tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/women-in-war-14555/articleswomen in war – La Conversation2024-02-20T13:14:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187462024-02-20T13:14:07Z2024-02-20T13:14:07ZWomen in South Africa’s armed struggle: new book records history at first hand<p>South Africa’s young democracy was a culmination of years of sweat, blood and revolution against the apartheid regime. In the early 1960s, after decades of “<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1960-1966-genesis-armed-struggle">non-violence</a>” as a policy of resistance, the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) formed military wings to take the fight to the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>Based on the living record and popular discourse, it would be easy to assume that the struggle against apartheid was almost entirely the domain of men. But women played a crucial role – one which is only really coming to light today.</p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Guerrillas-and-Combative-Mothers-Women-and-the-Armed-Struggle-in-South/Magadla/p/book/9781032597249">Guerrillas and Combative Mothers</a>, political and international studies academic <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/people/academic/profsiphokazimagadlahod/">Siphokazi Magadla</a> uses life history interviews to offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa from 1961 until 1994. She also examines the texture of their lives in the new South Africa after demobilisation.</p>
<p>Magadla interviewed women who fought with the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK); the PAC’s military wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), formerly known as Poqo; and the paramilitary self-defence units in black urban residential areas. </p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UKZN Press</span></span>
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<p>As a sociologist interested in gender and sexuality, I was keen to read this book for the gendered experiences of liberation struggles. I read it alongside <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Guns_and_Guerilla_Girls/dK1borNjTBMC?hl=en&gbpv=1">other studies</a> about <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Front_Line_Runs_Through_Every_Woman/foMvd3m6KDQC?hl=en&gbpv=0">women in southern African liberation wars</a>. </p>
<p>Much of the prevalent discourse about women’s wartime participation tends to centre on one question: why do revolutions and wars fail women? This discourse tends to, for example, heavily examine women’s experiences of sexual violence and victimisation in wars. It excludes their agency and contribution to wars. </p>
<p>But Magadla’s book, as well as the feminist analyses I read to complement it, widens the lens. She wants to know why women joined the armed struggle. How did women use or play with femininity and womanhood to optimise military effectiveness? How can women’s participation broaden our understanding of combat beyond direct physical fighting? And, lastly, how do women view their involvement in the revolutions that result? </p>
<h2>Broadening the definition of combat</h2>
<p>Some may argue that the women profiled by Magadla were not combatants. Few of them engaged in direct combat; that is, physical fighting on the battlefront. But the author urges us to widen the definition of combat. </p>
<p>Citing the South African political activist and academic <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a>, Magadla argues that apartheid was a war with no battlefront. Instead it occupied all corners of society. It was fought in homes, schools and churches. Women guerrillas put themselves at risk in different ways and relied on creative approaches to get close to potential targets. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/person-details/231">Thandi Modise</a>, who has served in South Africa’s parliament since 1994 and is currently the minister of defence and military veterans, is one of the women profiled in the book. She tells of carrying a handbag from which protruded a pair of knitting needles – an absolutely ordinary, nonthreatening sight – while she observed potential military targets. </p>
<p>On the rare occasions that women’s wartime participation is recognised in the wider discourse, they tend to be shown as armed revolutionaries who are, simultaneously, feminist icons. Images abound of these women soldiers toting AK47s, ready to shoot, or carrying rifles – and babies on their backs.</p>
<p>Magadla weaves in accounts throughout the book to disrupt this popular narrative. After all, it potentially erases those women who carried neither AK47s nor babies on their backs during the war for liberation. Some women hid bullets inside tampons to bring into the country for the war while others carried explosives in their purses. Some spent endless hours watching and testing for potential dangers and weaknesses in the apartheid military’s defences.</p>
<p>One example is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275874041_The_Road_to_Democracy_South_Africans_telling_their_stories_-_Nondwe_Mankahla">Nondwe Mankahla</a>, who, while working as a distributor for the New Age newspaper, simultaneously couriered bomb equipment for political activists Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. </p>
<h2>Soldiers, not ‘she soldiers’</h2>
<p>Throughout the book, Magadla refuses to pigeonhole the participants. She recognises that their experiences vary and analyses how the women of MK negotiated its culture of patriarchy in a way that highlights the women’s agency without romanticising their struggles. </p>
<p>Women in MK were known as “flowers of the nation” or as <em>umzana</em> (a small home) of the organisation. Some of the women found the labels, <em>umzana</em> in particular, endearing. Others felt that they diminished women’s roles. Similarly, they resisted qualifiers such as “she comrades” and “she soldiers”.</p>
<p>But they did not want to erase their femininity. Some aspects of the patriarchal culture worked to the advantage of women both inside the organisation and in their encounters with the apartheid security police during operations. Women combatants could easily manipulate their femininity to defy the guerrilla image contained in <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-27-00-the-knitting-needles-guerrilla/">government propaganda</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1980s MK staged <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Secret-world-of-Operation-Vula-20040331">Operation Vula</a>, a mission to bring exiled leaders back into the country. <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/womanveteransreflectontheirrolesinsouthafricasarmedstruggle.html">Busisiwe Jacqueline ‘Totsie’ Memela</a> successfully smuggled anti-apartheid activists Mac Maharaj and Siphiwe Nyanda into South Africa from Swaziland (Eswatini). Magadla attributes her success to a combination of her military training and dynamic use of femininity: Memela dressed as a Swati woman while observing the border around the clock. </p>
<h2>A work of theorising</h2>
<p>Guerrillas and Combative Mothers is more than just a project to name the women who dedicated their lives to liberating South Africa. It also presents different ways of theorising. It raises an interesting methodological question about seeing the limits of verbal language and the utility of silence when <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392104045377">dealing with traumatic events</a>. How do we analyse silence when the people’s wounds have not healed and therefore their lips remain sealed? </p>
<p>However, while Magadla’s argument is sophisticated, the language doesn’t “sweat”, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/95923/the-language-must-not-sweat">to quote Toni Morrison</a>. It remains simple and accessible to all audiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thoko Sipungu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The interviews in this book offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid.Thoko Sipungu, Lecturer in Sociology, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2056692023-05-22T15:22:13Z2023-05-22T15:22:13ZWomen’s secret war: the inside story of how the US military sent female soldiers on covert combat missions to Afghanistan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526309/original/file-20230515-30399-k7swu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C220%2C3573%2C2171&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US marines with a female engagement team in southern Helmand province, Afghanistan, in May 2012.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/654340/aerohunter-aif-iso-rct-5">Cpl. Meghan Gonzales/DVIDS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A US Army handbook from 2011 opens one of its chapters with a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem <a href="https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_youngbrit.htm">The Young British Soldier</a>. Written in 1890 upon Kipling’s return to England from India, an experienced imperial soldier gives advice to the incoming cohort:</p>
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<p>When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains …</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://publicintelligence.net/ufouo-u-s-army-commanders-guide-to-female-engagement-teams/">handbook</a>, distributed in 2011 at the height of the US’s counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, invoked Kipling and other imperial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/magazine/professor-nagl-s-war.html">voices</a> to warn its soldiers that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Neither the Soviets in the early 1980s nor the west in the past decade have progressed much beyond Kipling’s early 20th-century warning when it comes to understanding Afghan women. In that oversight, we have ignored women as a key demographic in counterinsurgency.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Around this time, a growing number of US military units were – against official military policy – training and posting all-women counterinsurgency teams alongside their male soldiers.</p>
<p>Women were still banned from direct assignment to ground combat units. However, these female soldiers were deployed to access Afghan women and their households in the so-called “battle for hearts and minds” during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Afghanistan-War">Afghanistan war</a>, which began on October 7 2001 when the US and British militaries carried out an air assault, followed by a ground invasion, in response to the September 11 attacks.</p>
<p>And these women also played critical roles in gathering intelligence. Their sexuality – ironically, the basis of the excuse the US military had long given for avoiding integrating women into combat units – was now seen as an intelligence asset, as the army handbook made clear:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like all adolescent males, young Afghan males have a natural desire to impress females. Using this desire to interact with and impress females can be advantageous to US military forces when done respectfully to both the female soldier and the adolescent Afghan males. Female soldiers can often obtain different and even more in-depth information from Afghan males than can male soldiers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whether collecting intelligence or calming victims of a US special forces raid, female soldiers – often despite a lack of proper training – played a central yet largely invisible role in the Afghanistan war. Their recollections of what they experienced on these tours call into question official narratives both of women breaking through the “brass ceiling” of the US military, and the war having been fought in the name of Afghan women’s rights and freedom.</p>
<p>Since the US’s final withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/afghanistan-single-women-and-widows-are-struggling-to-find-their-next-meal-under-taliban-restrictions-198279">rollback of women’s rights</a> has concluded a brutal chapter in a story of competing feminisms over the past two decades of war.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C71%2C1997%2C1257&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="US female marines crouching with their weapons" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C71%2C1997%2C1257&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526308/original/file-20230515-39291-krcr2g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Members of a US marine female engagement team in combat training before a tour, October 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/480702/fet-practices-live-fire">Cpl. Meghan Gonzales/DVIDS</a></span>
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<h2>Female counterinsurgency teams in Afghanistan</h2>
<p>Between 2010 and 2017, while conducting research at six US military bases and several US <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/war-college">war colleges</a>, I met a number of women who spoke of having served on special forces teams and in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was surprising as women were then still technically banned from many combat roles – US military regulations only <a href="https://www.history.com/news/u-s-military-lifts-ban-on-women-in-combat">changed in 2013</a> such that, by 2016, all military jobs were open to women.</p>
<p>Fascinated by their experiences, I later interviewed 22 women who had served on these all-female counterinsurgency teams. The interviews, alongside other observations of development contractors on US military bases and the ongoing legacies of US imperial wars, inform my new book <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501767746/at-war-with-women/">At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War</a>.</p>
<p>By 2017, enough time had lapsed that the women could speak openly about their deployments. Many had left the military – in some cases disenchanted by the sexism they confronted, or with the idea of returning to an official job in logistics having served on more prestigious special forces teams.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>In 2013, Ronda* supported a mission deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. She was one of only two women living on a remote base with the Operational Detachment Alpha – the primary fighting force for the <a href="https://www.americanspecialops.com/special-forces/">Green Berets</a> (part of the US Army’s special forces).</p>
<p>For Ronda, one of the most rewarding aspects of this deployment was the image she carried of herself as a feminist example for Afghan women. She recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Just letting the girls see there’s more out there [in the wider world] than what you have here, that was very empowering. I think they really appreciated it. In full kit I look like a dude, [but] that first instance when you take off your helmet and they see your hair and see you are female … A lot of times they have never seen a female before who didn’t just take care of the garden and take care of the kids. That was very empowering.</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=118%2C107%2C3443%2C2091&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Female soldiers talking to a local woman in front of a helicopter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=118%2C107%2C3443%2C2091&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526305/original/file-20230515-23617-4ties.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 2012, the US military presented its female counterinsurgency teams as feminist emblems while keeping their combat roles hidden.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/654343/aerohunter-aif-iso-rct-5">Cpl. Meghan Gonzales/DVIDS</a></span>
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<p>Amanda, who had been on a similar mission to Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan a year earlier, also described inspiring local women – in her case, via stories she shared through her interpreter of life in New York City, and what it was like to be a female soldier. Amanda lived alongside the male soldiers in an adobe hut with a thatched roof, and was unable to shower for the full 47 days of the mission. But she recalled going out into the village with pride:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You see the light, especially in the females’ eyes, when they see other females from a different country – [it] kind of gives them perspective that there is more to the world than Afghanistan.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Publicly, the US military presented its female counterinsurgency teams as feminist emblems, while keeping their combat roles and close attachment to special forces hidden. A 2012 army <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/news/86128">news article</a> quoted a member of one female engagement team (FET) describing the “positive responses from the Afghan population” she believed they had received:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think seeing our FET out there gives Afghan women hope that change is coming … They definitely want the freedom American women enjoy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the US military’s mistreatment of its female workforce undermines this notion of freedom – as do the warped understandings of Afghan culture, history and language that both male and female soldiers brought with them on their deployments. Such complexity calls into question US military claims of providing feminist opportunities for US women, and of acting in Afghan women’s best interests.</p>
<p>As a logistics officer, Beth had been trained to manage the movement of supplies and people. She said she was ill-prepared for the reality she confronted when visiting Afghan villages with one of the cultural support teams (CSTs), as they were also known, in 2009.</p>
<p>Beth’s pre-deployment training had included “lessons learned” from the likes of Kipling and Lawrence of Arabia. It did not prepare her to understand why she encountered such poverty when visiting Afghan villages. She recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Imagine huts – and tons of women, men and children in these huts … We had to tell these women: ‘The reason your children are getting sick is because you’re not boiling your water.’ I mean, that’s insane. Look at when the bible was written. Even then, people knew how to boil their water – they talked about clean and unclean, kosher, and that they know what’s going to rot. How did Jesus get the memo and you didn’t?</p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A female Afghan role-player wraps a headscarf around a female soldier while a third female soldier looks on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526208/original/file-20230515-29-glpwzx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Afghan role-player with soldiers during female engagement training at a US Army base.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jennifer Greenburg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Ambassadors of western feminism’</h2>
<p>By observing lessons in military classrooms, I learned how young US soldiers (men and women) went through pre-deployment training that still leaned on the perspectives of British colonial officers such as <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/who-was-lawrence-of-arabia">T.E. Lawrence</a> and <a href="https://www.rusi.org/podcasts/talking-strategy/episode-2-c-e-callwell-small-wars-and-integrated-sea-land-operations">C.E. Callwell</a>. There was a tendency to portray Afghan people as unsophisticated children who needed parental oversight to usher them into modernity.</p>
<p>US military representations of Afghan women as homogeneous and helpless, contrasting with western women as models of liberation, also ignored Afghan and Islamic feminist frameworks that have <a href="http://signsjournal.org/podcast/jennifer-fluri-discusses-the-gender-politics-of-the-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-with-sandra-mcevoy/">long advocated for women’s rights</a>. The notion of US female soldiers modelling women’s rights was often linked with representations of Afghan people as backward and needing models from elsewhere.</p>
<p>To skirt the military policy that in the mid-2000s still banned women from direct assignment to ground combat units, female soldiers were “temporarily attached” to all-male units and encouraged not to speak openly about the work they were doing, which typically entailed searching local women at checkpoints and in home raids.</p>
<p>Rochelle wrote in her journal about her experiences of visiting Afghan villages: “Out the gate I went, [with] headscarf and pistol …” Like Beth’s use of a biblical reference to explain the Afghan villages she confronted, Rochelle placed Afghanistan far backward in time. In one diary entry about a village meeting, she reflected:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For years, I have always wondered what it would be like to live in the Stone Age – and now I know. I see it every day all around me. People walking around in clothes that haven’t been washed, ones they have worn for years. Children with hair white from days of dust build-up. Six-year-old girls carrying around their baby brothers. Eyes that tell a story of years of hardship. Houses made of mud and wooden poles, squares cut out for windows. Dirty misshapen feet.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cultural considerations matrix." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526214/original/file-20230515-13823-9gqh6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Cultural considerations’ training material.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">USAID</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Rochelle was not accompanying the male patrols, she was visiting girls’ schools and holding meetings with Afghan women about how her unit could help support income-generating opportunities for women, such as embroidery or selling food. Her logic, that this would reduce Taliban support and recruitment, echoed <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/policy/countering-violent-extremism">USAID programmes</a> that still today claim targeted economic opportunity can “counter violent extremism”.</p>
<p>Amelia, a female soldier attached to a special forces mission, spoke of how she was an asset because:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were not threatening, we were just there. For Afghan men, we were fascinating because we were these independent women in a different role than they see for most women there. And we were non-threatening to them, so they could talk to us openly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Strikingly, Amelia admitted that she and other female soldiers played a similar role for their American counterparts too:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the [male] marines, just having us there helped kind of calm things down. We would do things to try to give back to them – like we baked for them frequently. That was not our role and I don’t want anyone to think that we were a “baking team”, but we would do things like that and it really helped. Like a motherly touch or whatever. We would bake cookies and cinnamon buns. It really helped bring the team together and have more of a family feeling.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Amelia’s clear apprehension at her unit being seen as the “baking team” speaks to how they were incorporated into combat through reinforcement of certain gender stereotypes. These women used “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/arlie-hochschild-housework-isnt-emotional-labor/576637/">emotional labour</a>” – the work of managing, producing and suppressing feelings as part of one’s paid labour – both to counsel the male soldiers with whom they were stationed, and to calm Afghan civilians after their doors had been broken down in the middle of the night.</p>
