This article looks at the ways in which Spanish American women exploited the political and social turmoil of the late 18th and early 19th centuries to move beyond their traditional sphere of influence in the home. Women directly participated in the Túpac Amaru Rebellion (1780–1781) and in the Wars of Independence (1810–1825) providing funding, food supplies, infrastructure and reinforcements for the troops, and nursing the wounded. Others contributed by taking part in the physical fighting (both openly and disguised (...) as men) and a few led troops into battle. This article looks at some of the individuals behind the statistics and reveals their determination to participate despite the punishments imposed on women found guilty of disloyalty to the Spanish crown. Spanish colonial law had to be amended to ensure that women dissidents were given as equally harsh sentences as men. In the immediate post-independence period, rather than be seen as misfits or a threat to the patriarchal system, several of these women were given national awards. (shrink)

ABSTRACT One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the “permanent things” seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the (...) theoretical. For it is Elshtain the citizen—the creatively engaged and contributing citizen—whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings—civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war—are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic. (shrink)

Dans l’Europe médiévale, l’art de la guerre est considéré comme spécifiquement masculin. Et pourtant, au détour des chroniques et des documents d’archives, il est possible de croiser des guerrières qui combattent pour défendre leurs fiefs ou s’engagent parmi les rangs des croisés. Cette pratique de la guerre au féminin, très minoritaire, mais avérée, reposait-elle sur un droit, ou, bien au contraire, bravait-elle toutes les interdictions des lois civiles et religieuses? Si le droit civil l’interdit, la réponse de l’Église semble parfois (...) plus ambigüe. C’est le cas aux xie et xiie siècles où, dans le cadre de la Querelle des Investitures, la comtesse Mathilde de Toscane est à l’origine d’une polémique qui a vu s’opposer les partisans de la réforme grégorienne à ceux de l’empereur Henri iv et qui s’est précisément cristallisée sur cette question : les femmes ont-elles le droit de faire la guerre? (shrink)

Cet article propose une synthèse historiographique de quarante années de recherches sur le thème « Femmes, genre et guerres », notamment à propos des deux conflits mondiaux du xxe siècle : d’une histoire au féminin qui se développe parallèlement à une histoire sociale des nations en guerre à une histoire genrée de la guerre concomitante de l’affirmation d’une histoire culturelle de la Grande Guerre. Attentif aux sources mobilisées, il présente les questionnements et les principales conclusions de ces approches, pour souligner (...) in fine les convergences actuelles sur quelques thèmes d’études : les sorties de guerre, l’intime en guerre, les violences sexuées et sexuelles. (shrink)

This paper examines changing conceptions of honour and masculinity during the Colombian Wars of Independence in the early 19th century. It explores the position of the foreign women who accompanied British and Irish expeditions to join the war against Spanish rule, and shows how colonial, imperial and republican conceptions of masculinity were affected by the role that women played in these volunteer expeditions and in the wars in general. The paper considers women's experiences during war and peace, (...) and examines their experiences in the light of changing conceptions of masculinity at home, in the British empire and in Hispanic America in the early nineteenth century. The social mobility of the Wars of Independence shifted the ground on which these concepts rested for all groups involved. The participation of foreign women alongside male adventurers was a further ingredient in this disorientating period. (shrink)

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the "permanent things" seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the theoretical. (...) For it is Elshtain the citizen - the creatively engaged and contributing citizen - whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings - civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war - are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic. (shrink)

I analyze the relationship between women and nationalism and argue that women's identity and relationship to the “Other” is different from that of men, hence even when women participate in nationalism it is in a less violent form. I argue, further, that the structures of nationalism are fundamentally homosocial, and antagonism toward women of one's own nation is one of the first forms of attack on the “Other,” and is constitutive of “extreme nationalism.”.

By applying terminology from trauma theory and a methodological approach from comics scholarship, this essay discusses three graphic autobiographies of women. These are A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached, We are on our Own by Miriam Katin, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Two issues are at the centre of the investigation: the strategies by which these works engage in the much-debated issues of representing gendered violence, and the representation of the ways traumatized daughters and their mothers deal with (...) the identity crises caused by war. (shrink)

Despite its commonality rape in war has long been an invisible war crime. Gender-based violence has escaped sanction because it has been shielded into the private sphere. Although rape in war is a form of public violence committed by soldiers representing a state it continues to be conceived as a private crime, committed by individual men. If women's human rights are to be respected in war and in peace the imaginary border between the public and the private has to (...) be abandoned. In this article rape in war is studied as a case of injustice for women in violent conflict. Arguments against feminist versions of ethics of care are formulated as these theories fail to challenge the public/ private distinction due to deep and constitutive gender norms. As an alternative, a narrative, feminist ethic of justice is presented based on women's narratives of experienced injustice in war. The theoretical model is developed through the integration of values derived from the ethics of care and thereby dismisses the distinction between public and private and between reason and emotion. The conclusion is that both substance and form of human rights must be based in concrete, situated gendered people's experiences of getting their human rights violated. (shrink)

This essay examines media images of women in recent conflicts in the Middle East. From the Abu Ghraib prison abuses to protests in Iran, women have become the public face of violence, carried out and suffered. Women’s bodies are figured as sexual and violent, a potent combination that stirs public imagination and feeds into stereotypes of women as femme fatales or “bombshells.”.

