gender and militarism

War Resisters League Peace Award Since 1958, WRI's US section War Resisters League honours a person or organisation whose work represents the WRL's radical platform of action with the WRL Peace Award. Recipients have included peace agitator A.J. Muste, civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, feminist and pacifist theorist Barbara Deming, Plowshares movement founder Daniel Berrigan, Gulf War Resisters, and many others.

War Resisters' International worked together with South Korean partner organisations for an international seminar on peace in North-East Asia, held at the Bongdo Centre outside Seoul in June 2005. The seminar brought together peace activists and peace researchers from North-East Asia and all over the world, to discuss the present threats to peace in North-East Asia, and possible peace movement responses, based on War Resisters' International's more than 80 years of experience with nonviolence.

Like all good gatherings, the Asking the Right Questions international consultation on nonviolence training and gender raised more questions than it answered. More than 300 inquiries and application were received by the organizers of the consultation, indicating a high interest in the issue of gender-sensitive nonviolence training.

by Shani Werner, Rela Mazali English: Tal Haran

Israel is the only country in the world that practices conscription for women. It is thus also the only country in the world where women’s draft resistance exists. The movement of women draft resisters in Israel is constantly on the rise, but no data are available as to its exact extent. The army refrains from making such data known to the public.

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Andreas Speck

Collective identities--"we" as queers, as whatever group you like--are often perceived as empowering, as providing a sense of belonging. On the other hand through their very existence, collective identities produce new boundaries of "in" and "out", and new norms of behaviour that limit peoples' freedom to be and to do. Not only can identity be disempowering, but it can also threaten peoples' lives, as nationalist and homophobic attacks show.

Keith Goddard

While it is common antimilitarist thinking that the male image of the warrior is to be condemned, there is little analysis of new masculinities within the military, and even less thinking in strategic terms. What does a criticism of masculinities mean in antimilitarist work? The same can be said for recruitment strategies focusing on the military as an institution of social integration: what is the antimilitarist answer to gay and lesbian rights, equal opportunity programmes for women and people of colour or the military as the only job opportunity for working class people?

What are the values to legitimise the military? In Germany through the process of nation building military service was made to be valued as "duty", linked with the right of citizenship. "Nation", (bourgeois) masculinity and citizenship were closely connected. After World War II "democracy" was the main value, linked with the need for military defence. Since the end of the 80s again a change can be identified, linking military with the "increased international weight of Germany" and the need to defend human rights everywhere.

by Shelley Anderson

The WRI Women's Working Group has had a long standing interest in women's militarization, including the role of women in militaries. This last issue can be a problematic one for feminist pacifists. Pacifists have no interest in encouraging women to join the military; rather, they support anti-militarist work that keep both women and men out of the armed forces. Conservative forces that support a restricted and traditional view of women's place also strongly oppose women in the military.

Gender Day: A large step forward in WRI's history?

"This day was an experience. When I started to work in WRI in 1979, many men could not accept, nor understand why women should have their own spaces and their own conferences. After a while we formed the Women's Working Group, and one aim was to look at WRI's issues more in a gender perspective.