War and Peace and Women

Abstract

Joyce P. Kaufman and Kristen P. Williams. (2013). Women at War, Women Building Peace Challenging Gender Norms. Kumarian Press, Boulder, 194 pp; $24.50; paperback. This book is concerned with women’s responses to war and conflict as forms of “political activism.” The authors explore the “how” and the “why” of such activism but also, importantly, the “so what” question in response to such activism, or more exactly why should we care! The answer, as is too often the case, is that research on the role of “women” in war, conflict, and peace building has been neglected in mainstream literature, and when it has been considered it has often been treated as a secondary phenomenon rather than as a central feature of any analysis (Grayzel 1999; Rooney 2000; Stapleton and Wilson 2014). As the authors state, “Mainstream IR [International Relations] theories tend to omit women and gender from their analysis of war and peace” (see also Yuval-Davis 1997; Ashe 2007). The book claims to focus particularly on women’s motivations for their political activism and also the discourse surrounding such activism. The range of motivations is well covered and carefully considered, although I think the term “discourse” is being used in its most general sense because there is certainly little of what we might call a “technical discourse analysis” of any of the materials, or examples within the text (for a recent example where a technical analysis is central, see Wilson and Boxer, forthcoming). This is not a problem, however, and does not interfere with the main thesis of reviewing women’s involvement in political activism. But it is important to note this point here as the term “discourse” may be used in various ways in different texts and different disciplines, and for those wanting a focus on the linguistic, for example, this might not be the place. In … j.wilson{at}ulster.ac.uk