Abstract
This essay focuses on a humanitarian knitting project to make dark camouflaged clothing for Vietnamese children residing in combat zones that was sponsored by the most significant Canadian peace association of the Vietnam War era, the Voice of Women/La Voix des Femmes (VOW). VOW members were inspired by an influential Canadian humanitarian group and aided by other North American women's peace groups—notably Women Strike for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I will argue that the members of VOW sought to disrupt and contest the stereotypic Western image of the compliant and uncritical woman war worker by challenging an essentialized image of a girl or woman knitting for “her boys” during wartime. By placing the implicitly motherly female knitter in the service of the victimized Other (Vietnamese children), VOW women and their like‐minded sister peace activists in the United States helped to recast in critical fashion the hegemonic male‐privileged discourse of war in a manner unique to their gender and time.
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