Masculinism

Gendering Military Sacrifice: A Feminist Comparative Analysis

Citation:

Åse, Cecilia, and Maria Wendt, eds. 2019. Gendering Military Sacrifice: A Feminist Comparative Analysis. London: Routledge.

Authors: Cecilia Åse, Maria Wendt

Annotation:

Summary:
This book offers a feminist analysis of military sacrifice and reveals the importance of a gender perspective in understanding the idea of honourable death.
 
In present-day security discourses, traditional masculinised obligations to die for the homeland and its women and children are challenged and renegotiated. Working from a critical feminist perspective, this book examines the political and societal justifications for sacrifice in wars motivated by human rights and an international responsibility to protect. With original empirical research from six European countries, the volume demonstrates how gendered and nationalistic representations saturate contemporary notions of sacrifice and legitimate military violence. A key argument is that a gender perspective is necessary in order to understand, and to oppose, the idea of the honourable military death. Bringing together a wide range of materials – including public debates, rituals, monuments and artwork – to analyse the justifications for soldiers’ deaths in the Afghanistan war (2002–14), the analysis challenges methodological nationalism. The authors develop a feminist comparative methodology and engage in cross-country and transdisciplinary analysis. This innovative approach generates new understandings of the ways in which both the idealisation and the political contestation of military violence depend on gendered national narratives.
 
This book will be of much interest to students of gender studies, critical military studies, security studies and International Relations. (Summary from Taylor & Francis)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
Cecilia Åse
 
2. Comparison as Feminist Method
Cecilia Åse and Maria Wendt
 
3. The Politics of War Rituals
Maria Wendt
 
4. The New National War Monuments
Vron Ware
 
5. Artistic Interventions
Redi Koobak
 
6. Debating Deaths
Hanne Martinek
 
7. Gendered Grief
Cecilia Åse, Monica Quirico, and Maria Wendt
 
8. Conclusion
Cecilia Åse and Maria Wendt

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Nationalism, Violence Regions: Asia, South Asia, Europe Countries: Afghanistan

Year: 2019

Women, Conflict and Conflict Reporting: The Deeply Gendered Discourse on the Rohingya Crisis in the News Websites in India

Citation:

Malaviya, Ritambhara. 2020. "Women, Conflict and Conflict Reporting: The Deeply Gendered Discourse on the Rohingya Crisis in the News Websites in India." In Citizenship, Nationalism and Refugeehood of Rohingyas in Southern Asia, edited by Nasreen Chowdhory and Biswajit Mohanty, 171-88. Singapore: Springer, Singapore.

Author: Ritambhara Malaviya

Abstract:

History shows how female bodies have been the site of contestation in violent conflicts across the world. There are innumerable instances of the use of rape as a systematic weapon for proving the superiority of one’s own race during conflicts, for instance, during the Bosnian crisis, or even earlier during the 1971 war of independence of Bangladesh. While conflicts impact women and children especially because of their vulnerability, the very understanding of why and how the conflict happened is deeply gendered. The Rohingya crisis is a case in point. This chapter attempts to understand the gendered discourse underpinning the discussion on the Rohingya crisis in India through a study of some major news websites in India. As per the framework used by Galtung (The Missing Journalism on Conflict and Peace and the Middle East, 2005), news reporting in India on the Rohingya is split into two camps, the war/victory-oriented journalism and the alternative peace-oriented approach. This chapter notes that while war journalism draws upon concepts which are masculinist, the softer peace journalism resembles the approach of feminists towards conflicts and cooperation. Feminism has analysed how the categories like state, sovereignty, security and militarization are deeply gendered. The patterns of reporting, however, are seen to follow the mainstream masculinist framework. These masculinist lenses are seldom questioned, and how power operates through these categories is rarely the subject of reporting. Therefore, through a careful study of the news portals, the chapter tries to understand how the discourse on the Rohingya encompasses within it gendered stereotypes and power equations.

Keywords: Rohingya, Gender, power, control, state, conflict

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Media, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh, India

Year: 2020

Introspecting Gender Concerns in National Action Plan for Climate Change of India

Citation:

Singh, Avantika. 2020. "Introspecting Gender Concerns in National Action Plan for Climate Change of India." Indian Journal of Public Administration 66 (2): 179-90.

Author: Avantika Singh

Abstract:

The climate sceptics faltered at COP21 Paris summit after climate change was accepted as a real threat. An agreement across tables on historical ‘polluters pay’ principle shifted the burden of curbing the emissions on developed economies. However, gender concerns were conspicuous by their absence in all agreements. Mary Robinson, a UN envoy at the summit precisely pointed out that Paris climate summit’s gender imbalance with substantial male domination is inimical to taking appropriate action to save people from climate change risks. The research shows a poor track record with minimum or no presence of women representatives in any breakthrough deal and discussion. There is a tendency to avert their voices and concerns in any stamped deals done by governments and organisations at international, national, sub-national levels. Despite such gender omission, the policy discourse carries an inherent assumption of gender neutrality while designing adaptation and mitigation efforts in averting climate-related stress. This paper is an attempt to unravel such ungendered tendency, by a critical examination of the National Action Plan for Climate Change in India to bring out an apparent masculinisation of the policy discourse.