Au demeurant très pointu et concernant l’histoire d’un pays méconnu en France – au-delà de quelques clichés se résumant aux pirates, au reggae et à l’athlétisme – cet ouvrage consacré aux Jamaïcaines dans les deux guerres mondiales se révèle à la lecture particulièrement stimulant. D’abord, il nous fait découvrir l’histoire de cette île dans le premier xxe siècle. L’étude de ce « Home front » lointain dévoile les enjeux de genre au sein de la société jamaïcaine. Les questions posées stimulent...

Depuis les années 1980, une production historiographique croissante examine les rapports de genre comme une composante essentielle de la formation de la Grèce moderne et contemporaine en utilisant le genre comme catégorie analytique de base, avec la classe et la nation ; elle a mis en évidence, entre autres, le contenu genré du nationalisme, sous différents aspects. Or, l’historiographie du nationalisme grec tend encore aujourd’hui à ignorer les questions du genre et les connaissances accumul...

This work analyses the complex and contentious issues of mutual affection and codependency in relationships between Korean ‘comfort women’ and Japanese soldiers during World War II. Drawing on a combination of interviews and published resources, it explores the groups’ perceptions of one another within the framework of ‘traumatic bonding’. Despite traumatic violence and stark inequalities, this article finds nuanced contributions from the parties involved. For the soldiers, the relationships provided a form of emotional relief from the violence of war (...) and from the oppression they themselves were subjected to by those of superior rank within the military hierarchy, while the women often sought kindness and protection from the military men with whom they had formed relationships. However, underneath the yearning for human connection, these relationships were highly complex and deeply affected by the overarching power dynamics of gender and the racialised colonial hierarchy. (shrink)

Ideas of masculinity and femininity become sharply defined in war-reliant societies, resulting in a presumed enmity between men and women. This so-called "battle of the sexes" is intensified by the use of misogyny to encourage men and boys to conform to the demands of masculinity. These are among Tom Digby's fascinating insights shared in _Love and War_, which describes the making and manipulation of gender in militaristic societies and the sweeping consequences for men and women in their personal, (...) romantic, sexual, and professional lives. Drawing on cross-cultural comparisons and examples from popular media, including sports culture, the rise of "gonzo" and "bangbus" pornography, and "internet trolls," Digby describes how the hatred of women and the suppression of empathy are used to define masculinity, thereby undermining relations between women and men--sometimes even to the extent of violence. Employing diverse philosophical methodologies, he identifies the cultural elements that contribute to heterosexual antagonism, such as an enduring faith in male force to solve problems, the glorification of violent men who suppress caring emotions, the devaluation of men's physical and emotional lives, an imaginary gender binary, male privilege premised on the subordination of women, and the use of misogyny to encourage masculine behavior. Digby tracks the "collateral damage" of this disabling misogyny in the lives of both men and women, but ends on a hopeful note. He ultimately finds the link between war and gender to be dissolving in many societies: war is becoming slowly de-gendered, and gender is becoming slowly de-militarized. (shrink)

Carol P. Christ discusses her new multi-pronged definition of patriarchy as an integral system: male dominance is enforced by violence which is a product of war; the control of female sexuality ensures the transfer private property and slaves which are the spoils of war in the male line; and the system as a whole is legitimated by religion. She argues, based on the new research on matriarchies that patriarchy is not eternal or universal, but that it arose in history, and (...) is inseparable from the rise of warfare and other forms of domination. (shrink)

Militarization—the mobilization of resources for war—is a gendering process. It both uses and maintains the ideological construction of gender in the definitions of masculinity and femininity. This article draws on material from contemporary South Africa to illustrate the relation between gender and militarization in four respects: how women actively contribute toward the process of militarization; the similarities in the position of women in both conventional and guerrilla armies; the durability of patriarchy and the fragility of the gains made (...) for women during periods of war; and, finally, how the South African experience sharpens the debate about the relation between equal rights and women's participation in armies. The article concludes that there is no necessary relation between demilitarization and gender equality. (shrink)

