of the Greenham protests in adopting an anti- imperialist resolution at one of its conferences, and of course the fact that it took such decisions and had such conferences meant that it was more democratic than the 'networking' model used at Greenham.
28 the revolutionary upsurge. no barrier to such activity. The British Suffragettes It is estimated that ever since to the present 50% figure. about 900 women fought, and more were there as nurses, including freed women slaves. Around 80 women combatants were killed. ' See Susan Moore, 'Women and War', Social- ist Resistance, May 2003 world wars, demonstration with demands for 'Bread' sparked In fact a small number of women have always fought in wars, often disguised as men. Women fought in the American Civil War, on both sides.' In the last century and in the new one, women have played and continue to play active roles in guer- rilla groups and armies fighting for national liber- ation. The Kurdish group, the PKK in Turkey had many women in its ranks; in the late 1970s and 1980s the FMLN in El Salvador and the FSLN in Nicaragua both had female soldiers. And anyone who has seen Pontecorvo's great film The Battle of Algiers, will remember the way he depicts veiled women carrying bombs around Algiers during the truggle against French colonialism. Perhaps mos surprising of all, given the increasingly fundamen talist nature of Islamic groups, the use of women suicide bombers is increasing, for example, in Pal- estine and Chechenya. While we might not endorse the strategy of suicide bombers it seems that sex is The Public and the Private the early twentieth century - women in long Edwardian dresses - dem- onstrated, chained themselves to railings, threw eggs at politicians, and themselves in front of horses. These actions transformed nineteenth century ster- eotypes of the 'caring' woman expected to be well behaved and safe in the private sphere, into angry, rude and abusive "public' women, making the point far more effectively than men doing the same thing. It is often argued that women in Britain won the right to vote after the first world war, not so much as a result of the activities of the Suffragettes, but rather as a consequence of the roles they played in that conflict. And similarly that the growth in numbers of women in paid work after the second world war also resulted from their work in muni- tions factories and on the land. There were powerful attempts to make them return to their rightful domestic role afterwards. Much was written, for example, on the negative effects of the loss of love for young children who spent their days in the nurs- eries which were thoughtfully provided by govern- ment during the war, only to be closed down after- wards. This material and ideological offensive was only partially successful, for the proportion of women working outside the home has increased These facts lead us to a second set of issues of the experience of war or conflict for women. As with the miners' strikes in Britain of the 1970s and 1980s, many women positively enjoyed their expe- riences of the world wars. As with the strikes, it was for many a first taste of independence, either from the parental or the married home, or from oppres- sive work 'in service'. In the first and second their work tending soldiers as nurses or working in factories or on the land, however arduous and tiring, gave them a sense of satisfaction and usefulness (and money) never before their lot. It gave them a freedom, and a public role, which they defended after the war when there were attempts to cajole them back into service or into domestic life, with a part-time job to fit in with childcare. The film Rosie the Riveter shows the same process in the United States, with women who had worked in heavy engineering and munitions factories during the second world war ending up as waitresses and cleaners afterwards. Demoted and financially worse off, they were still angry in the 1970s when the film- makers interviewed them. Women and War Today Of course the experiences of women in Britain and America during both world wars are not an adequate basis on which to analyse women and war in ex- Yugoslavia, in Iraq or some African states, or in lib- eration struggles in the semi-colonial world today. Nor was it the same for women resisting in Nazi Germany and those countries occupied by Germany in WW2. In the first examples, while there were shortages of food and goods, as well as homeless- ness, injury and death, the state still managed to control food supply and accommodation and there were nurseries and hospitals. Neighbours helped each other. While looting and crime was quite wide- spread, with some making fortunes from hoarding, society did not break down. By contrast, in many parts of the world today, in Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Burundi, Congo-Kinshasa, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the Palestinian territories, the lot of women (and children) is often unbearably difficult. While all but the oldest men and sometimes single, younger women without family responsibili- ties, become involved in military action, the old and the infirm, women and children become refugees in their own land, or are forced to flee abroad. For example 5.5 million in Sudan have been displaced as a result of the twenty-year civil war. Of these 1 million are currently in exile and 2 million died of the famine which resulted. In Chechenya, 160,000 civilians have been forced from their homes, at least 20,000 of them living in tented camps in neighbour- ing Ingushetia. And these statistics are replicated in many countries.? For these women. both during conflict and often for a long time afterwards, there is nothing positive to be gained from their experiences. Looking after the wounded. caring for children maimed by modern weaponry such as cluster bombs, producing babies deformed and disabled by depleted uranium, such women may, indeed, desire peace at any cost. But it is wrong to characterise them as passive victims. As any TV newscast shows, there are many women supporting liberation struggles, even when injury and death are the inevitable result.