Keywords: climate change, adaptation, vulnerability, National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Balance, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, International Organizations, Political Participation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2020

Challenging Refugee Men: Humanitarianism and Masculinities in Za‘tari Refugee Camp

Citation:

Turner, Edward Lewis. 2018. "Challenging Refugee Men: Humanitarianism and Masculinities in Za‘tari Refugee Camp." PhD diss., SOAS University of London. 

Author: Lewis Edward Turner

Abstract:

Feminist scholarship has demonstrated that ‘womenandchildren’ become the central and uncontroversial objects of humanitarian care and control in contexts of conflict, disaster, and displacement. Yet very little scholarly work has attempted to understand the place of men within humanitarian policies, practices and imaginaries. Through an exploration of the life and governance of Za‘tari Refugee Camp, Jordan, in which 80,000 Syrians live, this thesis argues that for humanitarianism, refugee men present a challenge. Humanitarian actors read Syrian men in gendered and racialised ways as agential, independent, political, and at times threatening. Refugee men thereby disrupt humanitarian understandings of refugees as passive, feminised objects of care, and are not understood to be among the ‘vulnerable,’ with whom humanitarians wish to work. Grounded in feminist and critical International Relations scholarship, and with an emphasis on the embodied, material and spatial practices of humanitarianism, this thesis draws on twelve months of fieldwork in Jordan, including participant-observation in Za‘tari Refugee Camp, and interviews with humanitarian workers and refugees. It demonstrates that humanitarian actors consistently prioritise their own goals, logics, and understandings of gender, over those of Syrians themselves, and exercise power in masculinised ways that actively disempower their ‘beneficiaries’. In the name of ‘global’ standards, humanitarian interactions with, and control over, refugee women are justified by a rhetoric of ‘empowerment.’ Refugee men, by contrast, are present but made invisible within the distribution of humanitarian aid, time, space, resources, and employment opportunities. These modes of humanitarian governance challenge Syrian men’s understandings and performances of masculinities. Yet when refugee men attempt to exercise agency in response to the disempowerment they experience in Za‘tari, humanitarian actors understand them as problematically political, and too autonomous from the control of humanitarian and state authorities, who attempt to re-assert their authority over the camp, and render Za‘tari ‘governable.’

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugee/IDP Camps, Feminisms, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Humanitarian Assistance, Race Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Jordan

Year: 2018

Pro-Gender Foreign Policy by Stealth: Navigating Global and Domestic Politics in Australian Foreign Policy Making

Citation:

Lee-Koo, Katrina. 2020. "Pro-Gender Foreign Policy by Stealth: Navigating Global and Domestic Politics in Australian Foreign Policy Making." Foreign Policy Analysis 16 (2): 236-49.

Author: Katrina Lee-Koo

Abstract:

As a middle-power nation, Australia promotes its global effectiveness, in part, through the adoption of international norms. Among those that it has more recently embraced has been pro-gender norms. The inclusion—for the first time—of gender equality considerations into overarching strategic doctrines, and the development of stand-alone gender strategies demonstrates this. While this is not without its shortcomings and contradictions, it is evidence that Australia is allowing feminist design to underpin areas of its foreign policy. However, unlike other states, this is not publicly emphasized. In fact, it is as if these policies were developed by stealth. This article examines the depth of Australia’s commitment to pro-gender norms in foreign policy. It argues that there is a genuine embrace of progender norms, but the masculinist cultures of Australia’s politics limit the capacity for it to be publicly debated and celebrated.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Feminist Foreign Policy, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Masculinism Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2020

Pro-Gender Foreign Policy by Stealth: Navigating Global and Domestic Politics in Australian Foreign Policy Making

Citation:

Lee-Koo, Katrina. 2020. “Pro-Gender Foreign Policy by Stealth: Navigating Global and Domestic Politics in Australian Foreign Policy Making.” Foreign Policy Analysis 16 (2): 236–49

Author: Katrina Lee-Koo

Abstract:

As a middle-power nation, Australia promotes its global effectiveness, in part, through the adoption of international norms. Among those that it has more recently embraced has been pro-gender norms. The inclusion— for the first time—of gender equality considerations into overarching strategic doctrines, and the development of stand-alone gender strategies demonstrates this. While this is not without its shortcomings and contradictions, it is evidence that Australia is allowing feminist design to underpin areas of its foreign policy. However, unlike other states, this is not publicly emphasized. In fact, it is as if these policies were developed by stealth. This article examines the depth of Australia’s commitment to pro-gender norms in foreign policy. It argues that there is a genuine embrace of progender norms, but the masculinist cultures of Australia’s politics limit the capacity for it to be publicly debated and celebrated.

Topics: Feminisms, Feminist Foreign Policy, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Masculinism, International Organizations, Peace and Security Regions: Oceania Countries: Australia

Year: 2020

Revealing the Patriarchal Sides of Climate Change Adaptation through Intersectionality: a Case Study from Nicaragua

Citation:

Gonda, Noémi. 2017. “Revealing the Patriarchal Sides of Climate Change Adaptation through Intersectionality: a Case Study from Nicaragua.” In Understanding Climate Change through Gender Relations, edited by Susan Buckingham and Virginie Le Masson, 173-190. London: Routledge.

