United Kingdom

The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820

Citation:

Liddington, Jill. 1991. The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Author: Jill Liddington

Abstract:

In this volume, Liddington examines the power of feminists in organizing peace movements in Britain from the aftermath of the Nepoleonic Wars to the end of the Cold War. Examining their criticisms of Britain's many conflics during more than 150 years, Liddington—among other things—provides an understanding of the "long road" that led to the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s. (Abstract from GWonline)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Political Participation, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 1991

Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence

Citation:

Kirk, Gwyn. 2019. “Our Greenham Common: Feminism and Nonviolence.” In Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, edited by Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King, 115–30. New York: Routledge.

Author: Gwyn Kirk

Annotation:

Excerpt:

“In this chapter I look at Greenham as an example of feminist nonviolence. In Chapter 14 I discuss the Greenham network as a political form. I have separated these two strands for clarity and emphasis, but this somewhat arbitrary division unfortunately cannot reflect the inter-connectedness between these aspects. I use Greenham in a broad sense to mean the peace camp and the many women's peace groups and projects associated with it. I have been involved in this network since February 1982 and have participated in many of the actions and discussions mentioned here, although I have not lived at the  peace camp for any length of time. (I use "we" when describing actions I was involved in and "they" when discussing those I heard about or observed.) For me, as for so many others, Greenham has been an extremely important focus, forging, however falteringly, a distinctively feminist peace politics” (Kirk 2019, 118).

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2019

From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-Nuclear Activisms

Citation:

Feigenbaum, Anna. 2015. “From Cyborg Feminism to Drone Feminism: Remembering Women’s Anti-Nuclear Activisms.” Feminist Theory 16 (3): 265–88.

Author: Anna Feigenbaum

Abstract:

By the 1990s the dynamic array of creative direct action tactics used against militarised technologies that emerged from women’s anti-nuclear protest camps in the 1980s became largely eclipsed by cyberfeminism’s focus on digital and online technologies. Yet recently, as robots and algorithms are put forward as the vanguards of new drone execution regimes, some are wondering if now is the time for another Greenham Common. In this article I return to cyborg feminism and anti-nuclear activisms of the 1980s to explore what drone feminism might look like today. I examine how antinuclear protesters infused affect and techne´, creating innovative images of, and tactics for, material resistance. I argue that Greenham women’s cyborg feminisms arose from their material entanglements with the military base. In their efforts to reveal and undermine the national and imperial myths upon which warfare is based, protesters re-imagined technological possibilities based upon a global accountability for ‘earthly survival.'
 

Keywords: militarism, cyborg feminism, drones, Donna Haraway, feminist activism

Topics: Feminisms, Infrastructure, Information & Communication Technologies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2015

Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common

Citation:

Laware, Margaret L. 2004. “Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common.” The National Women's Studies Association Journal 16 (3): 18–41.

Author: Margaret Laware

Abstract:

The Women's Peace Camp at Greenham in Newbury, England, survived almost twenty years, from 1981 until 2000, as an extended protest against the placement of nuclear missiles on British soil and provided an innovative and generative space of feminist rhetorical invention. This essay provides an analysis of their evolving protest actions. It looks specifically at the types of feminist rhetorical invention employed-including feminist coding strategies, use of women's bodies as rhetorical topos, and the use of Background symbolism, affirming symbols of women's lives-to create a women-centered community and challenge the patriarchal traditions and symbols that the nuclear missiles represented.

Keywords: background symbolism, embodied rhetoric, feminist coding strategies, feminist peace protest, feminist rhetorical invention, Greenham Commn Women's Peace Camp, menstrual

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Infrastructure, Peace and Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2004

Revisiting Ruddick: Feminism, Pacifism and Non-Violence

Citation:

Frazer, Elizabeth, and Kimberly Hutchings. 2014. “Revisiting Ruddick: Feminism, Pacifism and Non-Violence.” Journal of International Political Theory 10 (1): 109–24.

Authors: Elizabeth Frazer, Kimberly Hutching

Abstract:

This article explores feminist contentions over pacifism and non-violence in the context of the Greenham Common Peace Camp in the 1980s and later developments of feminist Just War Theory. We argue that Sara Ruddick’s work puts feminist pacifism, its radical feminist critics and feminist just war theory equally into question. Although Ruddick does not resolve the contestations within feminism over peace, violence and the questions of war, she offers a productive way of holding the tension between them. In our judgment, her work is helpful not only for developing a feminist political response to the threats and temptations of violent strategies but also for thinking through the question of the relation between violence and politics as such.

Keywords: ethics, feminism, non-violence, pacifism, politics, violence

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Peace and Security, Violence, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2014

Beyond Greenham Woman?: Gender Identities and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. 2017. “Beyond Greenham Woman?: Gender Identities and Anti-Nuclear Activism in Peace Camps.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 19 (4): 471–90.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Abstract:

This article investigates the discursive construction of gendered identities in anti-nuclear activism and particularly in peace camps. My starting point is the now substantial academic literature on Cold War women-only peace camps, such as that at Greenham Common. I extend the analysis that emerges from this literature in my research on the mixed-gender, long-standing camp at Faslane naval base in Scotland. I argue that the 1980s saw the articulation in the camp of the figure of the Gender-Equal Peace Activist, displaced in the mid-1990s by Peace Warrior/Earth Goddess identities shaped by radical environmentalism and reinstating hierarchical gender norms. I conclude that gendered identities constructed in and through anti-nuclear activism are even more variable than previously considered; that they shift over time as well as place and are influenced by diverse movements, not solely feminism; and that they gain their political effect not only through the transgression of social norms, but also through discursive linkage with, or disconnection from, political subjectivities in wider society. With such claims, the article aims to re-contextualise Greenham Woman in her particular place and time, and to contribute to a more expansive understanding of the gendering of anti-nuclear activism.

