Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Citation:

Sinovets, Polina. 2014. “Women and Weapons: Redressing the Gender Gap: A Ukrainian Response.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70 (5): 21–23.

Author: Polina Sinovets

Abstract:

In nuclear war, women would suffer at least as much as men. But women tend to be underrepresented in fields—such as high-level politics, diplomacy, military affairs, and science and technology—that bear on nuclear policy. Authors from four countries—Salma Malik of Pakistan (2014), Polina Sinovets of Ukraine, Reshmi Kazi of India (2014), and Jenny Nielsen of Denmark (2014)—discuss how women might gain greater influence on nuclear weapons policy and how their empowerment might affect disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Keywords: Carol Cohn, education, femininity, feminism, international organizations, masculinity, nuclear politics, nuclear weapons, soft power, women

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, International Organizations, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Ukraine

Year: 2014

Citation:

Kazi, Reshmi. 2014. "Women and Weapons: Redressing the Gender Gap: An Indian Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70 (5): 8-11.

Author: Reshmi Kazi

Abstract:

In nuclear war, women would suffer at least as much as men. But women tend to be underrepresented in fields—such as high-level politics, diplomacy, military affairs, and science and technology—that bear on nuclear policy. Authors from four countries—Salma Malik of Pakistan (2014), Polina Sinovets of Ukraine (2014), Reshmi Kazi of India, and Jenny Nielsen of Denmark (2014)—discuss how women might gain greater influence on nuclear weapons policy and how their empowerment might affect disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Keywords: conflict, disarmament, India, nuclear policy, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, peace, stereotypes, women

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Political Participation, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India, Pakistan

Year: 2015

Citation:

Nielsen, Jenny. 2014. "Women and Weapons: Redressing the Gender Gap: A Danish Response." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 70 (5): 17-20.

Author: Jenny Nielsen

Abstract:

In nuclear war, women would suffer at least as much as men. But women tend to be underrepresented in fields—such as high-level politics, diplomacy, military affairs, and science and technology—that bear on nuclear policy. Authors from four countries—Salma Malik of Pakistan (2014), Polina Sinovets of Ukraine (2014), Reshmi Kazi of India (2014), and Jenny Nielsen of Denmark—discuss how women might gain greater influence on nuclear weapons policy and how their empowerment might affect disarmament and nonproliferation efforts.

Keywords: Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, disarmament, Gender, International Atomic Energy Agency, nonproliferation, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons policy, Rebecca Johnson, Rose Gottemoeller, women

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Balance, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe Countries: Denmark

Year: 2014

Citation:

Eschle, Catherine. “Gender and the Subject of (Anti)Nuclear Politics: Revisiting Women’s Campaigning against the Bomb.” International Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (December 1, 2013): 713–24. doi:10.1111/isqu.12019.

Author: Catherine Eschle

Abstract:

This article aims to rehabilitate women campaigners against nuclear weapons as a focus of study and interlocutor for feminist International Relations scholars. Highlighting the recent tendency in gender and security studies to ignore or stereotype these campaigners, I first show how their critical re-investigation has been facilitated by recent systematizations of poststructuralist-influenced feminist methodology. In this light, I then revisit the discourses circulating in women’s antinuclear activism in the 1980s before deconstructing in more detail the post-Cold War writings of Helen Caldicott and Angie Zelter. I argue that multiple, differently gendered constructions of the antinuclear campaigner were in play during the Cold War and have since been reconfigured in ways that reflect and reproduce the shift to a post-Cold War context and differences between the United States and UK. In such ways, then, women antinuclear campaigners continue to develop diverse oppositional subject positions in their efforts to challenge nuclear hegemony, in a discursive struggle worthy of attention from gender and security scholars as part of a broader, critical re-engagement with the gendered dimensions of nuclear politics.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Conflict Prevention, Gender, Women, Gendered Discourses, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Americas, North America, Europe, Western Europe Countries: United Kingdom, United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Das, Runa. 2013. “United States-India Nuclear Relations Post-9/11: Neo-Liberal Discourses, Masculinities and Orientalism in International Politics.” Journal of Asian and African Studies. 

Author: Runa Das

Abstract:

In this article I explore how the post-9/11 neo-liberal climate of globalization has served as the context within which is articulated masculinist and orientalist forms of nuclear discourses between India and the United States (US). To this extent, I draw from feminist international relations (IR), that security is a gendered phenomenon, to explore the linkages between masculinities and nuclear weapons as underpinning the nuclear security discourses between India and the US. Yet considering issues of international hierarchy and power relations between India and the US, I also draw from Edward Said’s Orientalism to explore how assumptions of orientalism are also sustained in these masculinist nuclear discourses. My contribution lies in enriching feminist IR with a post-colonial angle by suggesting that feminist IR continue to engage with post-colonial feminist perspectives to comprehend the masculinist and orientalist forms of identity politics that underpin security relations/discourses between Western and post-colonial states.

Keywords: globalization, India, masculinity, nuclear security, orientalism, Pakistan, United States

Topics: Armed Conflict, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Globalization, Security, Violence, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Americas, North America, Asia, South Asia Countries: India, United States of America

Year: 2013

Citation:

Cohn, Carol, Felicity Hill, and Sara Ruddick. 2005. "The Relevance of Gender for Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction". Disarmament Diplomacy 80: online.

Authors: Carol Cohn, Felicity Hill, Sara Ruddick

Topics: Gender, Gendered Discourses, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2005

Citation:

Cohn, Carol. 1987. “SLICK 'EMS, GLICK 'EMS, CHRISTMAS TREES, and COOKIE CUTTERS: NUCLEAR language and how we learned to pat the bomb.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 43 (5): 17-24.

Author: Carol Cohn

Abstract:

Listening to the language of defense intellectuals reveals the emotional currents in this emphatically male discourse. But learning the language shows how thinking can become abstract, focusing on the survival of weapons rather than the survival of human beings.

Topics: Gender, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 1987

Citation:

Oza, Rupal. 2006. “Nuclear Tests and National Virility: Gender and Sexual Politics of Militarization.” In Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization, 103–33. New York: Routledge.

Author: Rupal Oza

Annotation:

Topics: Gender, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Sexuality, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2006

Citation:

Peach, Lucinda Joy. 2004. “A Pragmatist Feminist Approach to the Ethics of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” In Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction, edited by Sohail H. Hashimi and Steven P. Lee, 436–50. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Author: Lucinda Joy Peach

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Violence, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2004

Citation:

Easlea, Brian. 1983. Fathering the Unthinkable: Masculinity, Scientists, and the Nuclear Arms Race. London: Pluto Press.

Author: Brian Easlea

Keywords: masculinity, weapon of war

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 1983