The Women and War Reader

Citation:

Lorentzen, Lois Ann, and Jennifer E. Turpin. 1998. The Women and War Reader. New York: New York University Press.

Authors: Lois Ann Lorentzen, Jennifer E. Turpin

Abstract:

War affects women in profoundly different ways than men. Women play many roles during wartime: they are "gendered" as mothers, as soldiers, as munitions makers, as caretakers, as sex workers. How is it that womanhood in the context of war may mean, for one woman, tearfully sending her son off to war, and for another, engaging in civil disobedience against the state? Why do we think of war as "men's business" when women are more likely to be killed in war and to become war refugees than men?

The Women and War Reader brings together the work of the foremost scholars on women and war to address questions of ethnicity, citizenship, women's agency, policy making, women and the war complex, peacemaking, and aspects of motherhood. Moving beyond simplistic gender dichotomies, the volume leaves behind outdated arguments about militarist men and pacifist women while still recognizing that there are patterns of difference in men's and women's relationships to war.

The Women and War Reader challenges essentialist, class-based, and ethnocentric analysis. A comprehensive volume covering such regions as the former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Nicaragua, Chiapas, South Africa, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and India, it will provide a much-needed resource. The volume includes the work of over 35 contributors, including Cynthia Enloe, Sara Ruddick, V. Spike Peterson, Betty Reardon, April Carter, Leila J. Rupp, Harriet Hyman Alonso, Francine D'Amico, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and Carolyn Nordstrom. (Amazon)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

Many faces : women confronting war / Jennifer Turpin --
The truth about women and peace / Jodi York --
After feminist analyses of Bosnian violence / Darius M. Rejali --
Should women be soldiers or pacifists? / April Carter --
Gendered nationalism : reproducing "us" versus "them" / V. Spike Peterson --
All the men are in the militias, all the women are victims : the politics of masculinity and femininity in nationalist wars / Cynthia Enloe --
Surfacing gender : reconceptualizing crimes against women in time of war / Rhonda Copelon --
Girls behind the (front) lines / Carolyn Nordstrom --
Gender, militarization and universal male conscription in South Korea / Seungsook Moon --
Militarization, conflict and women in South Asia / Anuradha M. Chenoy --
Militarism and Cypriot women / Ninetta Pourou-Kazantzis --
Feminist perspectives on women warriors / Francine D'Amico --
Women munitions makers, war and citizenship / Angela Woolacott --
Women warriors/women peacemakers : will the real feminists please stand up! / Ilene Rose Feinman --
The expanding role of women in United Nations peacekeeping / Janet Beilstein --
War and gender : what do we learn from Israel? / Uta Klein --
Broken dreams in Nicaragua / Diana Mulinari --
Zapatismo : gender, power and social transfromation / Mariana Mora --
Domestic activism and nationalist struggle / Monica E. Neugebauer --
Torture as text / Irene Matthews --
Women's prison resistance : Testimonios from El Salvador / Lois Ann Lorentzen --
Imagining peace / Elaine R. Pgnibene --
"Women of peace" : a feminist construction / Sara Ruddick --
Maternal thinking and the politics of war / Nancy Scheper-Hughes --
War, nationalism and mothers in the former Yugoslavia / Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović --
Drafting motherhood : maternal imagery and organizations in the United States and Nicaragua / Lorraine Bayard de Volo --
Moral mothers and stalwart sons : reading binaries in a time of war / Malathi de Alwis --
Parenting troops : the summons to acquiescence / Rela Mazali --
Women or weapons? / Betty A. Reardon --
Dissension in the ranks : the New York branch of WILPF vs. the National Board, 1914-1955 / Harriet Hyman Alonso --
Solidarity and wartime violence against women / Leila J. Rupp --
Making connections : building an East Asia-U.S. women's network against U.S. militarism / Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey --
Afghan women in the peace process / Pamela Collett --
The impact of women in black in Israel / Gila Svirsky --
Israeli and Palestinian women working for peace / Ronit Lentin --
Silent or silenced? / Lynne M. Woerhle --
The psychology of societal reconstruction and peace : a gendered perspective / Susan R. McKay --

Topics: Armed Conflict, Citizenship, Combatants, Female Combatants, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Peacebuilding, Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Trafficking, Sex Trafficking, Violence

Year: 1998

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