Keywords: Anti-nuclear, peace camps, gender identities, discourse analysis, Faslane peace camps

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Women, Peace and Security, Peacebuilding, Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2017

Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham

Citation:

Roseneil, Sasha. 1995. Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham. London: Open University Press.

Author: Sasha Roseneil

Annotation:

Summary:

This text provides a sociological study of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. Using this as a basis, the author examines the ways in which feminists can resist and transform relations of male domination and female subordination. (Summary from WorldCat)

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Peace and Security, Rights, Women's Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 1995

Green New Deal - or Globalisation Lite?

Citation:

Salleh, Ariel. 2010. “Green New Deal - or Globalisation Lite?” Arena, no. 105 (May): 15-9.

Author: Ariel Salleh

Annotation:

Summary:
"In response to the global climate crisis and the breakdown of international financial institutions, green new deals are being discussed in local, national, regional and international settings. But the word ‘deal’ gives the lie to new, for these are mostly trade-off packages designed to hold together the narrow political arena of business-as-usual. The Transatlantic Green New Deal, the Global Green New Deal, as well as British and Australian versions, look rather like a revved-up Hobbesian social contract, drafted in the realisation that life under global capitalism is more ‘nasty, brutish and short’ than ever before. The outline of the contract is on the table, but only one voice is represented in the text. Class difference appears only as an employment statistic and the systematic exploitations of race and gender that underpin the global economy are ignored. The neocolonial South, the domestic North, and material nature at large, remain sites of subsumption in green new deal discourse" (Salleh 2010, 15).

Topics: Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Post-Conflict, Race Regions: Americas, Europe Countries: Australia, United Kingdom

Year: 2010

The Act That Shaped the Gender of Industrial Mining: Unintended Impacts of the British Mines Act of 1842 on Women’s Status in the Industry

Citation:

Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala. 2020. “The Act That Shaped the Gender of Industrial Mining: Unintended Impacts of the British Mines Act of 1842 on Women’s Status in the Industry.” The Extractive Industries and Society 7 (2): 389–97. 

Author: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Abstract:

In the 19th century, public outrage over poor working conditions of children in underground coal mines in the UK led to the enactment of the Mines and Collieries Act 1842. It prohibited boys under the age of ten and all females from laboring in underground mines. This Act wiped out the long and impressive history of women’s labor in the mining industry, and pushed women into more insecure areas of work. Later, during the 1920s and 1930s, this Act became the model for the International Labour Organization (ILO) to adopt protective legislation around women’s labor in the mining industry. Although unintended, the Act established ideals for decent work for women as per the Victorian norm and eventually led to the contemporary global context of hypermasculinity of the mining industry. The paper shows how women’s labor in mines—within a strict sex-based division of tasks—was, and remains, subject to gender ideologies that are not only propagated at home, but assume an authoritative position when adopted by the state.

Keywords: gender in mining, women in mining, protective legislation, British Mines Act, women's labor in mining, ILO and women's mining

Topics: Extractive Industries, Gender, Gender Roles, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Masculinism Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2020

Climate Change Politics in the UK: A Feminist Intersectional Analysis

Citation:

Wilson, Joanna. 2017. “Climate Change Politics in the UK: A Feminist Intersectional Analysis.” Paper presented at ECPR General Conference, Oslo, September 6-9.

Author: Joanna Wilson

Abstract:

Despite growing concern of environmental and climate justice, the issue of gender and climate change has, to date, received comparatively little scholarly attention. What is lacking is empirical evidence showing the ways in which overwhelmingly masculinised discourses of climate change can exacerbate or entrench existing inequalities, such as the gendered division of labour or the feminisation of poverty. Currently, the majority of gender and climate change scholarship, and most gender and climate change focused NGOs, perpetuate a narrative of impacts and vulnerabilities of women in the Global South. While this has been critical in ensuring recognition of gender in climate politics, it has arguably kept the construction of women firmly rooted in problematic narratives of subdued, passive women in need of masculine protection. In this paper, therefore, we explore how gender priorities are considered in contemporary policy. We do so by first highlighting the ways in which UK climate change politics can, or does, exacerbate the gendered division of environmental labour through: the ‘good jobs’ in masculinised professions, performed by men; the ‘dirty’ jobs in recycling, performed by migrant labourers; and the ‘household’ jobs or reproductive work, performed by women. Finally, we conclude by offering insights into how gender experts and activists can respond to a changing political climate.

Keywords: climate change politics, gender, feminism, intersectionality, environmental justice

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Roles, Gendered Discourses, Intersectionality Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: United Kingdom

Year: 2017

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