<p>But the women I met also revealed a culture of sexist abuse that had been exacerbated by the unofficial nature of their combat roles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soldiers who <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2394531-marine-corps-force-integration-plan-summary.html">did not want women in their midst</a> would joke, for example, that CST actually stood for “casual sex team”. Such treatment undermines the US military’s representations of military women as models of feminist liberation for Afghan women.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A soldier stands in front of a mock Afghan village, holding his rifle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526210/original/file-20230515-15-5gvp0g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A provincial reconstruction team deploying to Afghanistan patrols a mock Afghan village on a US military base.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jennifer Greenburg</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘It was the best and the worst deployment’</h2>
<p>Beth’s first deployment to Afghanistan in 2009 was to accompany a small group of Green Berets into an Afghan village and interact with the women and children who lived there. One of her strongest memories was figuring out how to shower once a week by crouching under a wood palate and balancing water bottles between its slats.</p>
<p>Beth’s role was to gather information about which villages were more likely to join the US military-supported <a href="https://irp.fas.org/doddir/dod/jp3_22.pdf">internal defence forces</a> – a cold war counterinsurgency strategy with a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/12/06/the-truth-of-el-mozote">history</a> of brutalising countries’ own citizens. To elicit feelings of security and comfort in those she encountered when entering an Afghan home or searching a vehicle, she described adjusting her voice tone, removing her body armour, and sometimes placing her hands on the bodies of Afghan women and children.</p>
<p>But this “kinder and gentler” aspect of her work was inseparable from the home raids she also participated in, during which marines would kick down the doors of family homes in the middle of the night, ripping people from their sleep for questioning, or worse.</p>
<p>Women like Beth were exposed to – and in a few cases, killed by – the same threats as the special forces units to which they were unofficially attached. But the teams’ hidden nature meant these women often had no official documentation of what they did.</p>
<p>If they returned home injured from their deployment, their records did not reflect their attachment to combat units. This meant they were unable to prove the crucial link between injury and service that determined access to healthcare. And the women’s lack of official recognition has since posed a major barrier to being promoted in their careers, as well as <a href="https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5ddda3d7ad8b1151b5d16cff/5e67d54e8c296ffede3c4f62_Reference-Guide-2017.pdf">accessing</a> military and veteran healthcare.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Female soldier saluting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526315/original/file-20230515-37865-m00axn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lack of official recognition posed a barrier to some women being promoted in their military careers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/american-soldiers-salute-us-army-military-1711680580">Bumble Dee/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While Beth said she was “lucky” to have come home with her mental health and limbs intact, many of her peers described being unable to sleep and suffering from anxiety, depression and other symptoms of <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/common/common_veterans.asp">post-traumatic stress disorder</a> (PTSD) as a result of their continued exposure to stressful combat situations such as night raids.</p>
<p>Six months into her deployment, Beth’s female partner was riding in a large armoured vehicle when it ran over an explosive device. “Luckily”, as Beth put it, the bomb exploded downwards, blowing off four of the vehicle’s wheels and sending a blast through the layer of rubber foam on which her partner’s feet rested. She was medevacked out of the combat zone with fractured heels, along with six other men.</p>
<p>Technically, Beth was always supposed to have a female partner when working for a cultural support team, but no replacement came. Her mission changed and she became the only woman assigned to support a group of marines stationed on a remote base. There were only a handful of other women on the base, and Beth lived alone in a repurposed shipping container sandwiched between housing for 80 men.</p>
<p>Beth said the marines spread false rumours about her. Other women I spoke with indicated that there was a widespread culture of degrading women like Beth in the US military at this time – just as its leaders were publicly disavowing the military’s epidemic of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/11/military-sexual-assault-survivors-epidemic">sexual assault and rape</a>.</p>
<p>As Beth described her treatment on the second part of her deployment in Afghanistan, her eyes widened. She struggled to find the words that eventually came out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was the best and the worst deployment. On some level, I did things that I will never do again – I met some great people, had amazing experiences. But also, professionally, as a captain in the Marine Corps, I have never been treated so poorly in my life – by other officers! I had no voice. Nobody had my back. [The marines] didn’t want us there. These guys did not want to be bringing women along.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Beth described how one of the male soldiers lied to her battalion commander, accusing her of saying something she didn’t say – leading to her being removed from action and being placed under a form of custody:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I got pulled back and sat in the hot-seat for months. It was bad. That was a very low point for me.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Women as a third gender’</h2>
<p>A narrow, western version of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/">feminism</a> – focused on women’s legal and economic rights while uncritical of the US’s history of military interventions and imperialistic financial and legal actions – helped <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3318265">build popular support for</a> the Afghanistan invasion in 2001. On an individual level, women like Beth made meaning of their deployments by understanding themselves as modern, liberated inspirations for the Afghan women they encountered.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A female soldier cleans the wound of a child" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526313/original/file-20230515-20222-5gvp0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=604&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A female engagement team member treats a child during a medical aid mission, October 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/337619/female-engagement-team-finds-strength-behind-burka">Staff Sgt. Whitney Hughes/DVIDS</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in reality, the US military did not deploy women like Beth with the intention of improving Afghan women’s lives. Rather, special forces recognised Afghan women as a key piece of the puzzle to convince Afghan men to join the internal defence forces. While male soldiers could not easily enter an Afghan home without being seen as disrespecting women who lived there, the handbook for female engagement teams advised that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Afghan men often see western women as a “third gender” and will approach coalition forces’ women with different issues than are discussed with men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And a 2011 Marine Corps Gazette <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hqiRxoTLeb8C&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq=Julia+Watson+Marine+Corps+Gazette+2011+%E2%80%9CFemale+Engagement+Teams:+The+Case+for+More+Female+Civil+Affairs+Marines,%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=tXO3YJJjBW&sig=ACfU3U0XPU65h1cNLncfpbRLhvXAU4VjRQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFxObLxaT9AhUPQkEAHbs8A_sQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=Julia%20Watson%20Marine%20Corps%20Gazette%202011%20%E2%80%9CFemale%20Engagement%20Teams%3A%20The%20Case%20for%20More%20Female%20Civil%20Affairs%20Marines%2C%E2%80%9D&f=false">article</a> underlined that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Female service members are perceived as a “third gender” and as being “there to help versus there to fight”. This perception allows us access to the entire population, which is crucial in population-centric operations.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The use of “third gender” here is surprising because the term more often refers to gender identity outside of conventional male-female binaries. In contrast, military uses of such language reinforced traditional gender expectations of women as caregivers versus men as combatants, emphasising how women entered what were technically jobs for men by maintaining these gender roles.</p>
<p>The female counterinsurgency teams were intended to search Afghan women and gather intelligence that was inaccessible to their male counterparts. Beth had volunteered for these secretive missions, saying she was excited to go “outside the wire” of the military base, to interact with Afghan women and children, and to work with US special operations.</p>
<p>Initially, she was enthusiastic about the tour, describing her gender as an “invaluable tool” that allowed her to collect information which her male counterparts could not. She went on home raids with the marines and would search women and question villagers.</p>
<p>Technically, the US military has strict rules about who is allowed to collect formal intelligence, limiting this role to those trained in intelligence. As a result, Beth explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Just like any other team going out to collect information, we always steer clear of saying “collect” [intelligence]. But essentially that’s exactly what we were doing … I won’t call them a source because that is a no-no. But I had individuals who would frequent me when we were in particular areas … [providing] information we were able to elicit in a casual setting instead of running a source and being overt.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘A completely different energy’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Recruitment poster for a female engagement team." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=771&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526212/original/file-20230515-5879-9gqh6y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=969&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Female engagement team recruitment poster, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Army</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cindy deployed with a US Army Ranger regiment to Afghanistan in 2012. Having recently graduated from one of the military academies, an advertisement caught her eye: “Become a part of history. Join the US Army Special Operations Command Female Engagement Team Program.”</p>
<p>She was drawn in by the high physical bar and intellectual challenge of jobs in special operations from which the military technically excluded her. Describing the process of being selected for the female unit as a “week from hell”, Cindy said she was proud of “being where it’s hardest” and “the sense of duty, obligation”.</p>
<p>While she was completing her training, Cindy’s friend from airborne school was killed by an explosion in October 2011, while accompanying an Army Ranger team on a night raid of a Taliban weapons maker’s compound in Kandahar. This was Ashley White-Stumpf, subject of the bestselling book <a href="https://gaylelemmon.com/ashleyswar">Ashley’s War</a>, which is now being adapted into a film starring Reese Witherspoon. She was the first cultural support team member to be killed in action, and her funeral brought this secret programme into a very public light.</p>
<p>Her death cast a shadow on the excitement Cindy had initially felt. To confuse matters, the dangers that White-Stumpf (and now Cindy) faced were publicly invisible, given that women were banned from being officially attached to special forces combat units. When female soldiers did appear in public relations photographs, it was often handing out soccer balls or visiting orphanages.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="US soldiers unveil a monument to their dead colleague" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526231/original/file-20230515-13823-5pl73m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers unveil a memorial to 1st Lt. Ashley White-Stumpf, September 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/1023069/nc-national-guard-soldiers-honor-fallen-comrade-with-memorial">Staff Sgt. Kelly Lecompte/DVIDS via Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet once deployed, Cindy was attached to a “direct action” unit – the special forces portrayed in action movies kicking down doors, seizing documents and capturing people. This meant that while special forces carried out their mission, her job was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To interact with women and children. To get information, or [find out] if there were nefarious items that were hidden under burkas and things of that nature.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She explained how “you have different tools as a woman that you can use that I don’t think a man would be successful in” – offering the example of a little boy in a village who her team thought knew something. A <a href="https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/special-ops/army-rangers.html">ranger</a> was questioning the little boy, who was terrified of how, in her words, this male soldier “looked like a stormtrooper, wearing his helmet and carrying a rifle”. In contrast, Cindy explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me to kneel next to the little kid and take off my helmet and maybe put my hand on his shoulder and say: “There, there” – I can do that with my voice, [whereas] this guy probably could not or would not. And that kid was crying, and we couldn’t get anything out of him. But you can turn the tables with a completely different energy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cindy told me proudly how it took her just 15 minutes to identify the correct location of the Taliban activity, when her unit had been in the wrong location. She, like many of the women I spoke to, painted a picture of using emotional labour to evoke empathy and sensitivity amid violent – and often traumatic – special operations work.</p>
<h2>‘I’ve had so much BS in my career’</h2>
<p>The women I interviewed were operating in the same permissive climate of sexual harassment and abuse that later saw the high-profile murders of the servicewoman <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/vanessa-guillens-fort-hood-murder-motive-b2086929.html">Vanessa Guillén</a> at Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2020, and the combat engineer <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2023/04/13/ana-fernanda-basaldua-ruiz-fort-hood-sexual-harrassment-murder-vanessa-guillen/">Ana Fernanda Basaldua Ruiz</a> in March 2023.</p>
<p>Before their deaths, both Latinx women had been repeatedly sexually harassed by other male soldiers and had reported incidents to their supervisors, who failed to report them further up the chain of command. Such cases overshadowed any excitement about the recent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/26/women-combat-military-special-forces/">ten-year anniversary</a> of women formally serving in ground combat roles in the US military.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Protesters carry a poster in memory of murdered US soldier Vanessa Guillén" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/526319/original/file-20230515-22982-2iwegm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters march in support of the murdered US soldier Vanessa Guillén, July 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-yorkunited-states07102020peaceful-march-vanessa-1778387528">Jewjewbeed/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mollie deployed to Afghanistan as part of a female engagement team in 2009. Her career up to then had been chequered with discriminatory experiences. In some cases, there were subtle, judgmental looks. But she also described overt instances, such as the officer who, when told of her impending arrival on his unit, had responded bluntly: “I don’t want a female to work for me.”</p>
<p>Mollie said she saw the FET as a way to showcase women’s skill and value within a masculinist military institution. She felt tremendous pride for the “20 other strong women” she worked with, whose adaptability she was particularly impressed with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the FET, I saw such great women. It frustrates me that they have to put up with this [sexism] … I’ve had so much BS like that throughout my career. Seeing how amazing these women were in high-stress situations – I want to stay in and continue to fight for that, so junior marines don’t have to put up with the same sorts of sexist misogynist comments that I did.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mollie said the experience on the FET changed her, describing herself emerging as an “unapologetic feminist” responsible for more junior servicewomen. This encouraged her to re-enlist year after year. But for other women, deploying in capacities from which they were normally excluded, only to then return to gender-restricted roles, was a good reason to quit after their contract was up. As was, for many, the continued background of resistance and abuse from male colleagues.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3162.html">2014 study</a> of the US military found that “ambient sexual harassment against service women and men is strongly associated with risk of sexual assault”, with women’s sexual assault risk increasing by more than a factor of 1.5 and men’s by 1.8 when their workplace had an above-average rate of ambient sexual harassment. In 2022, the US military admitted that the epidemic of sexual assault within military ranks had <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2022/09/01/the-militarys-sexual-assault-problem-is-only-getting-worse/">worsened</a> in recent years, and that existing strategies were not working.</p>
<h2>‘Magnitude of regrets’</h2>
<p>Amid the chaotic withdrawal of US and international forces from Afghanistan in August 2021, marines threw together another female engagement team to search Afghan women and children. Two of its members, maintenance technician Nicole Gee and supply chief Johanny Rosario Pichardo, died in a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/single-suicide-bomber-killed-us-troops-afghans-isis/story?id=82676604">suicide bomb attack</a> during the evacuation that killed 13 soldiers and at least 170 Afghans.</p>
<p>Media <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/28/female-marines-killed-in-kabul/">coverage</a> remembered Gee cradling an Afghan infant as she evacuated refugees in the days leading up to the attack, underscoring how female soldiers like her did high-risk jobs that came into being through gender expectations of women as caregivers.</p>
<p>Writing to me in 2023, ten years after her deployment to Afghanistan, Rochelle reflected that the departure of US soldiers could be “a whirlwind of emotions if you let it”. She added: “My anger lies with the exit of our own [US forces]. The magnitude of regrets, I hope, lay heavy on someone’s conscience.”</p>
<p>The experiences of Rochelle and other female soldiers in Afghanistan complicate any simplistic representations of them as trailblazers for equal rights in the US military. Their untreated injuries, unrecognised duties, and abusive working conditions make for a much more ambivalent blend of subjugation and pathbreaking.</p>
<p>And even as their position helped formalise the role of US women in combat, this happened through the reinforcement of gender stereotypes and racist representations of Afghan people. In fact, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tql5uPP0qE">Afghan women had long been mobilising</a> on their own terms – largely unintelligible to the US military – and <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-03-16/the-persecution-of-female-protestors-in-afghanistan-the-taliban-ran-me-over-and-tried-to-kill-me.html">continue to do so</a>, with extraordinary bravery, now that the Taliban is back in control of their country.</p>
<p>It is devastating, but not surprising, that the military occupation of Afghanistan did not ultimately improve women’s rights. The current situation summons feminist perspectives that challenge war as a solution to foreign policy problems and work against the forms of racism that make people into enemies.</p>
<p>Following the withdrawal from Afghanistan, US Army female engagement teams have been reassembled and deployed to train foreign militaries from <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/5693812/fearless-females-unite-empower-one-another">Jordan</a> to <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/image/3252982/24th-meu-female-engagement-team-trains-with-romanian-troops">Romania</a>. As we enter the third decade of the post-9/11 wars, we should revisit how these wars were justified in the name of women’s rights, and how little these justifications have actually accomplished for women – whether in the marine corps barracks of Quantico, Virginia, or on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan.</p>
<p><em>*All names and some details have been changed to protect the identities of the interviewees.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-my-20-years-in-afghanistan-taught-me-about-the-taliban-and-how-the-west-consistently-underestimates-them-167927?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban – and how the west consistently underestimates them
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/can-wars-no-longer-be-won-126068?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Can wars no longer be won?
