INTRODUCTION
The
shortage of women in political and military arenas is evidenced in world
government chambers, written theoretical discourse, and battlefields. Until the third wave of Feminism,
sometimes called the “lost wave,” began in the 1990’s, women were necessarily
making great strides as a movement, claiming the personal as political and
spearheading groundbreaking workplace, health and marriage legislation in the
1970’s. This aspect of social Feminism
has now taken a back seat, though, to a more self-saturated vision that takes
ownership of femaleness for the sake of individualization. However diluted the appearance of
Feminism has become, the practical nature of this newer third wave orientation
brings to light an actualized vision of women as committed and consistent
makers of a broader, globalized feminist model.
WOMEN AND WAR
In
Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick’s paper, “A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons
of Mass Destruction,” they outline a detailed tradition of “antiwar feminism.” While
they explore issues of economic and Imperialistic concerns relating to women,
this model has a specific trajectory of disarmament, and is aligned most
prestigiously with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the
oldest women’s world peace organization and an international non-governmental
organization with consultative status to several U.N. councils.
Decidedly
in opposition to “war making as a practice,” Cohn and Ruddick are careful to
point out that while war and peace are not “women’s issues” per se, and some
feminists fight for their right to participate in war, most feminists “do not
divorce feminism from national, ethnic, religious, class or other identities
and politics…” (Cohn/Ruddick). In
fact, the social construct of war as a purely masculine norm exploits the
emphasis on gender specificity that works for, but mostly against, women. Cohn and Ruddick neither masculinize
nor feminize war, but rather demonize it for it’s own sake as an exercise by
questioning why “military necessity should… be prioritized over…human
necessities.”
While
clearly working from an Idealist platform, there is nothing soft about Cohn and
Ruddick’s approach to the reality of war and antiwar feminism. Addressing deterrence theory, they ask,
“Isn’t is too risky to assume there are “rational actors” on all sides of this
equation?” The issue of WMD
(weapons of mass destruction) proliferation with its “techno-strategic,“ abstract
video game-like relationship to killing directs the mind toward the explosive
nature of such a weapon, but doesn’t consider the aftermath of its destruction,
nor the possibility that one might become the casualty of such a weapon, not
the perpetrator of its carnage.
Cohn and Ruddick refuse to see war myopically. They “take into consideration the political social,
economic, psychological, and moral consequences.” Cohn and Ruddick argue that women’s lives are
physically, socially and economically shattered in times of war. Whether by direct contact by combatants
as in cases of rape or by the culture of acceptability of militarization and
violence that contributes to a future deficient in resources (food, shelter,
healthcare, jobs), families in war-ravaged and war-ravaging countries are
usually headed by women and they suffer the most. The nature of war, in its hyped-up “Go Team” fatigues,
ready to conquer the enemy, rarely asks the right questions, presented here by
Cohn and Ruddick as matter-of-fact considerations of how war effects a valuable
facet of our population - women.
Their
conclusion of how avoid “war making” sits somewhere in the “negotiation of
treaties” corner, with a strong commitment to non-aggression; an unrealistic,
but worthy moral and quite pragmatic, humane approach to militarism,
considering the costs of having it otherwise.
BREAKING THE ROLE OF VICTIM
J.
Ann Tickner’s “Man, the State, and War:
Gendered Perspectives on National Security” takes on Hobbes, Morganthau
and the media in relation to their socialized constructions of women embodying
primary wartime roles of servitude, banality and victimhood. Tickner scathingly writes, “While men
have been associated with defending the state and advancing its international
interests as soldiers and diplomats, women have typically been engaged in the
“ordering” and “comforting” roles…” (Tickner). Ticker asserts that this devaluing of women and their
general exclusion from the canon of historical political discourse or
decision-making serves to promote the stereotype of women as “victims, rarely
as agents” in times of war.
Tickner
cites the contribution of the Cult of Domesticity to this “victim” construct. A
post-Industrial, 19th’ Century, middle class ideological social
mechanism popularized through books, magazines and behaviors, it assigned and
defined women exclusively by the following attributes: piety, purity, submissiveness, and
domesticity. This view
of women enhanced the Victorian and Imperialistic viewpoint of men as
protectors of women, thereby justifying men’s continued military exploits and their
view of women’s intellectual ineptitude.
Tickner,
dissimilar to Cohn and Ruddick, declares patriarchal presumptions as one of the
root causes of war. Citing
writings by Hobbes and Morganthau, the masculine hegemonic factor pushes open
the door toward a continuing gender gap.
If women are to be acknowledged for their true contribution and place in
society, thereby potentially occupying the seats where decisions are squarely
made regarding war and peace, they must vote their way into the discussion by
creating a movement that shifts the view of women’s role in society “from
sacrifice to responsibility” (Tickner).
In
a weak, supporting point, Tickner characterizes the presence of Sakakawea
(proper Mandan spelling) on the Lewis and Clark expedition as “security” for
the explorers by virtue of the fact that her femaleness dissuaded tribal
attacks by Indigenous nations along their trail. Tickner, through her summary of this point, does little to
create a view of women as necessary agents, equal to men, or essential to the
expedition itself. In fact, she
negates that point by depicting Sakakawea as the “token” woman on the trail
whom the “other Indians” didn’t want to harm. This slip by Tickner constitutes a cultural bias couched as
feminist primacy.
GLOBALIZED FEMINIST NETWORKS
Contrasting
both the intellectualizing of peace by Cohn and Ruddick, and the defensive
posturing of Tickner, Valentine Moghadam’s “Female Labor, Regional Crisis and
Feminist Responses,” tackles the issue of feminine subversion by supporting the
establishment of worldwide networks of “working women and organizing
women.” The formation of
globalized feminist networks constitutes the proliferation of women’s movements
at a local level, around the globe, signaling particular empowerment trends
across cultural and labor borders.
Moghadam’s
primary explanation of the advantages of economic and political globalization
opening labor pathways for women draws attention, simultaneously, to the
reality of demeaning and underpaid conditions contributing to women’s high
unemployment rates and the feminization of poverty.
CONCLUSION
Discourse
regarding the roles of women and feminist networks in a third wave globalized
world sheds light on the still-existing problem of exclusion of the feminist
perspective from patriarchal frameworks fueling military contexts. Women can only advance a feminist
agenda by continuing to dialogue across Third World/First World borders, living
rooms, and board rooms, inspiring and building powerful, viable, and reasonable
engagement of gender-wise actions.
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