Femininity/ies

Citation:

Streicker, Joel. 1995. “Policing Boundaries: Race, Class, and Gender in Cartagena, Colombia.” American Ethnologist 22 (1): 54–74.

Author: Joel Streicker

Abstract:

Analysis of everyday discourse among the poor of Cartagena, Colombia, reveals the mutual construction of race, class, and gender identities. Discourse on class and gender encodes racially discriminatory concepts, identifying blackness with acts that contradict normative class and gender identities. This article shows how the interlocking meanings of race, class, and gender enforce the status quo of men's, nonblacks', and elders' authority within the popular class.

Topics: Class, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Race Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 1995

Citation:

Žarkov, Dubravka. 2007. The Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press.

Author: Dubravka Žarkov

Abstract:

In The Body of War, Dubravka Žarkov analyzes representations of female and male bodies in the Croatian and Serbian press in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s, during the war in which Yugoslavia disintegrated. Žarkov proposes that the Balkan war was not a war between ethnic groups; rather, ethnicity was produced by the war itself. Žarkov explores the process through which ethnicity was generated, showing how lived and symbolic female and male bodies became central to it. She does not posit a direct causal relationship between hate speech published in the press during the mid-1980s and the acts of violence in the war. Instead, she argues that both the representational practices of the “media war” and the violent practices of the “ethnic war” depended on specific, shared notions of femininity and masculinity, norms of (hetero)sexuality, and definitions of ethnicity.

Tracing the links between the war and press representations of ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, Žarkov examines the media’s coverage of two major protests by women who explicitly identified themselves as mothers, of sexual violence against women and men during the war, and of women as militants. She draws on contemporary feminist analyses of violence to scrutinize international and local feminist writings on the war in former Yugoslavia. Demonstrating that some of the same essentialist ideas of gender and sexuality used to produce and reinforce the significance of ethnic differences during the war often have been invoked by feminists, she points out the political and theoretical drawbacks to grounding feminist strategies against violence in ideas of female victimhood. (Amazon)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Media, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, SV against Men, SV against Women, Violence Regions: Europe, Balkans Countries: Croatia, Serbia, Yugoslavia (former)

Year: 2007

Citation:

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. 2011. “Whores, Men, and Other Misfits: Undoing ‘Feminization’ in the Armed Forces in the DRC.” African Affairs 110 (441): 563–85.

Authors: Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Abstract:

The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defense reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. Crucial questions such as the ‘feminization’ of the armed forces are consequently neglected. Based on in-depth interviews with soldiers in the Congolese armed forces, this article analyses the discursive strategies male soldiers employ in relation to the feminization of the army. In the light of the need to reform the military and military masculinities, the article discusses how globalized discourses and practices render the Congolese military a highly globalized sphere. It also highlights the particular and local ways in which military identities are produced through gender, and concludes that a simple inclusion of women in the armed forces in order to render men less violent might not have the pacifying effect intended.

Topics: Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Men, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Globalization, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Sexual Violence, Rape Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2011

Citation:

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. 2013. “Fearless Fighters and Submissive Wives: Negotiating Identity among Women Soldiers in the Congo (DRC).” Armed Forces & Society 39 (4): 711–39.

Authors: Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Abstract:

This article addresses an underreported aspect of contemporary warring in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): the experiences of women soldiers and officers in the Congolese national armed forces (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo [FARDC]). It thus addresses an empirical gap in scholarly and policy knowledge about female soldiers in national armies on the African continent, and the DRC in particular. Based on original interviews, the article explores the way female soldiers in teh FARDC understand their identities as "women soldiers" and offers new insight into women soldiers' role and responsibilities in the widespread violence committed against civilians in the DRC. Moreover, it explores how their understanding of themselves are "women soldiers" both challenges and confirms familiar notions of the army as a masculine sphere. Such insight is important for better understanding the gendered makeup of the military and for contributing to a knowledge base for Security Sector Reform in this violent (post)conflict setting.

Keywords: women soldiers, identity, Gender, armed forces, Democratic Republic of Congo

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Households, Military Forces & Armed Groups Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Year: 2013

Citation:

Sjoberg, Laura. 2007. "Agency, Militarized Femininity and Enemy Others: Observations from the War in Iraq." International Feminist Journal of Politics 9 (1): 82-101.

Author: Laura Sjoberg

Abstract:

In this era of the increasing importance of gender, many conflicting images of women populate news headlines and political discourses. In the 2003 war in Iraq, Americans saw images of a teenage woman as a war hero, of a female general in charge of a military prison where torture took place, of women who committed those abuses, of male victims of wartime sexual abuse and of the absence of gender in official government reactions to the torture at Abu Ghraib. I contend that several gendered stories from the 2003 war in Iraq demonstrate three major developments in militarized femininity in the United States: increasing sophistication of the ideal image of the woman soldier; stories of militarized femininity constructed in opposition to the gendered enemy; and evident tension between popular ideas of femininity and women's agency in violence. I use the publicized stories of American women prisoners of war and American women prison guards to substantiate these observed developments.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2007

Citation:

Riley, Robin L. 2008. “Women and War: Militarism, Bodies, and the Practice of Gender.” Sociology Compass 2 (4): 1192-1208. 

Author: Robin L. Riley

Abstract:

Women around the world, in various geographic spaces, social and cultural contexts, as partners, wives, sisters, daughters, mothers, mourners, and victims experience war. Women's experience of war and their participation in it, either as actors or resistors, victims or perpetrators (Moser and Clark 2001), cheerleaders or critics, are always influenced by the construction of gender operating in and around their lives. While constructions of masculinity and femininity are always circulating in and around militarism and war, women's bodies are sometimes primary considerations for military and state leaders; this creates a visibility/invisibility/hyper-visibility problem for women in wartime. In this essay, women's participation in war as soldiers, refugees, prisoners, jailers, activists, and suicide bombers and the accompanying shift in the practice of femininity and masculinity is explored.