</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-inside-story-of-the-cia-v-russia-from-cold-war-conspiracy-to-black-propaganda-in-ukraine-188550?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">The inside story of the CIA v Russia – from cold war conspiracy to ‘black’ propaganda in Ukraine
</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Greenburg has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Association of American Geographers, Stanford University, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and the Department of Geography and the Graduate Division at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press).</span></em></p>Women who served in unofficial combat and intelligence roles during the Afghanistan war offer brutally honest accounts of their experiences.Jennifer Greenburg, Lecturer in International Relations, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2038412023-04-24T20:05:49Z2023-04-24T20:05:49ZAuxiliary power: in wartime, Australian women fought germs, fired shells – and took on gender norms<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521212/original/file-20230417-20-gtvbnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1599%2C1180&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Australian Army Medical Women's Service at work in the sterilising room of a military hospital, 1943. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sheila Sibley enlisted in the Australian Army in 1942 with a vision of becoming a wartime nurse – “an angel of mercy, the wounded man’s guide … the Rose of No-Man’s Land”, in her own words. </p>
<p>Many women wanted to “do their bit” during the second world war, and nursing had previously been the only avenue for women to join the military. They had historically been excluded from traditionally masculine roles within the armed forces.</p>
<p>Sibley, however, never became a nurse. Ideas of becoming “this war’s Florence Nightingale” were let go, and nursing was left to those who had trained for it. </p>
<p><a href="https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE777533&mode=browse">Private Sheila Sibley</a> instead served in a hospital kitchen and then laundry. </p>
<p>The establishment of women’s auxiliaries to Australia’s military in the early 1940s created new opportunities for women. This included expanded roles in military hospitals, but also jobs that reached far beyond the hospital ward. Women were called to serve as signallers and telegraph operators, mechanics, and even coastal artillery and anti-aircraft gunners.</p>
<p>These jobs were a clear break from the expected role of women at the time.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://www.impact.acu.edu.au/community/paying-tribute-to-the-legacy-of-women-at-war?home=true">my research shows</a> servicewomen like Sibley had to fight on another front: to have their contributions to the war acknowledged, in a time when much of their efforts were considered “women’s work”.</p>
<h2>The battle for hygiene</h2>
<p>In January 1941, 200 Australian servicewomen marched-in as orderlies to support Army nurses working in the Middle East. At first, they were given laborious jobs such as reclaiming bandages for reuse, “regardless of how revolting they were”, according to Sibley’s colleague Alice Penman.</p>
<p>Soon the nursing sisters trained the female orderlies in tasks such as <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C48011">dressing patient wounds</a>. </p>
<p>Stories from servicewomen in the Middle East were returned to Australia and they encouraged other women to join them. “Work hard,” said servicewoman Rita Hind, “because I am sure it is going to be a marvellous experience.”</p>
<p>Military officials also heard the stories of these women and noticed they had become a skilled and useful resource for the hospital. </p>
<p>In December 1942, these servicewomen were given their own branch of the Army, known as the <a href="https://www.dva.gov.au/newsroom/latest-news-veterans/80th-anniversary-australian-army-medical-womens-service">Australian Army Medical Women’s Service</a>. With the creation of the new auxiliary, servicewomen’s roles in military hospitals expanded to include those alongside nurses in patient wards and operating theatres, to those “behind the scenes” of hospitals such as in pathology laboratories, kitchens, laundries, and postal and telegraph offices. </p>
<p>Assigned duties that were considered then as “menial”, “domestic” or the “work of a housewife”, servicewomen working in the fundamental areas of hospital efficiency struggled to be seen.</p>
<p>Today, the COVID pandemic has illustrated the important work of all those who contribute to the health system. But there are few stories told about the historical work of women who toiled behind the scenes to ensure military hospitals ran efficiently and effectively during the second world war.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522270/original/file-20230421-14-kixpzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Private Sheila Sibley, at the 115th Australian General Hospital in Heidelberg in Melbourne’s northeast, c.1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Posted to duty in the laundry of the 115 Australian General Hospital (AGH) at Heidelberg, Victoria, Sibley came to appreciate that the laundry was fundamental to the maintenance of hygiene in hospitals. “Everyone who works in a laundry at an AGH,” Sibley suggests, “is fighting for the lives of the wounded as steadfastly as that clever surgeon.”</p>
<p>The correlation between hygiene and the health and recovery of patients was still in its infancy in the 1940s. Laundry work was also still considered to be “women’s work”.</p>
<p>Sibley stood up against the gendered portrayals of her wartime work. A hospital laundry bears no resemblance to its domestic counterpart with its industrial machinery to wash, dry, iron and fold linen and clothes. To Sibley, the laundry was the battlefront and the machines her weapons. She wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What may look like a washing machine in our big military hospitals is really artillery firing its rounds of good clean washing against the enemies, disease and death. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Fighting stereotypes</h2>
<p>The strategy of other servicewomen to break from gendered boundaries was less overt.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C229532">Sergeant Thelma Powell</a> quietly worked in her role at the No. 1 Facio-Maxillary and Plastic Unit where she became an artist painting artificial eyes for injured soldiers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522272/original/file-20230421-14-lumy04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Private EM Boyle sitting for Sergeant Thelma Powell, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before the war, Powell had an interest in fine art through her hobby of smoke-etching china. It was through her fine attention to detail and her meticulous care in the highly technical work of painting artificial eyes that Powell pushed back on expectations of women at the time.</p>
<p>Powell showed that the skills from a “hobby for women” could be applied to an important occupation directly affecting the rehabilitation and lives of injured men.</p>
<p>Given the ingrained gendered expectations within society at the time, the attempts of those like Powell and Sibley to highlight servicewomen’s work and afford their labour proper recognition were overshadowed.</p>
<p>Patients noticed their care, and medical professionals relied on their service, but their stories have not been told.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ladies-to-the-front-the-hidden-history-of-women-in-australian-airforce-bands-172947">Ladies to the front: the hidden history of women in Australian airforce bands</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jason Smeaton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nursing had traditionally been the only avenue for women to join the military. But the creation of women’s auxiliaries in the early 1940s created new opportunities for women.Jason Smeaton, PhD Candidate, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021862023-03-21T16:27:23Z2023-03-21T16:27:23ZWomen and war crimes: why so few are prosecuted, and what happens when they are<p>Within days of the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Criminal Court (ICC) <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-qc-situation-ukraine-receipt-referrals-39-states">opened an investigation</a> into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the resulting war. On March 17 2023, the ICC <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and">issued its first arrest warrants</a> against two Russian government officials. While significant attention has rightfully been paid to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-iccs-putin-arrest-warrant-may-be-symbolic-but-must-be-the-beginning-of-holding-the-russian-leader-accountable-201907">arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin</a>, much less has been said about the charges brought against Maria Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights. </p>
<p>The ICC alleges that Lvova-Belova engaged in two different war crimes described in Article 8 of the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Elements-of-Crimes.pdf">court’s statute</a>. Both relate to the unlawful deportation or transfer of the civilian population of an occupied country.</p>
<p>The warrants are based on the theory that Lvova-Belova, either acting individually or as part of a plan, removed orphans from Ukraine and deported them to Russia, where they have been adopted by Russian families. It has also <a href="https://hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/apps/sites/#/home/pages/children-camps-1">been reported</a> (although not specifically stated in the warrants) that Ukrainian children have been sent to reeducation camps in Russia for the purpose of promoting cultural, historical, societal and patriotic messages or ideas that serve Russian political interests. </p>
<p>Lvova-Belova’s situation is rare in international criminal law. She is only the second woman against whom charges have been brought by the ICC, and the sixth female suspect at any international criminal justice institution. In contrast, women are often the victims of international crimes – rape and other forms of violence against women occur frequently during armed conflicts. Despite this, prosecutions for these crimes have proved difficult. The ICC often prosecutes for rape and other crimes of sexual violence, but it has only secured <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/dominic-ongwen-declared-guilty-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-committed-uganda">two</a> <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-trial-chamber-vi-declares-bosco-ntaganda-guilty-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity">convictions</a> for those crimes.</p>
<p>There is no clear explanation about why women have so rarely been the subject of international criminal prosecutions. It is not that women do not commit international crimes – many have been convicted in national courts for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55661782">second world war</a>, the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13907693">Rwandan genocide</a> and the war in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/10/gender.uk1">former Yugoslavia</a>. </p>
<p>One reason women are not often prosecuted by international criminal courts and tribunals could relate to the small number serving in senior leadership positions in many countries. While it is not unheard of for the ICC to prosecute more junior officials, their approach has largely been to pursue more senior government and military officials. </p>
<p>In Russia, women occupy fewer than 10% of senior leadership positions in the government and the military. Of the 31 senior leadership positions in the Russian government, <a href="http://government.ru/en/gov/persons/#vice-premiers">only three are women</a>. There are also only three women among the 35 people identified as <a href="https://eng.mil.ru/en/management.htm">major staff and key officials</a> in Putin’s executive office. </p>
<p>Women are even more underrepresented in Russian military leadership. One of <a href="https://eng.mil.ru/en/management.htm">13 senior</a> Russian military leaders is a woman. Simply put, women in Russia may be committing crimes that are of interest to the ICC, but lack the seniority to be considered among those who bear the greatest criminal responsibility.</p>
<h2>When women commit war crimes</h2>
<p>On the rare occasions that women are pursued by international criminal courts and tribunals, gendered stereotypes are often employed in an effort to justify or excuse their criminal behaviour. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, Rwanda’s minister for family welfare and the advancement of women, was charged in 1999 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for her involvement in the 1994 genocide. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13907693">interview with the BBC</a>, she denied playing a role in the crimes, asserting that as a mother she could not have been responsible for killing another person. One of her lawyers later emphasised her protective maternal instincts <a href="https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/irrc-877-hogg.pdf">by describing her as</a> “a mother hen”. Despite this, Nyiramasuhuko was ultimately convicted in 2011 of seven charges, including genocide and incitement to commit rape.</p>
<p>Similarly, Biljana Plavšić, the former president of Srpska (a territorial entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina) was the only woman prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/10/gender.uk1">characterised in the media</a> along gendered lines, alternatively being described as “the Iron Lady of the Balkans” and “the Ice Queen”. </p>
<p>Plavšić’s defence to the charges against her were constructed around the idea that she was acting as “the mother” of her country, and that her behaviour was justified because she was protecting “her family”, the Serbian people. Plavšić ultimately pleaded guilty to the crime against humanity of persecution and served two-thirds of an 11-year sentence. But she later repudiated her plea, insisting that she had done nothing wrong.</p>
<p>These sorts of gendered narratives have also sprung up around Lvova-Belova. It <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/maria-alekseyevna-lvova-belova-accused-war-crime-1788581">has been reported</a> that at times the Russian media has referred to her as “Mother Russia”. She <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230113-mother-russia-maria-lvova-belova-the-putin-ally-deporting-ukrainian-children">has described herself</a> as the saviour of Russian children, helping to shield them from the violence of war. </p>
<p>She also adopted one of the children transported from the occupied portion of the Donbas region in Ukraine. She uses that adoption <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/17/vladimir-putin-arrest-warrant-ukraine-war-crimes">to suggest</a> that she understands what it means to be the mother of a deported child.</p>
<p>Taken together, this paints a picture of someone justifying their actions on the basis of their role as a mother, while simultaneously downplaying the political dimensions of their behaviour. Should this case ever come to trial, it is reasonable to surmise that a similar strategy will be deployed in her defence. As a result, it is crucial for the ICC to ensure that the case against her is evaluated on its merits, and not a constructed gender identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202186/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caleb Wheeler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Maria Lvova-Belova, wanted by the ICC along with Vladimir Putin, is one of a handful of women to be prosecuted in international criminal law.Caleb Wheeler, Lecturer in Law, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1729472022-03-15T18:58:57Z2022-03-15T18:58:57ZLadies to the front: the hidden history of women in Australian airforce bands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439969/original/file-20220110-15-wk26ye.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C613%2C478&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Military bands, with their shiny instruments, formal uniforms and precision marching are one of the most instantly recognisable symbols of a nation’s defence forces. As such, throughout much of history, their membership as been limited to men: Australian defence force bands only <a href="https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.unimelb.edu.au/dist/6/184/files/2017/02/14_Bannister-1q5lamh.pdf">formally welcomed women</a> into their ranks after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination act in 1984.</p>
<p>Despite this, during World War II, a groundbreaking group of women serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) performed alongside their male Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) counterparts to form some of the earliest documented mixed-gender defence force bands in the world. </p>
<p>At the beginning of World War II women were only allowed to serve in the defence force as nurses. As the war progressed, <a href="http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/explore-history/australia-wwii/home-wii/womens-auxiliary-services">women’s auxiliary services</a> were formed by the army, navy and air force to fill non-combat positions left vacant by men serving overseas. </p>
<p>I first became aware of the existence of WAAAF performers in supposedly all-male RAAF bands while I was conducting research on the history of Australia’s defence force bands. I was contacted by Olive Jardine (née McNeil), who had joined the WAAAF during World War II and who had played with her local RAAF band during that time. </p>
<p>I was so sure that these bandsmen had, indeed, all been bands<i>men</i> that I almost dismissed her, politely informing Olive the parameters of my study meant I couldn’t include women’s auxiliary bands. </p>
<p>But Olive was resolute. </p>
<p>She assured me that although she had served with the WAAAF, she had been invited to join her base’s RAAF band due to a shortage of male musicians during the war. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/AA45TVG9DIBNPMBUIVPN/full?target=10.1080/08145857.2021.2000849">I was soon to discover</a> she was just one of many such women: up to a quarter of RAAF bands had at least one female member during World War II.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-in-australias-military-on-the-frontline-of-the-gender-war-3711">Women in Australia's military: On the frontline of the gender war</a>
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<h2>Volunteer-led bands</h2>
<p>World War II saw a rapid increase in the number of all-female bands and orchestras, and in Australia the army, navy and air force all formed women-only auxiliary bands. While women-only bands were becoming a more familiar sight, mixed-gender military bands were much rarer. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Women with drums march in front of men in lines." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440145/original/file-20220110-19-f7zkix.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women’s only bands, pictured here leading RAAF personnel in 1944, were common.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the USA, a couple of bands featured <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Bands_of_Sisters.html?id=S6zRabb3Hw8C&redir_esc=y">visiting women</a> – but RAAF bands are the only defence force bands known to regularly feature men and women playing together at this time.</p>
<p>Australia’s army and navy were well established by World War II, and so had more ingrained traditions, including professional bands. But as a newer division of the defence force, only formed in 1921, RAAF bands were still volunteer bands made up of any interested members serving on base. </p>
<p>In the army and navy, musicians served together as a unit and the different regulations for members of women’s auxiliary forces made it impossible for them to join these bands. </p>
<p>However RAAF bands worked more like the many volunteer sports clubs on bases, with little (if any) oversight from air force hierarchy, opening the door for members of the WAAAF to join. </p>
<h2>Ladies to the front</h2>
<p>Olive’s story is typical of the young women joining these bands. </p>
<p>Keen to help with the war effort, she signed up to the WAAAF as an accounts clerk and was stationed at Uranquinty in New South Wales. An experienced piano teacher, she volunteered to play organ at church services where she was approached by members of the base band who were looking for new musicians. They offered to teach her to play tenor horn, and she became the band’s only female member. </p>
<p>It wasn’t always a case of the odd-woman out. The Mallala band in South Australia had as many as six female members at any one time.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439987/original/file-20220110-9511-q0jz92.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A combined RAAF and WAAAF Band marching in 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other women even held leadership positions in their bands. In Perth, Hannah Colley, whose father was a bandsmen in World War I, was given the prestigious role of playing the bugle calls at Perth’s 1944 Armistice Day ceremony, a role usually given to the most skilled bugler in the band. </p>
<p>She would go on to <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/S00719">post-war career</a> playing in concert parties as a musician in the Army’s Entertainment Unit. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Mary Palmer stood in as acting Drum Major in her band in Ascot Vale, Victoria, after learning to swing a mace by practising with a broom.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C327%2C457&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C327%2C457&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439964/original/file-20220110-22-10v5r1r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drum Major Mary Parker, photographed in Melbourne in 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The loss – and return – of women</h2>
<p>The pioneering women serving in RAAF bands during World War II performed proudly, and even held leadership positions alongside men. </p>