 

Author: Noémi Gonda

Abstract:

Nicaragua is the third most climate change-affected country in the world and its government identifies climate change adaptation as one of its key priorities. Since the early 2010s, this national priority is translated into measures that support rural populations to adapt to climate change impacts. This chapter explains how a discursive construction of nature as 'our own Mother' in post-neoliberal Nicaragua has contributed to giving women a primary place in climate change discourses and projects while the mainstream masculinist and science-oriented discourse is underlying the way climate change adaptation interventions are conceived. It also presents an argument that feminist scholars and practitioners need to engage more systematically with gendered climate change politics, in particular by mobilizing the intersectional perspective that simultaneously addresses the multifaceted oppressions climate change politics may reproduce, even though they include 'gender concerns'.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Masculinism Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Nicaragua

Year: 2017

The (In)Security of Gender in Afghanistan’s Peacebuilding Project: Hybridity and Affect

Citation:

Partis-Jennings, Hannah. 2017. “The (In)Security of Gender in Afghanistan’s Peacebuilding Project: Hybridity and Affect.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (4): 411–25.

Author: Hannah Partis-Jennings

Abstract:

In this article I draw on a feminist approach to hybridity to explore interview data and observations from my field research in Afghanistan. I argue that there is a logic of masculinist protection influencing the affective environment of the peacebuilding project there. The combination of a perceived patriarchal context in Afghanistan and security routines protecting civilian internationals (and Afghan elites), which rely on hypermasculine signifiers, help to create and perpetuate the conditions in which the female (for both internationals and Afghans) is marked with insecurity. I point to hybridity between the foreign and female experience, as well as resistance and reflexivity within my research. Throughout I explore fragments of power hierarchies that cut through the meaning of gender, rendering the female state a disempowering one, always referenced in some uncertain, hybrid way as protected or in need of protection.
 

Keywords: peacebuilding, Afghanistan, hybridity, masculinist protection, affect

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Masculinism, Peacebuilding, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Afghanistan

Year: 2017

Global Violence and Security from a Gendered Perspective

Citation:

True, Jacqui, and Maria Tanyag. 2017. "Global Violence and Security from a Gendered Perspective." In Global Insecurity, edited by Anthony Burke and Rita Parker, 43-63. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Authors: Jacqui True, Maria Tanyag

Abstract:

This chapter reconceptualises global violence and security through a feminist political economy framework. Violence and insecurity is intimately related to unequal political and economic power. However, the ‘continuum of violence’ is obscured by masculinist norms of security within gendered structures of political economy especially the division of public/private spheres, of production/reproduction activities, and of war/peace. These divisions are reproduced despite processes of globalisation that increasingly materially displace them. Feminist political economy analysis allows us not only to see the range of forms of violence and insecurity in war and conflict contexts but moreover, to understand how they are structurally connected to violence and insecurity within apparently peaceful societies and households. Applying this framework the chapter challenges the ‘silo-ing’ of the political-military and socioeconomic stabilisation pillars of international security. It reveals the disproportionately negative impact that this dichotomous approach to security has on individuals and communities, particularly on women’s rights to protection and participation in peace and security. Economic and political marginalisation exacerbates experiences of physical and structural violence both in and outside of conflict and hinders the achievement of sustainable peace. Fundamental change in global security governance must involve transforming the underlying structures of political, social, and economic inequality rather than prescribing more ‘good governance’, and ‘gender mainstreaming’ grafted onto security and humanitarian interventions.

Keywords: sexual violence, gender inequality, armed conflict, international peace, structural violence

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Feminist Political Economy, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Masculinism, Peace and Security, Rights, Women's Rights, Security, Violence

Year: 2017

Sexual Violence, Masculinity, and Agency in Post-Surrender Japan, 1945

Citation:

Kramm, Robert. 2019. "Sexual Violence, Masculinity, and Agency in Post-Surrender Japan, 1945." Journal of Women's History 31 (1): 62-85.

Author: Robert Kramm

Abstract:

In the immediate post-surrender period in late summer 1945, thousands of American servicemen entered Japan. Despite Japanese authorities’ tactical planning of a “female floodwall” with brothels and other recreational facilities to distract the occupiers from the Japanese population, especially from Japanese women, and the occupiers’ demonstration of military power, the first physical encounter of occupiers and occupied in the “militarized peace” of occupied Japan was nevertheless accompanied by violence—sexual violence in particular. Contrary to the often-portrayed peaceful image of the American occupation of Japan, this article highlights sex and violence as significant markers for the asymmetrical power relations during the occupation period. It analyzes the arena of sexual violence in which Japanese police officers and administrators, as well as Japanese civilians, struggled to prevent and control, but also to articulate and instrumentalize, the occupiers’ sexual assaults.

Topics: Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Post-Conflict, Sexual Violence, Violence Regions: Asia, East Asia Countries: Japan

Year: 2019

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