Women's Peace Research Articles

International Conference on Kurdish Women for Peace and Equality March 8, 2007, Erbil, Southern Kurdistan

Th e fi rst International Conference on Kurdish Women for Peace and Equality, hosted by the Kurdish National Congress (KNC) in cooperation with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), took place on March 8, 2007, International Women’s Day. Because of the heavy security at the entrance of the hall and the limited capacity of the auditorium, attendance was restricted to high offi cials in the KRG, the heads of certain NGOs, guests of the KNC, and dignitaries. I attended the conference as a doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, researching NGOs and women’s movements in Iraq. What I got was a closed meeting representing only a fraction of Kurdish women’s voices, towing the offi cial line of the occupation and of the KRG. Th e conference was a celebration of the achievements of Kurdish women in sustaining the Kurdish nation with the help and support of the Americans and the KRG. Th is being the case, it was diffi cult to engage in meaningful debate about the complex issues facing Kurdish women under conditions of war and occupation. Most of the papers presented were coming from the perspective of what Ellen Meiskins-Wood calls “Democracy as Ideology of Empire.” Th is approach allows for war and imperialism to be justifi ed by the principles of freedom, equality, and universal human dignity. Here, “democracy” is synonymous with “free market.” According to this logic, as long as the “market” is open to multinational corporate investment in the “reconstruction” of Iraq, democracy is considered to have been restored. Within this approach, women’s NGOs play an indispensable role and the

Speaking Truth to Power

Jane Addams is known for founding Hull-House and for her leadership in the emerging social work profession. But little scholarly attention has centered on the values that influenced her emergence as an internationally known social activist and pacifist. The findings include a congruity with Quaker beliefs and early social work values but no attempt to identify herself as a member of either group. Despite intense opposition, Addams led the early 20th-century women's peace movement, unwavering in her belief that women's nurturing experiences led them to value life deeply and that women's involvement in world political affairs would bring about a more humane and peaceful society.

‘Make pies not war’: Protests by the women's peace movement of the mid 1980s

The women's peace movement has a long history in Australia and groups of women have protested since at least World War I. In this paper I discuss the women's peace movement of the mid 1980s and, in particular, the activities of the Western Australian group, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Sound Women's Peace Camp held south of Perth in 1984. Radical feminism informed the women's peace movement and was expressed through protests not only against war, but also against other forms of what were considered to be patriarchal violence.

Nuclear Nights: The Women's Peace Movement and the History of Dreaming

This paper draws on materialist theories of dreaming to contextualise records of nightmares about nuclear war from the early 1980s British and North American womens peace movement, in particular the dreams recorded in Alice Cook and Gwyn Kirks book Greenham Women Everywhere (1983). Such nightmares do not only suggest evidence of collective dreaming but provide a remarkable case of the collective interpretation of dreams as they were taken up as a basis for political action. It concludes that in particular historical contexts, dreams can be especially visible indications of a political unconscious and, encouraged by feminist recognition of emotional life, of the unconscious as a political resource.

Fostering transnational dialogue: Lessons learned from women peace activists

Given the incredible diversity of the anti-globalization movement, developing inclusive and participatory spaces is an enormous challenge. Inequities in power, resources, and experience between Northern and Southern activists are of particular concern to a movement that values democratic participation. Dialogue is seen as a critical new way of addressing conflicts within the movement. For three decades, women's organizations dealt with similar issues at the UN World Conferences on Women. It was not until the 1990s that a global women's movement emerged. This paper, which is based on a qualitative study of women's peace organizations gathered at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in 1995, addresses the development of positive coalition dynamics. The focus on individual activist stories fills in gaps left by studying organizations as units of analysis or on transnational movements as a whole. My research shows that if transnational activists use constructive approaches, conflict can assist in building coalition dynamics necessary for effective and equitable cooperation. I conclude that a commitment to respond to conflict in a constructive manner is as important for coalition building as formal processes or mechanisms that foster dialogue.

Bombings, Burnings and Borders: Remembering Women's Peace Groups under Internment

Bombings, Burnings and Borders: Remembering Women's Peace Groups under Internment

Grounding local peace organisations: a case study of southern Sudan

Since the early 1990s, building peace during and after conflict has been moving away from the conference tables of diplomats to informal settings created by local NGOs. The vast majority, if not all, of the peacebuilding policy and literature argues for strengthening local organisations as vehicles for peace. This paper starts from the observation that there is a dire lack of organisational perspective to the processes set into motion. Current local peacebuilding policy, we argue, is based on analyses that are far removed from the everyday practices of the actors engaged in peacebuilding. The paper offers instead a qualitative approach that gives central attention to the dynamics of peace organisations and the way conflict is experienced in the everyday life of local people. It analyses the case of one local women's peace organisation: the ‘Sudanese Women's Voice for Peace’. Peacebuilding is done by people, and the dynamics of their organisation are crucial for its success. The paper argues that a process approach to peace organisations will enhance agencies' efforts for local peacebuilding. Such an approach focuses on the question how actors in and around organisations give meaning to an organisation. The paper outlines this approach, presents five central properties of local peace organisations, and discusses what lessons can be learnt from this perspective for the practice of peacebuilding.

Women United for the United Nations: US women advocating for collective security in the cold war

This article details the creation of Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), a coalition of US women's non-governmental organizations created in the wake of the Second World War to advocate for the United Nations and the efficacy of collective security. The article illuminates the strategies the organization used to flourish in the 1950s, an era characterized by suspicion of political activism and conformity for US women. It describes WUUN's initiatives and documents the way the organization clashed with a more radical women's peace group, WOMAN. The article places the discussion of WUUN in the context of work done by other historians on the fate of other US women's organizations in the 1950s and provides a detailed account of the measures WUUN took to navigate the complexities that confronted women activists in the Cold War.