The radical Islamist regime of the Taliban affords an extensive view of the logic of Muslim fundamentalism regarding the public and private spheres. I argue that the Taliban de-privatized several life-spheres, "publicizing" religion and the body. The Taliban performed power as public spectacle, employing public executions, amputations and whippings. Religion, too, was to be completely public, as Habermas argues it was in Europe before the 18th century. As soon as they took Kabul, the Taliban insisted that all residents had to (...) say their five daily prayers, the men in mosques. Likewise, men were given six weeks to grow out their beards to a hand's length and to trim their moustaches in accordance with a literal reading of sayings about the Prophet Muhammad's appearance. The young female memoirist of life in Taliban Kabul, Latifa, reported that her middle class father complied with the new rule, but insisted, "My beard belongs to the Taliban, not to me!" The rendering public of religion made public property of every religious act. His body had a choice, of being conformed to the movements and shaping of religion, or of being tortured because of lack of compliance. This publicization of the believer's body resulted in an alienation from individuals of parts of themselves. Likewise, the gendered character of the public and private spheres, with women being confined to the private, is as visible in Taliban thinking as it is in Hegel. The expansion of the public realm of religion and morality by the Taliban had the effect of shrinking the private sphere and so constraining women further. Girls' schools were shuttered and many war widows were reduced to begging and risking sanctions for being in the street without a male guardian. Posters of Bollywood actresses were forbidden, and Kate Winslet was condemned to death in absentia for portraying a fornicator in The Titanic. It is argued that the goal of perfectly privatizing the female body lay behind these Draconian measures. (shrink)

The question in the title involves two main issues: 1) should women enjoy the same right as men to fight in armed combat? 2) is it useful to have women-combatants?. I will argue that we need to address both issues. In other words, the issue of rights, including gender rights, is not sufficient to answer the question of the role of women in warfare, in general, and combat positions, in particular. In exploring the usefulness of women (...) in combat, I will look at two case-scenarios which I consider vital for answering the question at hand. My conclusion is that women do have a place in warfare and should be allowed to take up the position of combat soldiers. I have argued that the main normative ethical theories, namely Deontology, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics and Ethics of Care, do not pose insuperable and irreconcilable objections to my interpretation of the question. (shrink)

This paper examines changing conceptions of honour and masculinity during the Colombian Wars of Independence in the early 19th century. It explores the position of the foreign women who accompanied British and Irish expeditions to join the war against Spanish rule, and shows how colonial, imperial and republican conceptions of masculinity were affected by the role that women played in these volunteer expeditions and in the wars in general. The paper considers women's experiences during war and peace, (...) and examines their experiences in the light of changing conceptions of masculinity at home, in the British empire and in Hispanic America in the early nineteenth century. The social mobility of the Wars of Independence shifted the ground on which these concepts rested for all groups involved. The participation of foreign women alongside male adventurers was a further ingredient in this disorientating period. (shrink)

Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the George W. Bush administration used metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a link between vulnerability and violence.

Establishing women's rights became part of the moral justification given for waging `war on terror' by ensuring regime change in Afghanistan. Yet by December 2002, Human Rights Watch was reporting ongoing violations of women's rights. Western presumptions that women's lives would be transformed simply by removing the Taliban were false. This `interchange' explains this gap between expectation and reality by examining the contentious history of Afghan gender politics and the current political and economic situation. Acknowledging such factors (...) reveals that Western intervention will not easily subvert the existing gender order. Rather, any real change will result, not from prescribing Western models, but by enabling Afghan women to be autonomous agents with the right to determine their own life plans. (shrink)

Many servicemen and women began suffering from a variety of symptoms and illnesses soon after the 1991 Gulf War. Some veterans believe that their illnesses are related to toxic exposures during their service, though scientific research has been largely unable to demonstrate any link. Disputes over the definition, etiology, and treatment of Gulf War-related illnesses continue. The authors examine the roles of science, policy, and veteran activism in developing an understanding of GWRIs. They argue that the government’s stress-based explanation (...) of GWRIs and its insistence on a scientific link between service in the gulf and veteran illnesses forced veterans to shift from pleas for care, treatment, and compensation on moral grounds to engagement in the scientific process and debates over the interpretation of scientific findings. The authors compare the experiences of veterans to those of breast cancer activists to explain the stages of illness contestation in general. (shrink)

The history of computing usually focuses on achievements in Western universities and research centers and is mostly about what happened in the United States and Great Britain. However, in Eastern Europe, particularly in war-torn Poland, where there was very little state funding, many highly original hardware and software projects were initiated. The small number of publications available to us, especially those in English, led to the belief that technological progress was the result of research carried out in Western countries alone. (...) This article aims to fill this knowledge gap by focusing on the numerous research projects initiated in Polish universities and computer industries that unfortunately turned into dead ends as the result of socialist policies. These are references that cannot be ignored, not only for a historical reconstruction of the evolution of technology but also with regard to the social effects recorded in Poland immediately after the Second World War. The communist ideology, which pursued gender equality policies after the end of the war, encouraged women to pursue education, enabling the many female students enrolled in mathematics degree courses to specialize in “ Maszyny Matematyczne” (mathematical machines) and become, like men, experts in computer programming and design. As well as highlighting the role that Poland played in the nascent “computer science” and providing detailed information on what women contributed, this article will explain why the success of the Polish computer industry was limited due to the nonexistent coordination between the communist states (Comecon). (shrink)