<p>After the war, the RAAF introduced its first professional band service. Entry was now restricted to men who had auditioned and who were employed by the air force solely for their musical skills. The WAAAF was discontinued in 1947 and reformed as the Womens Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAF) in 1950, however, women were not eligible to join the band corps until the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act some 40 years later. </p>
<p>Perhaps one of the most refreshing aspects of these stories is the way these ground-breaking women were supported by their communities. Olive’s male bandmates taught her to play tenor horn, local newspapers proudly reported on the performances of their local WAAAF members and Hannah chose to follow in her father’s footsteps to become a defence force musician. </p>
<p>The musicians of the WAAAF proved to the Australian public that women could work as equals alongside men, both on the parade ground and on stage, paving the way for the generations who came after them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthea Skinner is a McKenzie Fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She also receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council for the Arts. </span></em></p>Australian defence force bands only formally welcomed women in the 1980s – but during the second world war, women often performed with the RAAF bands.Anthea Skinner, Postdoctoral research associate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1115632019-02-18T14:26:08Z2019-02-18T14:26:08ZTracing the history of Mozambique’s mysterious and deadly insurgency<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/259002/original/file-20190214-1748-193gr4g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique, provides fertile ground for extremism. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province has been held hostage by insurgents for nearly 17 months. Armed attacks, decapitations and the destruction of property have <a href="https://theconversation.com/mozambiques-own-version-of-boko-haram-is-tightening-its-deadly-grip-98087">become common</a>. Many are worried that the violence may escalate and destabilise the country’s economy further. </p>
<p>One of the biggest problems is that nobody really knows who the insurgents are. They don’t make public statements, so their motives are unclear.</p>
<p>Speculation and conspiracy theories abound. Many, including state officials and the new president of the <a href="https://macua.blogs.com/files/perdiz-n%C2%BA-245.pdf">Renamo opposition party</a>, believe the insurgency is part of a struggle within the national elite for the control of Cabo Delgado’s oil, gas and mineral riches. </p>
<p>The government offers few – and contradictory – explanations. It has said both that the violence is committed by local unemployed <a href="https://clubofmozambique.com/news/no-attacks-in-cabo-delgado-just-crimes-say-police-mozambique">“criminals”</a>, and that the attacks are the result of <a href="https://clubofmozambique.com/news/president-nyusi-warns-that-cabo-delgado-terrorists-can-spread-to-other-neighbouring-countries/">global jihadism trying to move into Mozambique</a>.</p>
<p>Lack of information and clashing explanations have led to confusion as to what’s happening in Northern Mozambique and what should be done to reverse the situation. </p>
<h2>Roots of insurgency</h2>
<p>The local population calls the group behind the attacks “al-Shabaab”. This means “youth” in Arabic and refers, of course, to the global terror group in Somalia (though the Mozambican insurgents have no formal links to them). In Mozambique, the group’s origins go back to the 2000s, when some young men within the Islamic Council of Mozambique began to develop a <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lusotopie/1074#ftn89">new reading and practice of Islam</a>. </p>
<p>In Cabo Delgado, they created a sub-organisation within the Islamic Council called <a href="https://www.dn.pt/lusa/interior/academico-recomenda-cuidado-ao-governo-para-nao-alienar-apoio-popular-no-norte-de-mocambique-10470432.html">“Ansaru-Sunna”</a> which registered legally with the state. It built new mosques and preached a stricter form of Islam across the province. Soon, a more radical and activist group formed within this sub-organisation and split off as a sect – what has become known locally as “al-Shabaab”.</p>
<p>This group initially concerned itself with religious debates, practice and opposition to the secular state. In 2010 the villagers of Nhacole in the Balama district decided to get rid of the group and destroyed its mosque. Sect members fled to the town of Mucojo, in the district of Macomia. There tensions flared with the local population and authorities. </p>
<p>The police had to intervene twice in Mucojo. In 2015 they were called in because the sect tried to forcefully impose a ban of alcohol in the town. Death and injuries ensued when a sect member fatally <a href="http://www.jornaldomingo.co.mz/index.php/reportagem/7791-tumultos-em-pangane-provocam-morte-e-feridos">stabbed a policeman</a>. </p>
<h2>Resort to arms</h2>
<p>Mainstream Muslim organisations and individuals, among them the Islamic Council from which the “al-Shabaab” sect split off, were disquieted by the group’s actions. They repeatedly <a href="https://www.dw.com/pt-002/ataque-em-moc%C3%ADmboa-da-praia-ter%C3%A1-sido-caso-isolado/a-40977442">asked the government to intervene</a>.</p>
<p>In late 2016, the government finally acceded to their request and began to arrest and bring some group leaders to court across the province. The men were accused of engaging in disinformation, rejecting state authority, refusing to send their children to school, and <a href="http://www.magazineindependente.com/www2/detidos-tres-membros-grupo-muculmano-promove-desinformacao-cabo-delgado">using knives to protect themselves</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not clear when the “al-Shabaab” members began to train militarily, but the state’s actions against their leaders seem to have been the tipping point towards their passing to armed action. Their <a href="http://opais.sapo.mz/jovens-radicais-sonham-com-califado-em-mocimboa-da-praia-">first attack</a> was in October 2017 in the town of Mocímboa da Praia and surrounding communities.</p>
<p>Since then, sect members have taken to the bush from where they attack isolated villages. The number of attacks and their brutality increased steadily in 2018. The insurgency seems to have become more organised. Its attacks and activities have focused on a coastal band about 150kms wide, from the provincial capital of Pemba to the Tanzanian border. </p>
<h2>Seeds of discontent</h2>
<p>It is clear, then, that the insurgency has built on some local social, religious and political tensions. Cabo Delgado is Mozambique’s poorest province; unemployment is high, particularly among the youth. It’s also largely rural. <a href="https://globalinitiative.net/northern_mozambique_violence/">Government services are not reliable</a>.</p>
<p>Major recent oil and gas <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/03/africa/mozambique-oil-and-gas-hub/index.html">discoveries in the area</a> have generated many expectations, but communities have seen <a href="https://clubofmozambique.com/news/poverty-and-unemployment-fuels-cabo-delgado-insurgency-admits-nyusi-by-joseph-hanlon/">very few, if any, benefits, particularly in rural areas</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, the fact that Muslims feel particularly marginalised in Cabo Delgado, where their ethnic neighbours have had <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/lusotopie/1410">privileged access to national political power since independence</a>, helps explain how an anti-state Islamist discourse may have gained traction.</p>
<p>Another aspect is the group’s international connections. Much has been said about <a href="http://www.verdade.co.mz/nacional/67947-atanasio-mtumuke-reinsiste-que-os-ataques-armados-em-cabo-delgado-tem-mao-externa">links to Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda</a>. But most connections are with Tanzania.</p>
<p>Mozambican Islamic clerics have trained in Tanzania for more than a century and exchanges have taken place for longer, among religious communities on both sides of the border. So it’s unsurprising that the Mozambican “al-Shabaab” connected with like-minded Muslims in Tanzania in the 2010s.</p>
<p>After Tanzanian radicals became violent and the state <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/tanzania">responded forcefully against them after 2015</a>, and <a href="https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2017/282841.htm">particularly strongly in early 2017</a>, some of them took refuge with the Mozambican “al-Shabaab”. This has reinforced and partially internationalised the insurgency.</p>
<h2>Seeking solutions</h2>
<p>Since the “al-Shabaab” in Mozambique is not the result of an internal or external conspiracy, the state needs to focus on the social, religious and political dynamics at play to control and combat the insurgency.</p>
<p>While the Mozambican army has managed successfully to contain the geographical spread of the armed sect, the government needs to focus with equal force on redressing the local grievances which the insurgents are tapping into.</p>
<p>Mozambican scholar <a href="https://pt.euronews.com/2018/10/05/yussuf-adam-nega-jihadismo-nos-ataques-de-cabo-delgado">Yussuf Adam</a> has put forward an interesting idea to start addressing these grievances. He argues that the state should hold district “general estate assemblies” to identify issues, and to design solutions from the bottom up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Morier-Genoud does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Speculation and conspiracy theories abound about the Mozambican insurgents leaving a trail of violence in resource rich Cabo Delgado.Eric Morier-Genoud, Senior Lecturer in African history, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1014732018-08-14T23:01:29Z2018-08-14T23:01:29ZWhy war evolved to be a man’s game – and why that’s only now changing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231887/original/file-20180814-2906-sxnxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/us-soldiers-giving-salute-716351914?src=9U2Ns5Na0uerisvkm8YKKQ-1-2">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One pattern characterises every war that’s ever been fought. Frontline fighting in warfare is primarily and often almost exclusively a male activity. From a numbers perspective, bigger armies obviously have greater chances of success in battles. Why then, are half of a community’s potential warriors (the women) usually absent from the battlefield?</p>
<p>Previous hypotheses have suggested that this is the result of fundamental biological differences between the sexes. But our new study, published in <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/lookup/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0975">Proceedings B</a>, finds that none of these differences fully explain why women have almost never gone to war, and nor are they needed to do so. Instead, this state of affairs might have more to do with chance.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390008437810">Some researchers</a> have proposed that since men are on average stronger, taller, and faster than women, they are simply more effective in winning battles. <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10359.html">Others</a> have suggested that this pattern occurs because the costs of warfare are lower for men, as the risks of dying or being injured are offset by the opportunity to obtain more sexual partners in case of victory. This isn’t true for women because they can only produce a limited number of offspring and so there’s little or no evolutionary advantage to obtaining more partners.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743814?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Others still</a> have argued the answer can be found in the fact that females in groups of ancestral great apes and humans were more likely to migrate. This supposedly means that women are less genetically related to their social group than men, and so are less keen to risk their lives for their communities.</p>
<p>Granted, these hypotheses all suggest plausible reasons why more men than women participate in wars. But they fall short on explaining why the fighting is almost always done by men. We set out to answer this question, developing a mathematical model of the evolution of male and female participation in warfare, building on some of <a href="http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1849/20162699.long">our previous work</a> in this area. Our model looks at the consequences of going to war on a person’s fitness, and for the fitness of their genetic relatives, to work out the probability that a person will join in the fighting.</p>
<h2>Modelling the evolution of warfare</h2>
<p>Before investigating each of the proposed explanations in detail, we decided we should better understand the simplest case where there are no sex differences. We designed a model that looked at men and women as two identical groups, and didn’t take account of the sexes’ different characteristics when working out the probability of an individual joining in a war. To our surprise, we found that exclusively male warfare could still evolve in this case.</p>
<p>Instead, our model showed that what was important was how many members of a person’s sex were already taking part in warfare at any given point, and how that affected sexual competition for mates with other people of the same sex. For example, if lots of men are already fighting, then the risks to an individual man would be lower and the potential rewards higher, but the there would be much less incentive for a woman to take part.</p>
<p>This evolutionary pressure means that, if there was then even a small reason why men might be more likely to fight, over many generations the incentives for men to join in would grow until warfare became an almost exclusively male practice.</p>
<p>But as our hypothetical model worked on the basis that men and women were identical, for every potential evolutionary trajectory that led to exclusively male warfare, there would be another that led to exclusively female warfare. Whether male-only war or female-only war evolved in our model depended only on the initial question of which sex was more likely to go to war to start with.</p>
<p>So, if both outcomes are equally plausible, why is warfare in fact almost exclusively male? Our study also suggests that male competition over mates and resources – an aspect of what biologists call <a href="https://theconversation.com/male-female-ah-whats-the-difference-12786">sexual selection</a> – might have caused men to evolve to be generally more aggressive than women. This was probably enough to make men more likely to go to war from the outset. And our model explains why this would ultimately lead to male-only war parties. Greater physical strength, together with lower costs and higher genetic links to the rest of the group, may have then helped reinforce this pattern.</p>
<p>But initial conditions could have – in theory – been different. Had women been naturally more aggressive, they would have become the warring sex and we would now live in a world of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-the-amazons-the-real-wonder-women-78248">Amazon-like</a> female-only wars. Interestingly, this is the case in some other animal societies that engage in inter-group conflicts. In <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1439-0310.2001.00672.x">spotted hyenas</a>, for example, only females attack other packs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231886/original/file-20180814-2903-1ngk5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women in combat roles are increasingly common.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/soldier-his-wife-battlefield-area-311412740?src=JD5GFNONO04KdM4GaZ4-JA-1-11">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The past and the future of war</h2>
<p>One implication of our study is that past ecological conditions can have very long-lasting effects. The evolution of men as the more aggressive of the sexes led to a pattern of male-dominated warfare that was unlikely to be altered by changing technological or ecological forces.</p>
<p>Consider the role of weapons, for example. When warfare initially evolved, men were likely more aggressive and might have been more effective at fighting, because primitive weapons relied on brute force. As a result, they went on to become the warring sex. Later, inventions such as the bow and arrow made physical sex differences in strength less important. In more recent times, further technological advances have effectively equalised men and women in their ability to fight opponents. But, as male-only war has already evolved, these technological changes have little or no impact. Only initial conditions matter.</p>
<p>As such, this long-lasting effect of ancestral behavioural differences might help explain why women’s presence in the armed forces today is still limited. Yet, perhaps culture is now having a greater role, at least partially overriding the biological basis for exclusively male warfare. The countries that have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/01/25/map-which-countries-allow-women-in-front-line-combat-roles/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bc047df850bd">opened military combat roles</a> to women in response <a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-myths-about-women-on-the-military-frontline-and-why-we-shouldnt-believe-them-55594">to changing attitudes</a>, and the recent reports of <a href="https://theconversation.com/kurdish-troops-fight-for-freedom-and-womens-equality-on-battlegrounds-across-middle-east-91364">Kurdish women fighting Islamic State</a> are testaments to that.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alberto J. C. Micheletti receives funding from School of Biology, University of St Andrews (PhD studentship). </span></em></p>Men have come to dominate military combat but new evidence suggests this might be more an accident than an inevitability of evolution.Alberto Micheletti, PhD Candidate in Evolutionary Biology, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/937542018-03-21T14:14:02Z2018-03-21T14:14:02ZHow women are collaborating to tell stories that break through the noise on Syria<p>Between the news coverage, reportage and statistics around the ongoing Syrian civil war and the battle against Islamic State the firsthand experiences of ordinary civilians on the frontlines are difficult to source and expose. Yet these are often the very stories that can often provide crucial wartime evidence, chronicle social and historic shifts, or unearth true narratives that can counter official ones. And these stories are increasingly found on our bookshelves rather than on the newsstands.</p>
<p>From testimonies to short stories, graphic novels to memoirs, female writers, journalists and survivors are currently fronting the literatures of war, conflict and exile. The past two years have seen a surge of books and memoirs authored by women that capture the far-reaching human consequences of the Syrian civil war. Amid the fatigued reportage on its increasingly more complex escalations – and the cynical moves of other nations vested in opposing outcomes – these are compelling testaments to what befalls ordinary people as a consequence of fanaticism and powerful interests.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211309/original/file-20180321-165554-ejr8oa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Personal account.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A remarkable example is Farida Khalaf’s 2016 memoir <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/01/the-girl-who-beat-isis-my-story-farida-khalaf-andrea-c-hoffman">The Girl Who Beat ISIS</a>. Khalaf and her family are Yazidis, members of a Kurdish-speaking minority who follow an ancient, pre-Islamic faith. The book recounts how Islamic State crossed the border into their mountainside village in northern Iraq, killing the men, recruiting the boys, and taking women and girls to slave markets in Raqqa. </p>
<p>Through testimonies of those such as Khalaf, the genocide against the Yazidis was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-election/cuba-holds-one-party-vote-as-post-castro-era-looms-idUSKCN1GN05H">officially recognised</a> by the UN. Khalaf, in collaboration with German journalist Andrea C. Hoffmann, shaped their series of detailed interviews into a first-person narrative. Despite the indiscriminate violence visited on whole communities and towns, her memoir reminds that what women have suffered at the hands of IS, and what they continue to endure in refugee camps, is further devastating still.</p>
<h2>Human consequences</h2>
<p>Kate Evans’ graphic novel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2017/jun/20/threads-a-refugees-story-in-words-and-pictures-world-refugee-day-extract">Threads: From the Refugee Crisis</a>, though different in perspective and style, tells the stories of equally vulnerable people. Volunteering in Calais in 2015-2016, Evans bore close witness to the situation of asylum seekers in the so-called “Jungle”. Accustomed as we are to seeing quick news segments, these drawings are slow documentation at its best. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211310/original/file-20180321-165554-1gnbqbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graphic novel based on interviews in the Jungle in Calais.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Verso Books</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Its detailed visualisation of ordinary life under extraordinary circumstances enables Threads to vividly capture life in temporary shelters, the direct human consequences of European leaders’ political manoeuvres and the remarkable hospitality of those who have lost everything. Unafraid of checking her privilege and keeping refugees’ stories in the foreground, Evans depicts what reportage on Calais did not – indeed perhaps could not – capture.</p>
<h2>Vivid testimonies</h2>
<p>Interviews are often less depersonalising, but even they can sometimes ventriloquise already vulnerable voices. <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2018/we-crossed-a-bridge">We Crossed A Bridge And It Trembled</a> avoids this imbalance by presenting the direct testimonies of more than 300 Syrians living across the Middle East and Europe. American scholar Wendy Pearlman’s book gathers four years of firsthand narratives chronicling the Syrian rebellion, civil war and displacement. </p>
