Women In The Military And In Armed Conflict

The debate about the role of women in war, violent conflict and the military is not only a long and ongoing one; it is also a heated and controversial one. The contributions to this anthology come from experts in the field who approach the topic from various angles thus offering different and, at times, diverging perspectives. The reader will therefore gain in-depth insight into the most important aspects and positions in the debate.

The gender-differentiated and more severe impacts of armed conflict upon women and girls are well recognised by the international community, as demonstrated by UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and subsequent resolutions. Similarly, the development community has identified gender-differentiated impacts upon women and girls as a result of the effects of climate change. Current research and analysis has reached no consensus as to any causal relationship between climate change and armed conflict, but certain studies suggest an indirect linkage between climate change effects such as food insecurity and armed conflict. Little research has been conducted on the possible compounding effects that armed conflict and climate change might have on at-risk population groups such as women and girls. Armed Conflict, Women and Climate Change explores the intersection of these three areas and allows the reader to better understand how military organisations across the world need to be sensitive to these relationships to be most effective in civilian-centric operations in situations of humanitarian relief, peacekeeping and even armed conflict. This book examines strategy and military doctrine from NATO, the UK, US and Australia, and explores key issues such as displacement, food and energy insecurity, and male out-migration as well as current efforts to incorporate gender considerations in military activities and operations. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international development, international security, sustainability, gender studies and law.

The debate about the role of women in war, violent conflict and the military is not only a long and ongoing one; it is also a heated and controversial one. The contributions to this anthology come from experts in the field who approach the topic from various angles thus offering different and, at times, diverging perspectives. The reader will therefore gain in-depth insight into the most important aspects and positions in the debate.

The role that gender plays in determining the experience of those caught up in armed conflict has long been overlooked. Moreover, the extent to which gender influences the international legal regime designed to address the humanitarian problems arising from armed conflict has similarly been ignored. In the early 1990s, prompted by extensive media coverage of the rape of women during the conflict in Bosnia Herzegovina, the international community was forced to critically examine the capacity of international law to respond to such crimes. The prevalence of sexual violence, is, however, merely one aspect of the distinctive impact of conflict on women. Although a range of factors influence the way individual women experience armed conflict, the endemic gender discrimination that exists in all societies is a common theme: from Cambodia, where women land-mine victims are less likely to receive treatment for their injuries than are men; to South Africa, where women widowed during the Apartheid years have become outcasts in their own society. To date, the extent to which international law addresses the myriad of ways in which women are affected by armed conflict has received little attention. This work takes the experience of women of armed conflict, matches it with existing provisions of international law, and investigates reasons for the silence of the latter in relation to these events for women. It is the first broad-based critique of international humanitarian law from a gender perspective. The contribution of the United Nations, through its focus on human rights, to improving the protection of women in armed conflict is also considered. The authors underscore the need for new approaches to the issue of women and armed conflict, and canvass a range of options for moving forward.

This book explores the consequences of the opening of the armed forces to women, a recent development highlighted by the Gulf War. It is a comprehensive interdisciplinary study of women as soldiers and officers, the socio-economic implications of their choice, the problems they face, and how their presence affects the military and alters traditional images of femininity. The book shows how both of the options presently available - complete assimilation to the prevailing, masculine military model or exclusion - have heavy costs for women.

This book traces the history of women in the Canadian military, including: their service as nurses in the late 19th & early 20th century (in the North West Rebellion, the Yukon Field Force, and the South African War); the creation of a military nursing service & participation in the First World War; creation of women's divisions in the armed forces in World War II; women war artists; demobilization & then re-establishment of women's organizations in the post-war period; military nursing in the Korean War and the rest of the 1950s; decline in women's military participation to 1965; and the subsequent expansion of women's military roles toward achieving gender equality.

Gender oppression has been a feature of war and conflict throughout human history, yet until fairly recently, little attention was devoted to addressing the consequences of violence and discrimination experienced by women in post-conflict states. Thankfully, that is changing. Today, in a variety of post-conflict settings--the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland --international advocates for women's rights have focused bringing issues of sexual violence, discrimination and exclusion into peace-making processes.In On the Frontlines, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Naomi Cahn consider such policies in a range of cases and assess the extent to which they have had success in improving women's lives. They argue that there has been too little success, and that this is in part a product of a focus on schematic policies like straightforward political incorporation rather than a broader and deeper attempt to alter the cultures and societies that are at the root of much of the violence and exclusions experienced by women. They contend that this broader approach would not just benefit women, however. Gender mainstreaming and increased gender equality has a direct correlation with state stability and functions to preclude further conflict. If we are to have any success in stabilizing failing states, gender needs to move to fore of our efforts. With this in mind, they examine the efforts of transnational organizations, states and civil society in multiple jurisdictions to place gender at the forefront of all post-conflict processes. They offer concrete analysis and practical solutions to ensuring gender centrality in all aspects of peace making and peace enforcement.

"This book explores the why and the how of women's participation in armed struggle, and challenges preconceived assertions about women and violence, providing both a historic and a contemporary focus. The volume is about women who have participated in armed conflict, as members of an armed group, trained in military action, with different tasks within the conflict. The chapters are all concerned to make women's own voices heard, to discover the untold stories of women as perpetrators and facilitators of military violence, and the authors do this through the use of personal interviews and the study of primary documents. The work widens the geographical perspective of feminist security studies to discover in what ways the historical, political, and social context has motivated the women to participate in military action, and presents new case study data from Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Cameroon, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Latin America. Temporally, the chapters cover almost two centuries, from late 19th century to the present day, touching upon a wide variety of examples of armed conflict, from wars of independence to the Second World War. Bringing together approaches from politics, history, anthropology, and area studies, the chapters are informed by the fundamental insights of feminist research and address such pivotal questions as hegemonic masculinity in the armed forces and the relation between women's armed violence and female agency. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers in gender and security studies, armed conflict and history"--