Keywords: refugees

Annotation:

Quotes:

"The capabilities of women's bodies are used to expand ideas about femininity in order to support military recruiting goals without calling into question masculine supremacy at the same time that ideas about femininity are used to justify militarized masculinity and obfuscate men's actions in wartime." (Riley, 1193-1194)

"In the build-up to the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, the liberation of Afghan women was used by the US government as part of the justification for the attack (Ayotte and Hussain 2005; Cooke 2002; Spivak 1988; Young 2003). This justification for US imperialism -- white men saving brown women from brown men (Cooke 2003; Spivak 1988) -- was insincere and positioned Afghan women as helpless and in need of rescue -- a popular narrative that upholds notions of militarized masculine supremacy in wartime (Young 2003). Not surprisingly, US military might did not end the oppression of women in Afghanistan." (Riley, 1196)

"In Iraq, women, who constitute 65 percent of the population (Sandler 2003b), had enjoyed a relatively free way of life for the region under Saddam Hussein's police state, which included safety on the streets, if not safety from Saddam Hussein's repressive tactics (Brown and Romano 2006). Since the USA has occupied Iraq, however, the rate of rapes and kidnappings within Iraq has skyrocketed. This is particularly notable given the social and legal discouragement for reporting rapes (Human Rights Watch 2003). Within their society, Iraqi women have become hypervisible. Afraid to leave their homes because of the threat of rape, they are being pressured, sometimes through open harassment on the street, to cover their heads with a scarf, hijab, or abaya (Colson 2003)." (Riley, 1196)

"While the images of the men abused at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have been seen around the world, less is known about what happened to the women prisoners who were made invisible (Harding 2004, Eisenstein 2007)." (Riley, 1200)

"This gender confusion, where women need protecting but fight alongside men, where they are comrades but not equal comrades, where they want to be treated equally but are not expected to achieve equal standards, leads to what Sheila Jeffreys calls 'double jeopardy' where women in the military, hyper-visible within the ranks, are in danger from both the enemy and their own colleagues." (Riley, 1202)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Political Participation, Sexuality, Sexual Torture

Year: 2008

Citation:

Hudson, Heidi. 2004. "Gender and the Globalization of Violence: The Treacherous Terrain of Privatised Peacekeeping." Agenda 59: 42-55.

Author: Heidi Hudson

Abstract:

This article examines how globalisation has transformed the state's security functions and monopoly over violence. The expansion of the global arms dynamic and privatisation indicate increased (re)militarisation which threatens a norm-driven and people-centred global security order. A feminist conceptualisation of globalised security is necessary to remind us not to overestimate the extent to which power has become removed from the state and to offer theoretical and practical insights on how a fusion of masculine and feminine values may assist human and state security. Progress has recently been made in mainstreaming gender in peacekeeping operations, but much still needs to be done regarding implementation. Progress is also threatened by the increased use of private military companies which operate outside of generally acceptable accountability norms. Regulating these companies through international law is a possible solution which could also serve gender mainstreaming objectives. This option may be costly since it entrenches using force in conflict resolution. This could only prove detrimental to the fostering of comprehensive security based on gender justice.

Keywords: privatized peacekeeping, peacekeeping, globalization, global arms dynamic, global security sector

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Globalization, International Law, Peacekeeping, Security

Year: 2004

Citation:

Goldstein, Joshua S. 2001. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author: Joshua S. Goldstein

Abstract:

Gender roles are nowhere more prominent than in war. Yet contentious debates, and the scattering of scholarship across academic disciplines, have obscured understanding of how gender affects war and vice versa. In this authoritative review of our state of knowledge, Joshua Goldstein assesses the possible explanations for the near-total exclusion of women from combat forces, through history and cross cultures. Topics covered include the history of women who did fight and fought well, the complex role of testosterone in men's social behaviors, and the construction of masculinity and femininity in the shadow of war. Goldstein concludes that killing in war does not come naturally for either gender, and that gender norms often shape men, women, and children to the needs of the war system. Illustrated with photographs, drawings, and graphics, and drawing from scholarship spanning six academic disciplines, War and Gender translates and synthesizes our latest understanding of gender roles in war. (WorldCat)

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Female Combatants, Male Combatants, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies

Year: 2001

Citation:

Schemenauer, Ellie. 2012. "Victims and Vamps, Madonnas and Whores: The Construction of Female Drug Couriers and the Practices of the US Security State." International Feminist Journal of Politics 14 (1): 83-102.

Author: Ellie Schemenauer

Abstract:

This article explores how the US "war on drugs" depends on certain notions of femininity and womanhood. In particular, I examine how female couriers from the Americas are constructed at US border sites of international airports in the 1990s. I find that female drug couriers are described in terms of victims and vamps - a take off of the madonna/whore dichotomy. The victim and vamp discourses, I argue, are the performative enactments of a security state that operates according to a racialized logic of masculinist protection. I hold in tension the circulation of the victim/vamp discourses with the story of Paula, a Colombian woman who was caught trafficking heroin in hidden compartments of her suitcase. I use Paula's story to call attention to the political work in dismissing women as agents in the international drug trade.

Keywords: war on drugs, feminist perspectives, race, masculinity

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Security, Trafficking, Drug Trafficking Regions: Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2012