<p>The results unfold the extraordinary trajectory of the conflict in Syrians’ own words. The men’s accounts paint a vivid picture of life under Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian regime, the build up of revolutionary momentum, and the devastation that followed. The female voices here, however, often transport the reader directly into these experiences. One young woman describes her first anti-regime demonstration in electrifying words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I started to whisper, Freedom. And then I started shouting, Freedom! I thought to myself, this is the first time I have ever heard my own voice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For some, finding the stories themselves comes with the highest of stakes. Having left Syria with her daughter in 2011 when the regime pursued her, writer and journalist Samar Yazbek secretly returned in 2012 hoping to set up a civic institution for women’s empowerment. The devastated homeland she found took shape into her latest book, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/review-the-crossing-my-journey-to-the-shattered-heart-of-syria-by-samar-yazbek-1.2303223">The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=966&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211316/original/file-20180321-165580-mhi1wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1214&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samar Yazbek: tipped as one of the top young Arab writers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yazbek’s account is a hauntingly good piece of literature – less than a decade ago, under vastly different circumstances, she was among Hay Festival’s top <a href="http://www.hayfestival.com/beirut39/authors39.aspx?skinid=6">young Arab writers</a>. Yazbek, although a longtime dissident, is an Alawite <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/syrias-alawites-the-people-behind-assad-1435166941">like the Assad family</a> – so to travel in rebel-held regions and speak to jihadis, as she recounts doing, seems an almost suicidal undertaking. The Crossing is unforgettable when it thus entwines the personal and the political, as well as in its powerful lament: for girls snatched from childhood, and a homeland that has become unrecognisable.</p>
<p>All sides of the conflict in the region have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/16/i-screamed-but-no-one-came-the-horrifying-sexual-violence-facing-syrias-girls/?utm_term=.b08a0085ad5d">entrenched the abuse of women</a>. Dangerous journeys to Europe – and that often only to the limbo of refugee camps, rarely promise a way out. It recently <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjj0oyg4OLZAhVRqaQKHV3GDxIQFggpMAA&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/women-in-syria-sexually-exploited-in-return-for-aid-df0kxnw20&usg=AOvVaw1vUG54DvyKp2FKG6LupMlh">came to light</a> that humanitarian workers in Syria had been demanding sex from refugee women for UN food aid. </p>
<p>The sad fact is that this is a body of literature that can only grow as the true costs of this war for women continue to mount. But these books are a vital start.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Jilani receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK and the Isaac Newton Trust.</span></em></p>A vivid and remarkable body of writing is emerging to highlight the human cost of the war in Syria.Sarah Jilani, PhD Student, Faculty of English, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/899512018-02-02T10:29:01Z2018-02-02T10:29:01ZHow Yemeni women are fighting the war<p>Since 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has waged war against Shia Houthi <a href="https://theconversation.com/saudi-air-strikes-yemen-has-been-in-a-downward-spiral-ever-since-the-arab-spring-39269">forces</a> in Yemen. <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29319423">More than 8,000 people</a> have been killed, and more than 49,000 injured; at least 69% of the population <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34011187">is reportedly in need of humanitarian assistance</a>. Million of Yemenis <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-n-aid-groups-warn-starvation-death-yemen-n818956">are facing starvation</a>. Weapons circulation is widespread and uncontrolled: in 2016, a UN report estimated that between <a href="http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/s_2015_125.pdf">40m to 60m firearms were circulating freely in the country</a>.</p>
<p>The conflict has had a devastating impact on the women of the country. Household breadwinners are usually men; many are fighting, injured or killed. There is an economic crisis in the private sector, and many public sector jobs are no longer paying salaries. The health and security of the female population is endangered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/12/yemen-cholera-outbreak-worst-in-history-1-million-cases-by-end-of-year">by exposure to cholera and other diseases</a>. And then there’s the issue of child marriages: the severe poverty crisis means that prepubescent girls are married off to repay debts, or to raise funds to feed <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-war-the-girl-forced-to-marry-at-11-whose-story-exposes-the-conflicts-toll-on-children-a7125151.html">the rest of the family</a>. </p>
<p>A woman from the Northern Ibb region, which is occupied by the rebel Houthi army, explained the situation to <a href="https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1125-awomen-nowadays-do-anythinga-womenas-role-in-conflict-peace-and-">a research team</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We live in a state of lawlessness: no security, no protection and no functional law enforcement authorities. A person may be shot dead for a trivial thing. The security situation doesn’t look like it did in the past. Now, there are informal groups behaving as if they were law enforcement authorities. These groups have power, and their power is the law. They use force against whoever disagrees with them or criticises their behaviour.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe has pointed out, women are crucial for war and play <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt14qrzb1">supportive roles for the military</a>. Indeed, many Yemeni women are not victims of war or just escaping or hiding from this war. In many contrasting ways, they are actively supporting it, and <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/08/opinions/yemen-women-nadia-sakkaf-asequals/index.html">not only on humanitarian grounds</a>. </p>
<h2>Women engaging in war</h2>
<p>Although many Yemeni women discourage their family members from taking part in the conflict and very few take up arms themselves, they also <a href="https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1125-awomen-nowadays-do-anythinga-womenas-role-in-conflict-peace-and-security-in-yemen">help recruit men to the army</a>. They also support combatants by cooking food for them and helping to distribute it. </p>
<p>A young woman, Nasseem Al-Odaini, whose family has fled to the neighbouring Ibb region, stayed behind in Houthi-occupied Taiz and initiated an organisation that assist the combatants that support the former government. As she told <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/yemeni-women-keep-engines-war-running-battle-taiz-846276150">Middle East Eye</a>: “We want to encourage the pro-government forces to advance in the province, by raising the spirits of the fighters”.</p>
<p>Other Yemeni women try to mitigate the impact of the conflict the best way possible. For example, women engage in humanitarian relief and in providing social and psychological support for people who have been traumatised by the war. They also engage in peace processes when they initiate discussions of the conflict <a href="https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1125-awomen-nowadays-do-anythinga-womenas-role-in-conflict-peace-and-security-in-yemen">in their communities</a>.</p>
<p>Since the war is not equally intense in every part of the country, there are better possibilities for women to participate in peace processes around the port city of Aden, in the south, than it is in the north, where the Houthi army has taken control and Saudi coalition airstrikes are part of everyday life. Accordingly, women’s conditions and activities differ from one region to another.</p>
<h2>A blocked momentum</h2>
<p>In the north, local communities are more divided (between supporters and adversaries of the Houthi government) than in the south. When women enter the public and participate in charity work, they may be questioned by “de facto authorities” (read: the Houthi army) who, according to <a href="https://www.saferworld.org.uk/resources/publications/1125-awomen-nowadays-do-anythinga-womenas-role-in-conflict-peace-and-security-in-yemen">one woman</a>, would try to prevent them from doing their work. They would also tell women that they are not allowed to appear in public before men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They [the Houthis] are opposed to women playing a role in public life. According to them, the woman’s role is restricted to cooking and housework. They marginalise women; they deny their role in the community.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women in Northern and Southern parts of Yemen <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/yemen-womens-rights-must-be-front-and-center/">are not full citizens</a>. According to Amnesty International, they “face discrimination in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody, and the state fails to take adequate measures to prevent, investigate, and punish domestic violence”. Discrimination against women in Yemen go back far beyond the war and are associated with local customs according to <a href="http://www.refworld.org/docid/47387b712f.html">several studies</a>. And yet, Yemeni women maintain their engagement in the development of their country. </p>
<h2>An old engagement</h2>
<p>During the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-12482293">popular uprising in the country in 2011</a> where hundreds of thousands of Yemenis followed the “youth movement” and protested against the corrupt reign of the then-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemeni women took to the streets to an extent that was <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/04/17/yemen.women.protest/index.html">unforeseen and unprecedented</a>. </p>
<p>Many women participants were independent of political groups, but in the later stages of the protests the Islamic Reform party – inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood – managed to take charge of the protest movement, raising independent women’s concern that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-politics-women/saleh-is-gone-but-yemen-womens-struggle-goes-on-idUSBRE83A0SX20120411">their rights would be disregarded</a>.</p>
<p>However, independent women and women belonging to the political parties, including the Islamic Reform party and the Houthi political wing, Ansar Allah, constituted almost <a href="http://www.mei.edu/content/yemens-national-dialogue">one third of participants</a>in the UN-guided National Dialogue Conference which followed the forced resignation of the President in November 2011. The aim of the 10 months long conference was to formulate a new and more democratic constitution for a united Yemen. However, the draft constitution which included <a href="http://pomed.org/blog-post/political-process/political-transition/yemens-houthis-reject-draft-constitution/">a general 30% gender quota was rejected </a> by the Houthi movement in September 2014, before the population had given their voice in a referendum. </p>
<p>By then disappointment with the process towards a new Yemen had given the Houthis wide popular support. They occupied major government institutions in the capital, Sana'a and removed the transition government recognised internationally. Interestingly, it was not the gender quota which made the Houthis reject the draft constitution, but the view to a power-sharing model <a href="http://pomed.org/blog-post/political-process/political-transition/yemens-houthis-reject-draft-constitution/">which did not give them what they expected</a>.</p>
<p>The Houthi movement’s occupation of the capital and seizure of government seemed to mark both the beginning of a war, and the end of momentum for women’s rights in Yemen – a country which generally figures in the lowest ranks of <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII">Arab gender equality indexes</a>. In 2014, a group of women from diverse political backgrounds pushed <a href="http://www.ndc.ye/news.aspx?id=4045">for political solutions</a> instead of war. Since then <a href="http://peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/What-the-Women-Say-Yemen-Winter-2016.pdf">they have been sidelined</a> from peace negotiations – but that doesn’t mean that Yemeni women have lost all hope.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Connie Christiansen received funding from The Danish foreign Ministry</span></em></p>Many Yemeni women are not victims of war or just escaping or hiding. In many and contrasting ways they are actively supporting it, and not only on humanitarian grounds.Connie Christiansen, Visiting associate professor, Lebanese American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/776472017-11-08T11:24:12Z2017-11-08T11:24:12ZBook inscriptions reveal the forgotten stories of female war heroes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193750/original/file-20171108-26977-bp9mv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/antique-pocket-watch-glasses-book-vintage-581613547?src=QE1fIjeT9_QobYbVnbrUkA-1-10">Librakv/Shuttestock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Open up a book from the late 19th or early 20th century and chances are that you will find an <a href="https://edwardianculture.com/2015/05/13/edwardian-encounters-the-edwardian-bookplate/">inscription inside the front cover</a>. Often, they are nothing more than handwritten names that state who owned the book, though some are a little more elaborate, with personalised designs used to denote hobbies and interests, tell jokes or <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-the-edwardians-bookplates-were-as-rebellious-as-modern-day-tattoos-70308">even warn against theft</a> of the book. </p>
<p>While seemingly insignificant markers of ownership, book inscriptions offer important material evidence of the various institutions, structures and tastes of Edwardian society, and act as tangible indicators of class and social mobility in early 20th century Britain. They can also reveal vast amounts of information on how both attitudes of ownership and readership varied according to geographical location, gender, age and occupation at this time.</p>
<p>My research involves collecting these inscriptions from secondhand books and working with archives to delve into the human stories behind these ownership marks. I am particularly interested in “everyday” Edwardians – the miner, the servant, the clerk – who are so often forgotten by time, yet played an essential role in ensuring Britain ran smoothly during the war years.</p>
<p>My latest work has focused on the stories of the female heroes of World War I. They weren’t fighting on the battlefield but their contributions at home and abroad were nothing short of incredible. Using the inscription marks they left in books, censuses, local history, and Imperial War Museum archives, I have tracked several untold tales, two of which I’ve written about here.</p>
<h2>Elizabeth Veronica Nisbet</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170765/original/file-20170524-25617-tyj3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth Veronica Nisbet’s inscription inside her copy of George Du Maurier’s book.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/5150825">Elizabeth Veronica Nisbet</a> was born in 1886 in Newcastle. The daughter of a colliery secretary, Nisbet was part of the lower-middle class that emerged in Britain at the end of the Victorian era. She studied art at Gateshead College before serving as a nurse with St John Ambulance and the Royal Victoria Infirmary. </p>
<p>In 1913, Nisbet’s father gave her a copy of the biography of cartoonist <a href="http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199799558/obo-9780199799558-0024.xml">George Du Maurier</a>, and inscribed it “with dear love”. Du Maurier was well-known for his <a href="https://punch.photoshelter.com/search?I_DSC=george+du+maurier&I_SDATE%5BMM%5D=&I_SDATE%5BDD%5D=DD&I_SDATE%5BYYYY%5D=YYYY&I_EDATE%5BMM%5D=&I_EDATE%5BDD%5D=DD&I_EDATE%5BYYYY%5D=YYYY&I_CITY=&I_STATE=&I_COUNTRY_ISO=&I_ORIENTATION=&I_IS_RELEASED=&I_IS_PRELEASED=&_CB_I_PR=t&_CB_I_PU=t&_CB_I_RF=t&_CB_I_RM=t&I_SORT=RANK&I_DSC_AND=t&V_ID=&G_ID=&C_ID=&_ACT=search">cartoons in the satirical magazine Punch</a>, which <a href="http://museumstjohn.org.uk/collections/vad-nurse-veronica-nisbets-scrapbook/">inspired Nisbet’s own artwork</a>. Just one year after receiving the book, World War I broke out and Nisbet headed to France to aid wounded soldiers at St John Ambulance Brigade Hospital in Étaples. This hospital was the largest to serve the British Expeditionary Force in France and treated over 35,000 casualties. </p>
<p>Throughout these troubled times, Nisbet’s passion for art was her salvation: she kept a scrapbook of cartoons, sketches and photos, which provide an insight into wartime Étaples and the vital work of the female nurses. Looking at her artwork, it is clear that she was strongly influenced by the cartoon style of Du Maurier, suggesting that the book remained a treasured artefact to her while she was serving in France.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"837278831354359808"}"></div></p>
<p>Today Nisbet’s work is kept at the Museum of the Order of St John in London. After the war, she returned to Newcastle and worked again as a nurse until the 1920s when she became a full-time artist, travelling regularly to the US and Canada to showcase her work. She died in 1979 at the age of 93.</p>
<h2>Gabrielle de Montgeon</h2>
<p>Born in France in 1876, Gabrielle de Montgeon moved to England in 1901 and lived in Eastington Hall in Upton-on-Severn throughout her adult life. She was the daughter of a count of Normandy and part of the upper class of Edwardian society. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170772/original/file-20170524-25571-1ymbb1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gabrielle De Montgeon’s bookplate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her affluence is showcased in the privately-commissioned bookplate found inside her copy of the 1901 Print Collector’s Handbook. The use of floral wreaths and decorative banderoles in her plate – both features of the fashionable art nouveau style of the period – mimic the style of many of the prints in her book. This demonstrates the close relationship that Edwardians had between reading and inscribing.</p>
<p>Stepping out of her upper class life, during World War I, de Montgeon served in the all-female <a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/5145722">Hackett-Lowther Ambulance Unit</a> as an assistant director to Toupie Lowther – the famous British tennis player who had established the unit. The unit consisted of 20 cars and 25-30 women drivers, who operated close to the front lines of battles in Compiegne, France. De Montgeon donated ambulances and was responsible for the deployment of drivers. After the war, she returned to Eastington Hall and led a quiet life, taking up farming, before passing away in 1944, aged 68.</p>
<p>Considering the testing circumstances of war, the survival of these two books (and their inscriptions) is a remarkable feat. While buildings no longer stand, communities have passed on, and grass on the bloody battlefields grows once more, these books keep the memories of Nisbet and de Montgeon alive. They stand as a testimony of the unsettling victory of material objects over the temporality of the people that once owned them and the places in which they formerly dwelled.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Alex O'Hagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A simple signature can lead to an incredible story.Lauren Alex O'Hagan, PhD candidate in Language and Communication, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/658172016-09-30T06:31:31Z2016-09-30T06:31:31ZFrom Peru to Colombia: the silenced voices of women fighters<p>The October 2 referendum in Colombia is the country’s chance to end more than 50 years of civil war between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/89">FARC</a> - some <a>30 to 40% of which are women</a>. </p>
<p>Representatives of the Colombian government and the FARC have declared their commitment to <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2016/7/women-at-the-frontlines-building-peace-in-colombia">include a gender perspective</a> in the peace agreement, but the experiences of other female combatants throughout history show that women risk being left out of narratives of war. </p>
<p>So how will Colombia’s female fighters be <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/20/are-women-the-key-to-peace-in-colombia-farc-talks/">accounted for in the ongoing peace process</a>? </p>
<h2>Women in war</h2>
<p>Women have always appeared on the battlefield – from the female fighters in the Dahomey Kingdom (modern-day Benin) in the 19th century, to the hundreds of thousands of <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-west-ignores-women-as-actors-in-otherized-societies-a-sociological-unraveling-of-the-logos-of-the-soviet-amazons/5372529">Russian women soldiers who volunteered during the second world war</a>, whose testimonies have been magnificently gathered by Nobel prize laureate, <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/10/12/svetlana-alexievich-truth-many-voices/">Svetlana Alexievitch</a>. </p>
<p>As Alexievitch shows in her book, women’s contribution to war tends to be erased by history.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139475/original/image-20160927-30466-1pmppca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fon warriors also known as Mino in the Dahomey kingdom (now Benin) in the 19th century. They were called Amazones by Europeans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_c%C3%A9l%C3%A9bration_at_Abomey(1908)._-_The_veteran_amazones(_AHOSI_)_of_the_Fon_king_B%C3%A9hanzin,_Son_of_Roi_G%C3%A9l%C3%A9.jpg">Edmond Fortier</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s role in conflict has been traditionally associated with building peace, and the dynamic of male fighters versus women victims has historically dominated how we think about gender and war. Even today, the diversity and complexity of women’s war experiences is often silenced to conform with <a href="https://www.routledge.com/International-Organization-and-Global-Governance/Weiss-Wilkinson/p/book/9780415627603">the frames imposed by international organisations</a>, such as UN Women, which are the principal founders of peace-building projects. </p>
