When we talk about war, so often it is in terms of the male soldier or male head-of-state. When women are mentioned, it is often in the lumped phrase ‘women and children’. As we’ve progressed through this term, it has left me wondering: where are the women? 

Simply, women are the factory workers, the civilians, the nurses, the army prostitutes, (and in some cases) the soldier and heads-of-state too. Women have a profound impact on war. Yet aside from ignoring their physical presence, a lot of our thinking around war ignores gender (and its intersection with power) as a concept.

By examining the impact of war on women’s lives, we can better understand how the same power and gender systems that affect women also impact political issues like war. 

The masculinization of public life, and the separation of home and marriage into the private sphere, facilitates the dismissal of issues fundamentally tied to global politics. Take US overseas military bases, where non-political conceptions of ‘home’ allow bases to hide under the pretense of normalcy, accepted by local populations, facilitating large international military presence. Masculinized assumptions deem ‘women’s issues’ (i.e., marriage and the home) separate from “significant” issues like economy and military. These same norms facilitate the undervaluing of women’s labor, allowing governments to exploit women to repair their economy. While traditional theorists prefer to deal in guns and money, we cannot pretend that political security and stability are separate from women’s underpaid labor, girls’ education, reproductive health, male violence” (just think of the international gun trade, and its links to wartime violence against women).

Masculine norms define current definitions of politics. One thing we’ve learned about recently in my Politics course is the typical ‘realist’ view of states’ nature, which is often masculinized by depicting states in aggressive or paternalistic relationships. This view pits ‘self-interested; states together in a model of international relations that seems ready to boil over into war at any point. 

This can have profound political effects. Think about imperialism, which relies on masculine norms of nationalism to function. The argument here is that the image of a man who has gone from masculine protector to tray-carrying waiter is one of stolen pride and righteous anger, whereas women, by nature of the standard of unpaid women’s work, only confirm their feminine role when fulfilling similar service tasks demanded by imperialism. Notions of power and gender thus make it harder to recognize exploitative relations between countries. 

Once we acknowledge the way ideas around gender impact our political dealings as a whole, it becomes easier to recognize trends that paint states as masculine (and therefore aggressive). In unpacking the assumptions we make, we can change the way we think about war. Perhaps, this might be a change for the better.