Women united for the united nations: US women advocating for collective security in the cold war

Abstract This article details the creation of Women United for the United Nations (WUUN), a coalition of US women's non-governmental organizations created in the wake of the Second World War to advocate for the United Nations and the efficacy of collective security. The article illuminates the strategies the organization used to flourish in the 1950s, an era characterized by suspicion of political activism and conformity for US women. It describes WUUN's initiatives and documents the way the organization clashed with a more radical women's peace group, WOMAN. The article places the discussion of WUUN in the context of work done by other historians on the fate of other US women's organizations in the 1950s and provides a detailed account of the measures WUUN took to navigate the complexities that confronted women activists in the Cold War.

Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common

The Women's Peace Camp at Greenham in Newbury, England, survived almost twenty years, from 1981 until 2000, as an extended protest against the placement of nuclear missiles on British soil and provided an innovative and generative space of feminist rhetorical invention. This essay provides an analysis of their evolving protest actions. It looks specifically at the types of feminist rhetorical invention employed—including feminist coding strategies, use of women's bodies as rhetorical topos, and the use of Background symbolism, affirming symbols of women's lives—to create a women-centered community and challenge the patriarchal traditions and symbols that the nuclear missiles represented.

Before “Care”: Marietta Kies, Lucia Ames Mead, and Feminist Political Theory

Marietta Kies and Lucia Ames Mead were two late nineteenth-century thinkers who anticipated the late twentieth-century feminist ethic of care. Kies drew on Hegel's philosophy to develop a political theory of altruism. Ames Mead adopted Kant's theory of peace and established a pacifist theory based on international cooperation. Both Kies and Mead insisted that the prototypically feminine ideals they espoused are rational, not emotional, responses to modern political life, and are essential to good political practice. Kies was a member of the early Hegelian movement and Christian Socialist movement. Ames Mead was a member of the Woman's Peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and an early proponent of the League of Nations.

Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common

Circling the Missiles and Staining Them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Invention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women's Peace Camp at Greenham Common

Before "Care": Marietta Kies, Lucia Ames Mead, and Feminist Political Theory

Marietta Kies and Lucia Ames Mead were two late nineteenth-century thinkers who anticipated the late twentieth-century feminist "ethic of care." Kies drew on Hegel's philosophy to develop a political theory of altruism. Ames Mead adopted Kant's theory of peace and established a pacifist theory based on international cooperation. Both Kies and Mead insisted that the prototypically "feminine" ideals they espoused are rational, not emotional, responses to modern political life, and are essential to good political practice. Kies was a member of the early Hegelian movement and Christian Socialist movement. Ames Mead was a member of the Woman's Peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and an early proponent of the League of Nations.

Women at the peace table

abstract This reportback looks at the Third African Women's Peace Table Conference which took place during October 2003. The conference explored the position of women in defence and security forces on matters of peace and security in Africa and participants made recommendations with regard to women's effective involvement in the African Union/New Partnership for Africa's Development peace and security agenda.

“We are the Web”: Letter Writing and the 1980s Women's Peace Movement

This essay considers the unsung role of letter-writing in the construction of feminist communities formed in protest. Using the example of the Greenham and Seneca womens peace protests of the early 1980s, I show that the vibrant sense of community symbolised by the womens web was partly constructed through personal letters and epistolary publicity sent to and from peace camps. Like the web, letter-writing was symbolic as well as practical, the virtual extension of a profound identification across an international network of women. However, as a means of outreach and negotiation, letters also show conflicts with locals and within the movement itself to reveal the adversarial and unconscious dimensions of community-making as well as the more manipulative aspects of letters. In either case, letter-writing functions simultaneously as a basic technology of campaigning and a form of creative life-writing, testifying to the interdependence of writing and political direct action.

Women and War in Comparative Perspective

Books reviewed in this article:Harriet Hyman Alonso, The Women's Peace Union and the Outlawry of War 1921–1942Joy Damousi, The Labour of Loss: Mourning: Memory and Wartime Bereavement in AustraliaBelinda J. Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I BerlinJean Gallagher, The World Wars Through the Female GazeSusan R. Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War

A Radical Women's Rights and Peace Activist: Margarethe Lenore Selenka, Initiator of the First Worldwide Women's Peace Demonstration in 1899

A Radical Women's Rights and Peace Activist: Margarethe Lenore Selenka, Initiator of the First Worldwide Women's Peace Demonstration in 1899

Klara Marie Fassbinder (1890-1974) and Women's Peace Activities in the 1950s and 1960s

Klara Marie Fassbinder (1890-1974) and Women's Peace Activities in the 1950s and 1960s

Pacifist Thought and Gender Ideology in the Political Biographies of Women Peace Activists in Germany, 1899-1970: Introduction

Pacifist Thought and Gender Ideology in the Political Biographies of Women Peace Activists in Germany, 1899-1970: Introduction

“Little Old Ladies and Dangerous Women”: Women's Peace and Social Justice Activism in Chicago, 1960–1975

The predominant image of women peace activists in 1960s and 1970s peace and anti–Vietnam War historiography is maternal, in particular drawing on Amy Swerdlow's research on Women Strike for Peace (WSP). This essay analyzes the peace and social justice activism of two single‐sex organizations in Chicago: Women for Peace (the Chicago chapter of WSP) and Women Mobilized for Change. These women activists used “women as citizen” and maternal rationales as well as their gender, age, and class to legitimize their activism. Using oral history and organizational sources, this essay also investigates how women activists' tactics to recruit members and confront male authorities were shaped by pre‐feminist gender norms and violent police resistance in Vietnam‐era Chicago.