<p>It was striking to see, for instance, that the challenges faced by women ex-combatants were <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/es/news/stories/2016/9/announcement-second-national-summit-of-women-and-peace-in-bogota">barely mentioned</a> during the last summit of Women for Peace organised in Bogota.</p>
<p>The 2004 <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib">Abu Ghraib scandal</a>, which disclosed the participation of female US soldiers in torturing Iraqis prisoners, showed that women are not by nature inherently more peaceful than men. From suicide bombers in radicalised groups to <em>guerrilleras</em> in revolutionary movements like Colombia’s, women have participated in one way or another every struggle in contemporary history. </p>
<h2>The Shining Path</h2>
<p>When I first started my doctoral research on women’s participation in the Peruvian armed conflict 11 years ago, my primary goal was to overthrow the idea that women are victims, not combatants. The Peruvian case was emblematic, notably because of the high level of participation of women in the Shining Path, a revolutionary Maoist movement that rebelled against the state in 1980. Some <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3985659.stm">69,000 people</a> died in the conflict.</p>
<p>Like the FARC, women were thought to make up <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/22/world/lima-journal-shining-path-women-so-many-and-so-ferocious.html">40% of Shining Path militants</a>, and also to occupy executive positions. The role of women in the movement was set out in a document called <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/adrianzen/1974.htm">Marxism, Mariategui and the Women’s Movement</a>, written by a group of female militants during the 1970s. </p>
<p>This document established the basis from which women’s issues would be treated within the Shining Path ideology. Several strategies were put in place in order to recruit female militants, peasants, students, and workers, and were coordinated by the <a href="http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ifinal/pdf/TOMO%20II/CAPITULO%201%20-%20Los%20actores%20armados%20del%20conflicto/1.1.%20PCP-SL/CAP%20I%20SL%20ORIGEN.pdf"><em>Comité Femenino Popular</em></a> (Popular Women’s Committee). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139603/original/image-20160928-27042-1n376p5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shining Path electoral boycott poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Shining Path held an understandable attraction for young Peruvian women. During the 1970s, Peruvian society underwent <a href="https://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-prc/Record/prc_47166">several dramatic social changes</a>, such as the democratisation of education and the emergence of the feminist movement, that considerably affected traditional social structures. Both occurred during a period of economic crisis and political instability.</p>
<p>The Shining Path provided an enticing alternative for young Peruvian women. Unlike other leftist parties such as <em><a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/589278/summary">Vanguardia Roja</a></em> or <em><a href="http://perso.wanadoo.es/guerrillas/movguerrperumir.htm">el MIR</a></em> that were reluctant to address feminist issues, Shining Path insisted on the central role of women in the revolution. The movement’s success in recruiting women, in other words, was mainly due to the failure of other political movements to understand that women’s issues were eminently political. </p>
<p>When Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/14/world/fugitive-leader-of-maoist-rebels-is-captured-by-the-police-in-peru.html">was arrested in September 1992</a>, eight other militants were arrested with him. Four of these were women. Like female fighters who grab headlines today, the women got the most attention in the national press on the days following their capture. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An archive of Guzman and members of Shining Path arrested in 1992.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Women militants of the Shining Path became objects of shame, and their representations in the press were used to discredit their leader - and indeed the whole party. </p>
<h2>Writing women into the story</h2>
<p>Women’s motivations for joining the armed struggle were diverse, as were their social origins, ages, and occupations. On the other side of the conflict, women contributed to the self-defense committees that were formed in the early 1980s to support the Peruvian army in the struggle. </p>
<p>Despite being mentioned by the <a href="http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-peru-01">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> in its 2003 final report, the contribution of peasant women to the war still remains neglected in histories of the conflict.</p>
<p>The physical and symbolic injuries caused by the armed conflict are tangible in Peru today. Thousands of men and women were incarcerated, mostly during the 1990s, some of them <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/shining-path-militant-leaders-given-life-sentences-in-peru-1.628864">facing life sentences</a>. Mass incarceration, then as now, had a particular effect on women and on their families. </p>
<p>It also raised new issues for reconciliation. For a peace process to be successful, the diversity of experiences that women had as combatants must be considered. </p>
<h2>Colombia’s next phase</h2>
<p>As I now begin a new research project in Colombia, I wonder how the question of women’s participation to that armed conflict is going to be treated by history.</p>
<p>I am working to understand how gender is understood in this specific context of war turning to peace, and it seems to me, for now, that women are still largely considered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/20/colombia-city-of-women-safe-haven-from-violence-conflict">victims</a> rather than political agents. </p>
<p>The Colombian peace process is different from that of Peru, mainly because Colombia is ending its conflict through negotiation. But there are lessons on inclusion to be learned. Women’s experiences as combatants must be visible in the post-conflict era. By escaping historical oblivion, women can find space for recognition and social action.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camille Boutron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women’s involvement in armed conflict in Peru and Colombia has a deep impact on societies. But peace processes and political aftermath rarely recognise their role.Camille Boutron, Research assistant professor, Universidad de los Andes Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/622462016-07-11T09:57:03Z2016-07-11T09:57:03ZBritish women will soon be able to serve on the military frontline – but are they ready to fight?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130003/original/image-20160711-9264-1241vju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-445108723/stock-photo-british-special-forces-soldiers-with-weapon-take-part-in-military-maneuver-war-army-technology.html?src=NvesWkZi_Ow3zpfshxZY6w-1-21">Shutterstock/studio0411</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At last, a ban that has long restricted women’s roles within the British military <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/08/women-to-serve-in-combat-in-british-forces/">is to be lifted</a>. For years, sceptics and fearmongers have influenced policy and public opinion in the UK preventing women from serving in ground close combat roles, “where the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/27403/Report_review_excl_woman_combat_pr.pdf">primary role is to close with and kill the enemy</a>”; stopping female soldiers from joining the Royal Marines, RAF Regiment, infantry and armoured regiments.</p>
<p>Myths regarding women’s physical inferiority, questionable mental discipline and emotional stability, to name a few, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-myths-about-women-on-the-military-frontline-and-why-we-shouldnt-believe-them-55594">long been disproved by research</a> and finally it seems like policy has caught up with the facts. From November, a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/536423/20160615-WGCC-COSIfindings-Public_FINAL.pdf">phased implementation of the new policy</a> will see women becoming eligible to crew tanks in the Royal Armoured Corps alongside their male crewman. This three-year phased approach will then be extended to all areas of the military including the Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment by late 2018. </p>
<p>Considering this timescale, there is still plenty of time for the policy to be amended or stalled, as has happened in other countries: in January this year, the US – just one month after announcing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/us/politics/combat-military-women-ash-carter.html?_r=1">all combat jobs</a> would be open to women with no exceptions – stated that their “gender-neutral” policy <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/05/politics/women-joining-special-forces-delay/">wouldn’t actually include Special Forces</a> units.</p>
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<p>Having women on the frontline is a contentious topic in many areas of the world, including the UK. And one very important question still needs to be asked: will women want to serve in ground combat roles?</p>
<p>There is certainly no shortage of female talent in the military, yet it remains to be seen whether they have the appetite for offensive close combat. Since the announcement on July 8 2016 that women will be allowed to apply for ground combat roles, serving female soldiers have already come out saying that they have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/putting-women-soldiers-like-me-on-the-front-line-is-dangerous/">serious reservations about it</a>, with some citing “pure biology” as the reason.</p>
<p>Current selection processes for frontline roles are largely a <a href="http://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/ADSC_Fitness_Selection_Standards.pdf">physical aptitude test</a> which is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGrDbA7v_o">optimised for a male cohort</a>. But while sceptics believe women are incapable of attaining the current fitness requirements for ground close combat roles – an Army review estimated that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11304952/Fewer-than-40-women-a-year-to-get-ground-combat-jobs.html">fewer than 40 soldiers</a> would be up to standard – women in the US are already proving them wrong. </p>
<p>Major Misty Posey of the US Marine Corps notes that the problem is that <a href="http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Docs/SecretToPullupsHowToGoFrom0To20.pdf">women often don’t know <em>how</em> to train for the tests</a> but that the key to success is technique not gender. If women are to pass the demanding tests then <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2880029/Girl-soldiers-fight-frontline-2016-senior-officers-warn-allowing-women-infantry-tank-regiments-mistake.html">they need to train smartly</a> and not necessarily in the same way that their male counterparts do.</p>
<p>Furthermore, if women are to be successfully integrated into the last male military bastions then the current standards need to be retained. Any reduction in selection and training criteria will seriously undermine the acceptance of women by their male counterparts and most likely result in gender resentment and a reduction in the combat effectiveness of the organisation. </p>
<h2>Equality or politics?</h2>
<p>The decision to allow women into combative roles on the frontline is long overdue for the the British Armed Forces, and they are at last falling in line with allies such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-in-australias-military-on-the-frontline-of-the-gender-war-3711">Australia</a>, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11276724/Army-front-line-Women-are-to-fight-on-the-front-line.-Now-the-battle-really-begins.html">Canada</a> and the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/army-approves-first-22-female-officers-for-ground-combat-jobs/news-story/744ea4d1e848873ac5d76060f6339c0e">United States</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the news has not been well received by all. There are still a number of individuals who express <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/10/allowing-women-soldiers-on-front-line-will-cost-lives-warns-form/">deep concerns about the impact women</a> will have on operational effectiveness, calling it a “social experiment” in equality.</p>
<p>When asked about the news, a retired British Army soldier told me: “Once again our lives are to be put at risk by politicians making ill-informed decisions, all because women want to be equal. The Army is in full self-destruct mode.” </p>
<p>This sentiment is shared by many “old and bold” ex-service personnel, and is coupled with a more general <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/05/putting-women-on-the-front-line-is-dangerous-pc-meddling-we-will/">cry of “political correctness gone mad”</a>. But there seems to be a generational disparity dividing opinion here. A growing number of current service personnel support the policy change after <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/female-soldier-describes-life-frontline-1775718">successfully serving alongside female colleagues</a> on the frontline in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
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<p>I asked Royal Air Force Corporal Victoria Keats what she thought of this difference in opinion. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I joined the RAF 11 years ago rather than following in the footsteps of my father, a former soldier, because he was concerned about the poor attitudes soldiers held against female colleagues back then. I think attitudes have changed now and the new recruits have joined up not knowing any different and understanding the value of having women in the section.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After years of amalgamation and downsizing, the British Armed Forces should now strive to create a resilient, effective force, in which access to roles is based on merit, competence and qualifications, not on genetic makeup. </p>
<p>Women currently make up only a small proportion of the UK military and while many believe this new policy will have <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11304952/Fewer-than-40-women-a-year-to-get-ground-combat-jobs.html">little impact on recruitment figures</a>, there is a possibility that we are entering a new era. An era that will see more women enlisting to serve their county as they no longer have to accept working in an environment which restricts their career opportunities, allowing them to compete as an equal across all employment roles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leanne K Simpson receives funding from the British Ministry of Defence via their Defence Science and Technology Laboratory via there Ph.D studentship scheme researching mental robustness in military personnel. This article does not reflect the views of the research councils or other publicly-funded bodies.</span></em></p>Equality is coming to the British Armed Forces, whether it’s wanted or not.Dr Leanne K Simpson, PhD Candidate, School of Psychology | Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/515812016-04-24T20:52:19Z2016-04-24T20:52:19Z‘It makes one feel and realise what a dreadful thing war is’ – a nurse’s story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119784/original/image-20160422-4747-cc7nx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dorothy Campbell with patients evacuated from Tobruk, Alexandria 1941.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Five thousand Australian nurses served during the second world war. The most famous of these, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/people/P10676383/">Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel</a>, survived a massacre on Bangka Island, and Japanese “hell camps” in Sumatra.</em></p>
<p><em>For many other nurses, life in WWII was by turns tedious, perilous and adventurous. Dorothy Janet Campbell was one of the vast majority who survived without capture, imprisonment or fatal illness. Her experiences are caught in her extensive diaries and photographs shared here by her niece Janet Scarfe.</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=883&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119556/original/image-20160421-8026-19kb3ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Dorothy Campbell, 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>South Australian Dorothy Campbell (known throughout her life to all as “Puss”) served in the Australian Army Nursing Service from 1940 to 1946, in England during the Blitz, in the Western Desert during the siege of Tobruk, in Papua New Guinea, and in Queensland and South Australia.</p>
<p>She spent many nights in air raid shelters and nursing in a tin hat but she was never directly bombed on land or sea. </p>
<p>Campbell’s diaries and photos record the nurses’ day to day lives, mostly away from the wards. She and her friends took full advantage of their split shifts and days off. There were sherry parties, tennis and golf, and sightseeing.</p>
<p>For all that, Campbell’s “real work” was “looking after our boys”. Long periods of inactivity, such as waiting for hospitals to be set up or weeks at sea became tedious, despite the games and socialising.</p>
<p>Campbell nursed in several hospitals that were state of the art, including the Australian Hospital in Surrey and in the Greek hospital in Alexandria. She also worked in freezing tents in Queensland and grass huts in Buna in Papua New Guinea.</p>
<p>She was devoted to her patients – provided they were genuine. She deplored the “B Class” men she nursed in England in 1940. Deemed unfit for service and awaiting repatriation to Australia, they made difficult patients, malingering, drunk and dismissive of the nurses’ orders. By contrast, the sick and wounded evacuated straight from Tobruk received her complete attention:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How I love to be able to help them, and to listen to their great stories they tell … it makes one feel and realise what a dreadful thing war is …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Occasionally she described cases as “very interesting” or “difficult” but mostly her comments relating to work were “busy”, “very busy” or “dog-tired”. Comparisons between her diary entries and the hospital daily war diary show what an expert in understatement she was.</p>
<p>Campbell was never too tired to sight see. She loved England and Scotland. In Alexandria, she sponged her patients very early one Saturday morning, rushed off duty and caught the train to Cairo with several nurses and officers. They shopped, dined and danced till late, saw the sphinx and pyramids, rode camels and donkeys, had their fortunes told (“damn lot of rot”) then caught a small plane back to Alexandria on Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>She and the other nurses had a rich social life. In Alexandria, there were sea bathing and sailing, occasional dinners with colonels yearning for some female company, mosques to visit, and customs to marvel at. </p>
<p>The American base near Buna guaranteed a rich social life. She learned to drive a jeep, spent time off socialising with American officers and fell for one who was charming but duplicitous. </p>
<p>Campbell’s diary entries change over the years. Exhaustion and monotony set in as the war ground on. England, Egypt and Papua New Guinea were highlights.</p>
<p>Queensland in 1942-43 and 1945 was dull and she never liked dull. Entries from Townsville in 1945 were brief and largely confined to golf games (nine holes most days between shifts) and the narrow-minded matron. There were few photos. Her exaltation at the news of peace was personal, professional and patriotic. Here are her diary entries for 15th and 16th August 1945:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Wednesday. 15th <br></p>
<p>Very exciting day PEACE. Every body very excited – Party arranged in Red + Hut for all Hosp. (pts and staff.) – had few drinks in our Mess first, then… went to Sgts Mess – and then to dance, and then on to Officers Mess and spent very bright evening happiest night ever spent in army – felt rather ill and went out for walk…</p>
<p>Thursday Aug 16th [Townsville]. <br></p>
<p>Terriffic [sic] headache., after a few hrs felt better and got busy and arranged party in our Mess – Off [duty] 1–6 – had a little rest and helped to prepare supper… Went off duty 8pm to party, it was one of the best we have had and it kept on until 1 am. every body thoroughly enjoying themselves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The diaries end abruptly the night before she boarded the train home to Adelaide on 28 November 1945. Her great adventure was over.</p>
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<span class="caption">Campbell (front right wearing green) in the 1994 Adelaide VP Day Parade. CLICK TO ENLARGE.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>She had nursed men with battle wounds and serious illnesses. She knew the anxiety of air raids and long sea voyages. But she also relished all the opportunities that came her way, particularly the friendships, the sightseeing and new experiences.</p>
<p>Campbell remained in the Citizens Military Forces until 1958 and was decorated for her work with the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps. </p>
<p>After her demobilisation, Campbell worked as a radiotherapy technician, one of the first women in South Australia to do so. She remained single, explaining to a small boy in an Anzac Day school talk that she “had loved them all and married none”. </p>
<p>She spoke of her time in the war to her family only in the broadest terms (“When we were away …”). She kept her diaries to herself to the end of her life. But kept them on her bookshelves for easy discovery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51581/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Scarfe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Five thousand Australian nurses served during World War Two. One of them, Dorothy Campbell endured air raids and tended wounded men in freezing tents - but the war opened her eyes to a more adventurous world.Janet Scarfe, Adjunct research associate, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/555942016-04-01T10:01:22Z2016-04-01T10:01:22ZEight myths about women on the military frontline – and why we shouldn’t believe them<p>Although women have proven themselves capable in frontline combat situations – most recently in Iraq and <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/female-soldier-describes-life-frontline-1775718">Afghanistan</a> – sceptics argue that this does not demonstrate they are capable of the dirty, exhausting, terrifying and chaotic job that is offensive close combat.</p>
