POLS2603 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Peacebuilding, Masculinity
Lecture 8 - Gender, War and Peace
•How does gender shape discourses, structures, + institutions of war?
•how does it shape the way we experience + interact with war?
•how is gender shaped by war?
•what policy frameworks exist to respond to war as a gendered practice?
strengths + limitations
•Gendered Combatants
◦Combat is gendered masculine
◦women are underrepresented in conflicts
◦image of soldier
◦why is combat gendered?
▪Goldstein:
•men are not naturally predisposed to conflict
•positivist approach
•hypotheses address biological + psychological arguments
•culture constrains potentials
•cultural concepts more rigid than biological gender
•‘a potential in biology becomes a mandate in culture’
•gender identity = tool which which societies induce men to fight
•war is something societies impose on men
◦How is combat gendered?
▪myth of the band of brothers
•cultural origins
•combat is made up of male fighting units who train + endure together
•captures unity forged through male camaraderie
•nat sec becomes dependent upon this idea
•sustains understanding that the enemy is something ‘other’ to this unit
◦= enemy can become women
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▪myth of the just warrior + beautiful soul
•binary construction of soldiers + civilians
•men as just warriors, women as beautiful souls who do not fight
•describes women’s innocence + purity which is entwined with their exclusion from
war
•Based on essential difference
•separates private + public spheres
•uses normative construction of femininity as justification for war - to preserve home
sphere + innocence
•sustains logic of war + gender
•women’s consent is not necessary
▪Young:
•men as protectors -> logic of governing
◦masculine security state that wages war abroad + expects feminised obedience
at home
▪women’s presence in combat disrupts both these narratives
•idea that women will disrupt unity + efficiency
•if women fight, they are no longer what is being fought for
◦then why fight?
•Sjoberg:
◦women have to negotiate these narratives
▪their fighting remains unusual + visible
▪Participation is problematised
◦women in the war on terror:
▪Presence explained in gendered terms
▪civilisational credentials - bc women are involved, it is a progressive army
▪especially vulnerable to attack
▪how might we transform the gendered structures of the military?
•is this a worthy project?
•not transformative
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