<p>Many myths, based on stereotype and perpetuated by a minority of “old and bold” military personnel, are <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3173736?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">historically unfounded</a>. However, the findings do not seem to be filtering though – and popular opinion still believes that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/03/10/survey-details-depth-of-opposition-in-marine-corps-to-allowing-women-in-combat-jobs/">women are incapable of serving in ground close combat roles</a>. It is time to put these myths to bed once and for all:</p>
<h2>1. Women are physically inferior to men</h2>
<p>We have known <a href="http://example.com/https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kirk_Cureton/publication/19552903_Sex_difference_in_muscular_strength_in_equally-trained_men_and_women/links/004635236f0f79c75e000000.pdf">since the 1980s</a> that direct measures of strength are a more valid qualification criteria than sex and that women are capable of the same level of physical fitness as men of the same size and build. Now, putting that aside, advances in military equipment such as <a href="https://vimeo.com/100446428">exoskeleton suits are being developed</a> to reduce the effort spent by soldiers while increasing the amount of weight they can carry and the distance they can cover. This will soon make physical inferiority regardless of sex a moot point.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114923/original/image-20160314-11299-1s9sl1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High-tech research developing exoskeletons that would help reduce injury and fatigue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.darpa.mil/about-us/image-gallery">DARPA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Women lack violent tendencies</h2>
<p>In truth, women are just as capable of violence as men. Although <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/07/02/0956797615586979.abstract">studies</a> have consistently found that males are more aggressive than females, very little of the research considers the sex of the victim in comparison to the sex of the aggressor. When controlling for this, the sex difference isn’t as clear-cut – women are equal to, if not more aggressive than, men in some contexts. </p>
<p>One former female warrant officer in the British Army to whom I spoke for this article said: “Military training ensures that all personnel regardless of sex are capable of aggressive behaviour that is appropriate and proportionate even in high-risk hostile enviroments”.</p>
<h2>3. Women lack the mental discipline required</h2>
<p>Women have proven themselves to be mentally formidable, performing highly stressful jobs – for example, as doctors, police officers and pilots – alongside their male counterparts. <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468.short">Research has quashed the sexually dimorphic view</a> of the human brain, instead demonstrating that our brains are highly individualised and mental discipline cannot be discriminated by sex.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/115782/original/image-20160321-30949-vkt82h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s impossible to tell the sex of an individual based solely on MRI images of the brain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dr Leah T Johnstone</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Women are not as emotionally stable as men</h2>
<p>Men and women <a href="http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1733742&resultclick=3">suffer from depression at similar rates</a>, however there is a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9560163">suicide paradox</a> in which men are more likely to succeed in <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/Suicide-DataSheet-a.pdf">taking their own lives</a> than women are. Men are also more likely to have <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00127-005-0981-3">substance abuse and addiction problems</a>. Not quite the picture of emotional stability one might assume is needed for comparison. </p>
<h2>5. Women will be sexually assaulted by male peers</h2>
<p>Military sexual trauma is a concern particularly in the US, where an <a href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR870.html">estimated 20,000</a> assaults occurred in 2014, against 40% of active-duty female soldiers and 13% of active-duty male soldiers. Based on these percentages it is estimated that 11,400 male and 8,600 female personnel were sexually assaulted in 2014; so, while the proportion of women assaulted is higher, more men were actually victimised – dispelling this misconception that this is a woman’s issue.</p>
<p>The US figures include assaults by “other service members, civilians, spouses or others”. In the UK, the military police received <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32780009">225 allegations of rape and sexual assault between 2011 and 2013</a> from active-duty soldiers against their colleagues.</p>
<h2>6. Women will jeopardise unit cohesion</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/27406/women_combat_experiences_literature.pdf">2009 literature review</a> on women in ground close combat roles for the UK’s Ministry of Defence found a positive relationship between team cohesion and performance. However, it was unable to make a clear recommendation due to a lack of scientific data examining the effects of women in close combat teams particularly within the UK Armed Forces. </p>
<p>Consequently, the decision was left to “a military judgement that under conditions of high intensity close quarter battle, team cohesion is of such significance that the employment of women in this environment would represent a risk to combat effectiveness with no gain in terms of combat effectiveness to offset it.” A disappointing conclusion for equality campaigners considering the review stated there was no scientific evidence to show that women would or would not impact unit cohesion.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/389575/20141218_WGCC_Findings_Paper_Final.pdf">more recent review</a> that aimed to update the 2009 work came up with a different conclusion, finding that gender was not a significant factor in team cohesion. It went on to note that any negative issues related to the integration of women and unit cohesion were short-lived, and could be offset by collective experience and strong leadership – a major factor in how well units perform, rather than the presence or absence of women. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fQZR6xzDkjc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>7. Female military units won’t work</h2>
<p>There are already examples of many battle-proven all-female units, including the <a href="http://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-women/ypj/">Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ)</a>in Rojava, Kurdistan – the most recent female military unit to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kurdish-women-fighting-isis_us_56e05e98e4b065e2e3d46569">capture media attention</a>. The YPJ has been extraordinarily successful, playing a key role during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/kurds-turn-the-tide-against-islamic-state-in-kobane-36744">liberation of Kobani in Syria</a>. </p>
<p>The YPJ have <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">also assisted the Yazidi community</a>, who were trapped on Mount Sinjar in Iraq in 2014. The rescue operation saved thousands of Yazidis who had taken refuge on the mountain and fought thirst and hunger for months, including a large population of women and children who were at risk of being [captured and enslaved by Islamic State (IS)](<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-the-women-and-girls-rescued-from-islamic-state-52185">https://t.co/sg30mrBcGA</a>. For IS, who believe that <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11110724/Isil-fanatics-fear-being-killed-by-a-woman-will-deprive-them-of-virgins-in-paradise.html">death at the hands of a woman disqualifies them from Paradise</a>, these women are a formidable threat.</p>
<h2>8. Women can’t perform as well as men in the Special Forces</h2>
<p>Many countries have made significant progress towards full gender integration in the military, accepting that women should have the same opportunity to serve their country as their male counterparts. However, there seems to be an unequal application of gender equality when it comes to some Special Forces (SF) units. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/114939/original/image-20160314-11267-abf3tb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 707th Special Mission Battalion, a special forces unit in the Republic of Korea Army Special Warfare Command.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2013.4.16_%EC%88%98%EB%8F%84%EB%B0%A9%EC%9C%84%EC%82%AC%EB%A0%B9%EB%B6%80_%EB%8F%85%EA%B1%B0%EB%AF%B8%EB%B6%80%EB%8C%80_%EB%8C%80%ED%85%8C%EB%9F%AC%ED%9B%88%EB%A0%A8_Counter_Terrorism_Training_of_Republic_of_Korea_Army_Capital_Defense_Command_(8655915637).jpg">Wikimedia/Republic of Korea Armed Forces</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In December last year, the US military said that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/us/politics/combat-military-women-ash-carter.html?_r=0">all combat jobs will be open to women with no exceptions</a> – but by January <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/05/politics/women-joining-special-forces-delay/">it was announced</a> that this “gender-neutral” policy wouldn’t include SF units. </p>
<p>SF selection processes are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BviCyQbQ3s4">largely a physical aptitude test that is optimised for a male cohort</a>. Arguably this isn’t appropriate for current operational requirements. Considering the irregular nature of current operating environments – where frontlines are rarer and enemies don’t wear uniform – it seems that SF units must continually evolve to deal with modern threats. A retired UK Special Forces major told me that: “[21st-century] threats will require a greater reliance on specialists embedded and working within ‘traditional’ SF structures.” They added: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>More effective recruitment and retention of women is likely to be an important part of that evolution. In many respects this is back to the future, creating something that looks more like a special operations executive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no shortage of female talent in the military and it is time to use it fully. While not every woman will be capable of serving in ground close combat roles, neither is every man. Access to such roles should be based on competence and qualifications, not determined by a Y chromosome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leanne K Simpson receives funding from the British Ministry of Defence via their Defence Science and Technology Laboratory via there Ph.D studentship scheme researching mental robustness in military personnel.</span></em></p>Women are more than capable in frontline combat – so why do we still keep believing these myths?Dr Leanne K Simpson, PhD Student, School of Psychology | Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/521852016-02-23T14:37:22Z2016-02-23T14:37:22ZHow to help the women and girls rescued from Islamic State<p>Violence against women, especially in war, is so pervasive around the world it’s often not considered news. But the barbaric treatment of women by the group known as Da’esh or Islamic State (IS) has for once managed to attract some specific attention. </p>
<p>When IS <a href="https://theconversation.com/isis-sweeps-across-borders-and-takes-grip-of-an-iraq-collapsing-back-into-civil-war-27886">overran the city of Mosul and much of northern Iraq</a> in June 2014, it abducted <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/islamic-state-slaves-yazidi-girls-sold-isis-slavey-bought-back-families-years-salary-1728081">more than 5,000 women and girls</a> of religious and ethnic minorities (the vast majority being <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-who-are-the-yazidis-30280">Yazidi</a>, Turkmen and Christians). They were systematically isolated from their families and many watched other family members being murdered, particularly men and older women. </p>
<p>Women often bear the brunt of war, but IS is responsible for some of the most egregious treatment of women in recent history, with girls and women effectively becoming weapons of war. These young women and girls (some as young as 12) are being systematically raped and assaulted nearly to the point of death, with many being forced into marriage and religious conversion, sold or given as “gifts”.</p>
<p>Initially, IS and its supporters denied that the women abducted were being sexually exploited. But in an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/10/22/islamic-state-sex-slave_n_6027816.html">October 2014 issue</a> of its publication Dabiq, the group publicly acknowledged it was keeping sex slaves. Justifying it with a predictably narrow and self-serving <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/islamic-state-releases-fatwa-for-male-owners-of-women-slaves/a-18950434">interpretation of Islam and Islamic law</a>, it stated it considers these women the “spoils of war”. </p>
<p>It states that these “apostates” are legitimately enslaved, declaring that “Islam allows it and we will do it”. The group even says that slavery and rape will benefit the girls and young women, as it exposes them to the “true Islam”. </p>
<p>It’s not uncommon for them to attempt suicide in captivity in a bid to end their suffering, and due to the conservatism of their communities, many who do somehow return home are ostracised. They may even face death at the hands of male family members eager to avenge their family’s loss of morality – a woman’s purity and chastity are linked to a family’s honour. This also contributes to the problem that the actual number of victims is unknown, as many rapes go unreported out of stigma and shame. </p>
<p>Sexual violence and physical abuse is one of IS’s key psychological weapons. It has driven thousands of families from the north and west of Iraq, expanding their territory in their wake. Some more <a href="http://icsr.info/2015/09/icsr-report-narratives-islamic-state-defectors/">cynical observers</a> also argue that the promise of sex slaves, cars and houses is a ploy to attract young men from countries where they have no prospects of marriage or wealth thanks to inequality and unemployment. </p>
<h2>Psychological impact</h2>
<p>Several hundred of the captured young women have since <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33964147">escaped</a> or been <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/02/22/report-islamic-state-releases-43-christian-hostages/80724820/">liberated</a> from multiple locations across northern Iraq and eastern Syria. Those who have returned are in dire need of physical assistance associated with sexual abuse (including unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV) and psychological support. </p>
<p>These women and girls are in a very unstable mental state, suffering from acute levels of stress, anxiety and depression with many showing strong suicidal tendencies. Many victims are unable to comprehend the barbaric treatment they have experienced and witnessed and are unable to sleep more than a few hours at a time due to nightmares and intrusive thoughts. </p>
<p>The precarious and monotonous conditions in the refugee camps are not contributing positively to their mental states either, with many feeling under constant threat of being captured. Because of this, many are desperate to leave Iraq, where they are constantly reminded of their time in captivity. </p>
<h2>Desperate for help</h2>
<p>Plenty of public attention is given to the physical needs of those affected by the conflict in the Middle East, but this often overshadows the scourge of serious psychological trauma.</p>
<p>There is little psychological assistance available for these destitute young women. One organisation that’s stepping in to help is <a href="http://en.wadi-online.de">WADI</a> the Association for Crisis Assistance and Solidarity Development Cooperation. This Iraq-German based nonprofit focuses on women’s rights in the Middle East and is providing psycho-social assistance to the traumatised female survivors of IS’s abuse. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/107126/original/image-20160104-11938-xkitcs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WADIs mobile teams take care of Yazidi girls.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">WADI</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>WADI’s Dohuk teams consist of committed young women who visit refugee camps to offer psycho-social support. WADI has also established a women’s activity centre in Dohuk that provides a safe all-female environment and a break from the miserable conditions in the refugee camps. </p>
<p>The centre aims to make the women feel “at home”, empowering them and encouraging them to have a say in the peace and reconciliation process. The centre also offers referrals for much needed psychological aid and health care. Awareness training into women’s rights is also available. </p>
<p>Sadly, the current efforts are merely the beginning, and funding for such projects is scarce. Every day more women become victims; mental health is a taboo topic in many Arab countries, and efforts to help sufferers are therefore very poorly resourced. Although there has been an international response, it’s been direly inadequate given the scale of the challenges and needs. </p>
<p>And all the while, even though IS has <a href="https://theconversation.com/iraqs-battle-for-ramadi-isnt-just-about-defeating-islamic-state-52617">lost some ground</a> in Iraq and Syria, there’s no indication that this horror story will end any time soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52185/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leanne Simpson receives funding from the British Ministry of Defence via their Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. </span></em></p>Domestic and sexual slavery are being used as weapons of war – and the victims are too often forgotten.Dr Leanne K Simpson, PhD Student, School of Psychology | Institute for the Psychology of Elite Performance, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/498952015-11-09T00:01:40Z2015-11-09T00:01:40ZWaging peace: women’s century-long campaign to end war continues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/100297/original/image-20151030-20170-18ekwdb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women and girls suffer some of the worst horrors of armed conflict, but are still denied a central role in preventing violence.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rodi Said</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>United Nations Security Council <a href="http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N00/720/18/PDF/N0072018.pdf?OpenElement">Resolution 1325</a> turned 15 on October 31. The most notable of the worldwide celebrations was in New York, where representatives of UN member countries and women’s civil society organisations gathered throughout October to celebrate progress, highlight roadblocks and forge new ways forward.</p>
<p>It is odd that a Security Council resolution should have a birthday party. Resolution 1325 is the only one that does. But this one is special. It is the landmark resolution that established the UN’s <a href="http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/issues/women/wps.shtml">Women, Peace and Security</a> (WPS) agenda.</p>
<p>This agenda recognises the relationships between women, armed conflict and the struggle for peace. It acknowledges that armed conflict has unique impacts on women and girls, and that their contributions are central to building peace and security.</p>
<p>The WPS agenda is based upon three main pillars: the prevention of armed conflict, the protection of women and girls in armed conflict, and the participation of women in peace and security processes. There is a commitment to ensure that a gender perspective is mainstreamed into all of the UN’s peace and security work.</p>
<p>The most recent of eight WPS resolutions is UN Security Council <a href="http://www.peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/N1531109.pdf">Resolution 2242</a>. Adopted in October, it highlights the impact of violent extremism and terrorism on women, and women’s central role in countering this global trend. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon <a href="http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/sc12076.doc.htm">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At a time when armed extremist groups place the subordination of women at the top of their agenda, we must place women’s leadership and the protection of women’s rights at the top of ours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is strong rhetoric. But after 15 years, have we seen sufficient action? Perhaps the best birthday present Resolution 1325 could receive was a 418-page global study designed to answer this question.</p>
<p>As its title suggests, <a href="http://wps.unwomen.org/%7E/media/files/un%2520women/wps/highlights/unw-global-study-1325-2015.pdf">Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, Securing the Peace</a> makes (at least) three important points, which are designed as a significant course correction to the UN’s peace and conflict work.</p>
<h2>Ending or regulating war?</h2>
<p>First, the report argues, the UN’s priority should be preventing conflict. </p>
<p>This is an agenda that the UN has had difficulty with. Security Council debates on when and where to sanction the use of military force have marginalised conflict prevention. This makes little common sense: preventing conflict would preclude the need for protection or peacemaking. These debates make even less sense when we consider the Security Council’s five permanent members are among the world’s largest arms dealers.</p>
<p>To the century-long activist movement of the <a href="http://www.wilpf.org/">Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom</a>, this continues to make little sense.</p>
<p>In 1915, as war raged across Europe, more than 1200 women from 12 countries travelled to The Hague to study, debate, protest, make known and eliminate the causes of war. While the nature of armed conflict has changed greatly since then, the <a href="http://wilpf.org/resolutions-from-wilpfs-triennial-congresses/">resolutions</a> they created in 1915 were precursors to Resolution 1325 and the WPS agenda:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1915.pdf">General Disarmament</a>: “It sees in the private profits accruing from the great armament factories a powerful hindrance to the abolition of war.”</p>
<p><a href="http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1915.pdf">Women’s Suffrage in War</a>: “This International Congress of Women oppose the assumption that women can be protected under the conditions of modern warfare. It protests vehemently against the odious wrongs of which women are the victims in time of war, and especially against the horrible violation of women which attends all war.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the 100th anniversary of this movement, peace activists and women’s rights advocates – including one of this article’s authors – gathered again in the Hague to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/27/female-activists-hague-new-peace-agenda-1915-congress-of-women">set a new peace agenda</a>. It is no coincidence that the strategies they discussed are consistent with the global study.</p>
<p>The study advises how to re-focus attention on the causes of conflict. It offers advice on creating early warning systems that monitor indicators of the probable onset of armed violence, such as violence against women.</p>
<p>Recommendations also address longer-term and structural causes of conflict. These include social and economic deprivation and exclusion, population growth, environmental change, extremism and weak governance. Importantly, these impact men, women and different gender identities in materially different ways.</p>
<p>Debates on the recently agreed <a href="http://www.globalgoals.org/">2030 Sustainable Development Goals</a> show us that addressing these long-term issues is not easy. However, the study is a timely reminder that the path to peace does not need to be through war but ideally via sustainable development and human rights.</p>
<h2>Human rights or security?</h2>
<p>The global study’s second point reminds us that UN Security Council Resolution 1325 was born out of a human rights framework. Why is this important? The Security Council has been criticised for co-opting the women’s rights agenda, leading to claims that women have been “securitised” within a conflict mindset.</p>
<p>This has led to an overwhelming, and some might suggest disproportionate, focus on protecting women from sexual violence as opposed to pursuing gender equality.</p>
<p>Alternatively, it is argued, the human rights framework has a stronger tradition of including women’s priorities and needs. It brings into focus, for instance, the importance of ending impunity for crimes against women, the underlying inequalities that make women and girls so vulnerable in conflict, and the need to include women’s participation and leadership in all aspects of transition to a post-conflict society.</p>
<h2>Women’s leadership</h2>
<p>Ensuring women’s meaningful participation in all peace and security processes is the third theme of the study. <a href="http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/sites/iheid/files/sites/ccdp/shared/Docs/Publications/briefingpaperbroader%20participation.pdf">Recent research</a> shows that peace processes that include women have a greater chance of success.</p>
<p>Women’s empowerment and leadership is itself a conflict prevention strategy, as the women of 1915 <a href="http://wilpf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WILPF_triennial_congress_1915.pdf">identified</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since the combined influence of the women of all countries is one of the strongest forces for the prevention of war and since women can only have full responsibility and effective influence when they have equal rights with men, this International Congress of Women demands their political enfranchisement.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet today women are locked out of peace processes in Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan, Mali and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Civil society, and women’s rights organisations in particular, play an important role here. It is no coincidence that enhancing women’s participation in peace processes was the primary recommendation from the global study’s consultations, as outlined in PeaceWomen’s report, <a href="http://www.peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/May%2029%20Copy%20-%20Through%20the%20Lens%20of%20Civil%20Society%20-%20Executive%20Summary%20For%20Summary%20Report.pdf">Through the Lens of Civil Society</a>. </p>
<h2>Difficult conversations</h2>
<p>This study challenges us to have difficult conversations about gender, feminism, women’s and men’s power, militarism, the root causes of violence, the arms trade, our approaches to peace. These are big and overlapping issues, which make us confront our use of power and ways of thinking. </p>
<p>This is critical for every country, including Australia as it progresses implementation of the <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/women/publications-articles/government-international/australian-national-action-plan-on-women-peace-and-security-2012-2018">Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (2012-2018)</a>.</p>
<p>The global study is right: UN Security Council Resolution 1325 needs to remember its roots. The resolution is not about regulating war, but about waging peace. </p>
<p>The courageous women who gathered in 1915 came prepared to wage peace through having difficult conversations – and bringing them to the attention of the world. In some ways, their work was a precursor to the modern-day doctrine of <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/jacqui-true/why-we-need-feminist-foreign-policy-to-stop-war">feminist foreign policy</a>, which places human rights and gender equality first in support of long-term prevention of conflict and violence. </p>
<p>Perhaps this 100-year history of women’s activism can help us heed the call to chart a new course for waging peace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrina Lee-Koo is part of an ARC Discovery Project titled Gender after Conflict, and is ex officio member of the Steering Committee for the Annual Civil Society Dialogue on women, peace and security.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Boyd is affiliated with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).</span></em></p>Women from around the world first came together 100 years ago to demand peace, and 15 years ago the UN recognised their central role in ending armed conflict. But the long journey is far from over.Katrina Lee-Koo, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Monash UniversitySarah Boyd, Adjunct Research Fellow (Gender, Peace and Security), School of Social Sciences, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/459172015-09-15T14:27:04Z2015-09-15T14:27:04ZHow narratives around violent women warp our view of female jihadis<p>Every time we hear of girls and young women who appear to embrace violent jihad by joining Islamic State (IS) <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/27/white-widow-samantha-lewthwaite-al-shabaab">or al-Shabaab</a>, we struggle to comprehend their actions. Violent women subvert entrenched notions of femininity which tell us women are gentle, nurturing and conformist. Violence by women tests the limits of these norms, and is threatening because it reveals that cultural understandings of womanhood are constructed – in other words, these norms are not given or “natural”. </p>
<p>Portrayals of violent women in the media often vilify them as warped and evil, or demean them with humour. There is a tendency to assume that women are not truly in control of their violent acts. Instead, they have been coerced, have fallen under the influence of others or are not in their right minds. Of course, violence by men is not considered to be acceptable as such, but it is more easily seen as an acknowledged aspect of normal male behaviour. Culturally, violence is coded as masculine.</p>
<p>In my work on gender representations of <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/women-murder-and-femininity-lizzie-seal/?isb=9780230222755">women who kill</a>, I have examined the repetition of certain stock stories about violent women, for example as witches on the margins of society. For the most part, these stories emphasise the deviance of female murderers, repeating stereotypes of violent women as especially masculine or as sexually depraved. These portrayals reappear in different places and at different times. This is not to argue that the telling of these stories is fixed and unchanging; it gets modified in relation to new events, contexts and cultural concerns. But these stock stories offer ready-made explanations for, and ways of talking about, women’s involvement in violence.</p>
<h2>Marriage of convenience</h2>
<p>The phenomenon of girls and young women travelling to Syria to join IS have also been portrayed in the media through stock stories and gendered stereotypes. The widely used term <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/runaway-british-jihadi-bride-writes-6179441">“jihadi bride” is a clear example</a>. The fact that “jihadi” has to run alongside the idealised feminine role of the bride underlines the novelty of young women’s – and particularly young western women’s – involvement with IS. </p>
<p>Such gendered nicknames, which define the role of women and girls in relation to men, have trivialising effects. Articles raise the spectre of young women’s rebellious actions to participate in a violent, extremist group, and yet they also rob those actions of their seriousness through repetition of these vaguely humorous nicknames. </p>
<p>A parallel can be found in the practice of referring to female <a href="http://ire.sagepub.com/content/22/1/5.short">Chechen terrorists as “black widows”</a>. This is a more threatening term than “jihadi bride” but it similarly positions women in relation to a conventionally feminine, heterosexual role. One reading of this is women avenging the deaths of their husbands. There is also a longer standing meaning of the deadly <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11294432/Japans-black-widow-sought-new-husbands-reports.html">black widow who kills multiple husbands</a>. This plays into stereotypes of women’s calculated evil and devouring sexuality. Samantha Lewthwaite, believed to be a prominent figure in Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, has been dubbed the “white widow”.</p>
<p>Contrasting portrayals can be found where women are judged to be on the “right” side. Kurdish women who fight IS are described as “brave” and skilled fighters. But this does not mean they are immune from the stereotypes – one headline from the Daily Mirror <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/angels-death-isis-savages-fear-6275913">called them the “angels of death”</a> in an attempt to highlight the novelty of their femininity. </p>
<h2>Mail model</h2>
<p>The thrill of implied deviant sexuality is a significant aspect of reports on female members of IS. Terms with sexual connotations, such as “seduced” and “lured”, are used to describe Western young <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/579731/New-book-lure-Jihadi-bride">women and girls travelling to Syria</a> to join IS. These terms play down willing choices but also hint at a sexual motivation. </p>
<p>The Daily Mail’s website is a particularly good example of how media outlets seek to highlight this aspect of women in IS. It is illustrated by their <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3156921/Isis-s-female-Gestapo-wreaking-terror-sex.html#ixzz3jjO2mgvK">report on a “female Gestapo”</a> whose members “bite and whip any woman who steps out of line and force girls to become sex slaves”. <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/horrific-new-reports-of-the-islamic-states-rape-and-sexual-violence-intensify-calls-for-action">Rape and sexual abuse</a> in IS camps is a serious issue but this reporting, complete with Nazi imagery, is uncomfortably close to soft pornography. It seems designed to titillate the reader above all else. And of course, MailOnline stories are always accompanied by its infamous <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/samjparker/the-daily-mail-translation-guide#.loJwwWdn4">sidebar of shame</a>, where celebrity gossip and pictures of semi-naked women which deepen the associations between young women and girls, and sex.</p>
<p>Women’s involvement in political violence and terrorism makes it more newsworthy, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/terror-groups-like-isis-al-qaeda-recruiting-more-women-for-attacks/">as some articles explore</a> and as the recruiters recognise. Femininity is especially symbolic. The unruly behaviour of women and girls is interpreted as a warning sign of social disorder. A comparison can be found in the media <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10484563/British-girls-have-almost-worst-drinking-habits-in-Western-world.html">fascination with young women’s drunkenness</a>. This is a less apocalyptic symbol of social unrest than joining IS, but also voices fears about female unruliness.</p>
<p>The stereotypes and assumptions about young women and girls who join or support IS downplay the significance of politics. The absence of a consideration of their political rationale from many, (<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29507410">although not all</a>), news features denies that these could matter or need to be understood. This prevents the opportunity to investigate and counter the motivations that brought them to their decision. Instead, women and girls must have been brainwashed, lured or seduced by cleverer men – it is a powerful, enduring narrative that we would do well to reject.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lizzie Seal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Western media tropes of black widows, deviant sexuality and unthinking compliance fail to explain why violence crosses the gender divide.Lizzie Seal, Senior Lecturer in Sociology/Criminology, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/365332015-01-27T11:08:31Z2015-01-27T11:08:31ZJapan government continues to deny responsibility for sex slavery<p>In 1943, during the height of World War II, fifteen-year-old Liu Mianhuan was tied up and taken away by Imperial Japanese troops from her village in Yu County, Shanxi Province, China. </p>
<p>She was confined to a cramped cave dwelling near the Japanese military stronghold in Jingui Village as one of the troops’ “comfort women.” Japanese soldiers raped her during daylight hours and a military officer took his turn at night. </p>
<p>The torture injured the teenager so badly that before long, her entire body swelled. “The pain was so excruciating that I could neither sit nor stand.” Liu recalled when she spoke with me decades later, “When I needed to go to the latrine I had to crawl on the ground…I wanted <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chinese-comfort-women-9780199373895?cc=us&lang=en&">to die.”</a> </p>
<p>Liu’s account is typical of Chinese comfort women’s wartime experiences and similar to the ordeal of other women forcibly drafted from Japanese-occupied areas in the Asia Pacific between 1931-1945. </p>
<p>The Japanese government, however, continues to deny imperial Japan’s responsibility for forcing the women into sex slavery during this period. </p>
<h2>A series of denials in 2014</h2>
<p>This past fall, a renewed campaign of denial began after a major Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun retracted a series of articles on <a href="http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201409110080">“comfort women.”</a> </p>
<p>These articles, most published in the 1990s, cited the memoir of Seiji Yoshida, a former Japanese soldier. Yoshida wrote that he had participated in forcibly drafting comfort women on the Korean island of Jeju, but his story was <a href="http://www.asahi.com/articles/SDI201408213563.html">later discredited,</a> and has not been used by the scholarly community in studying the comfort women system since.</p>
<p>The current campaign of denial does not focus on factual errors of journalism, but on international criticism of Japan’s wartime wrongdoing. </p>
<h2>Pushing back against international critics</h2>
<p>On October 14, 2014, a Japanese Foreign Ministry official was sent to New York requesting that Radhika Coomaraswamy, a former United Nations Special Rapporteur, revise her <a href="http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201410160051">1996 report</a> on imperial Japan’s forceful recruitment of sex slaves. </p>
<p>Activists and conservative media outlets from Japan have also sought to discredit a <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/110/hres121/text">2007 US House of Representatives Resolution</a> that urged Japan to “formally acknowledge and apologize in a clear and unequivocal manner.” </p>
<p>Recently the Japanese government even went so far as to request a major American publisher, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2015/01/15/statements-by-japan-publisher-over-textbook-passage-on-comfort-women/">McGraw-Hill,</a>to edit passages on comfort women in its history textbook. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=636&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69650/original/image-20150121-29767-1wylgtx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese girl interviewed by allied soldier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">en.wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The voices of denial in Japan insist that no objective evidence exists to prove the forcible abduction of women by the Japanese military. </p>
<p>I learned otherwise while researching a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chinese-comfort-women-9780199373895?cc=us&lang=en&">new book on the subject</a> and interviewing women who survived such sexual exploitation. </p>
<h2>Chinese testimony</h2>
<p>The twelve survivors whose stories recorded in our book were all detained by force to be the Japanese military comfort women when their hometown was occupied.</p>
<p>Zhu Qiaomei,for example, owned a small restaurant on Chongming Island near Shanghai when Japanese army came in the spring of 1938. The soldiers forced her to service the troops as a comfort woman from home. Outraged, her husband joined the local resistance force to fight, but was caught and beaten to death. The sexual assault against Zhu Qiaomei and other women in the town continued until the Japanese army left the region in 1939.</p>
<p>Many have stepped forward to give similar testimony, yet the Japanese government insists that there is no evidence of abducting women by force. </p>
<p>Because the Imperial Forces destroyed incriminating documents at the war’s end, the international community has reason to ask: in re-constructing the facts of war trauma, who can claim the legitimacy of objectivity? Whose words count? </p>
<p>There is <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/comfort-women/9780231120333">ample evidence</a> to show that the sexual violence committed against women under the umbrella of the comfort women system took place across all battle zones and areas occupied by Japan during the Asia-Pacific war. </p>
<p>Investigations in China suggest that in addition to the comfort women drafted from Korea, Japan, and other regions from the early 1930s to 1945, approximately 200,000 women were drafted from mainland China by Imperial Japanese Forces. </p>
<p>The great majority, as in the cases of Liu Mianhuan and Zhu Qiaomei, were abducted from their homes and enslaved in the improvised “comfort facilities.”</p>
<h2>Owning up to the past</h2>
<p>What is equally disturbing about the rhetoric of denial is the claim that historical facts somehow inflict damage on Japan’s honor. </p>
<p>For the majority of Japanese and the rest of us around the world, recognizing comfort women’s sufferings is not done to disgrace contemporary Japan, just as commemorating the victims of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb does not disgrace Germany and the United States. Quite the contrary. </p>
<p>Taking responsibility to recognize and rectify past wrongs could greatly help Japan gain trust and respect from the international community. </p>
<p>This happened, for example, when a US Congressional investigation led to the <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/09/210138278/japanese-internment-redress">1988 American apology</a> for and restitution made to Japanese-Americans wrongly interned during World War II. Far from damaging US honor, this step to remedy an historic wartime wrong was widely welcomed.</p>
<p>Japanese nationalist rhetoric has portrayed the issue of comfort women as realpolitik. Even our book documenting Chinese comfort women’s sufferings has been described by a Japanese politician as China’s attempt to start a comfort women battle in the US. </p>
<p>Ironically, research about the history of comfort women in China was inspired by a grassroots movement in Japan to provide humanitarian support to the victims. </p>
<p>In Japan – despite nationalist denials for seventy years since the war – citizen groups, researchers, lawyers, intellectuals, and <a href="http://www.massviolence.org/The-Japanese-Imperial-Army-s">lawmakers</a> have worked diligently to redress imperial Japan’s wartime wrongs. Their actions reflect the honor of humanity and have won them international respect. </p>
<p>My own research on this issue was inspired by a Vassar College student’s senior thesis whose concern for the suffering of exploited women in distant countries exemplifies the best approach to resolving the comfort women issue: let humanitarian principles guide our actions and attitudes. </p>
<p>It is through compassion – in Japan and abroad – that East Asia will be able to move beyond the current tensions and political stalemate toward true reconciliation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36533/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peipei Qiu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1943, during the height of World War II, fifteen-year-old Liu Mianhuan was tied up and taken away by Imperial Japanese troops from her village in Yu County, Shanxi Province, China. She was confined…Peipei Qiu, Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Professor of Chinese and Japanese and Director of Asian Studies Program, Vassar CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.