Committee for Conflict Transformation Support

CCTS
Review 23

Gender and Conflict Transformation

A discussion paper by Diana Francis

This paper will be more of a polemic than a study, embodying a rather personal set of ideas. It will, however, be based on much experience and reflection. It will reflect what I learned while undertaking a gender study I undertook recently (2003) for the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies in Sri Lanka. More generally, it will be informed by years of work with mixed groups and all-women groups; by the thoughts expressed and information collated in different reports and studies on this issue, and by broader thinking and reading over many years (which will be taken further in my forthcoming book on peace and the institution of war, due out in July this year). My aim is not only to reflect on some of the current realities of men’s and women’s roles and the relative exclusion of women from power and on what can be done to address it. (I shall do those things, but far less thoroughly than others have done.) It is also to set those realities and challenges in a wider theoretical context, which we can debate, and in addition to bring them nearer home, to our own organisations and to ourselves.

I will begin with a clarification of terms. By gender I mean the socially constructed and entrenched roles of men and women, which exist in relationship, which involve discrimination on the basis of sex (biology). By conflict transformation I mean constructive ways of approaching conflict, which can include engaging in it nonviolently in order to bring about change. Within this approach, conflict itself is regarded as potentially positive, as well as inevitable. It is violence – cultural, structural and behavioural (Galtung, 1990) that is the problem. Structural and cultural forms of violence are oppressive. Addressing them is likely to involve conflict, though not necessarily violence. War is the concerted, large-scale use of violence to conduct conflict and achieve political and economic goals.
I shall first be looking broadly at war and violence and the culture and structures that support them and their relationship to gender. Then I shall discuss current realities of violent conflict and ‘peace processes’ and go on to relate conflict transformation to gender and the need to transform the roles assigned to men and women. Next I shall review where we have got to in translating our ideal of gender justice into practice in current attempts at conflict transformation and look at the impact of gender on those of us who work in this field. I shall comment on the unease around gender and culture and relate this to global power relations. In my final section I will suggest some ways forward.

The big picture: gender and the culture of domination

War is based on a dominatory approach to relationships (Eisler, 1990) in which the usual, overriding aim is to get the better of or overcome the other, who is framed as an opponent or competitor. By contrast, conflict resolution is based on the notion of mutuality and co-operation. Where there is no readiness for conflict resolution and action for change is undertaken by one side, nonviolent conflict transformation still requires that all parties to a conflict are to be respected.

I want to argue that the institution of war is closely related to gender and in particular to the construction of masculinity. The apex of masculinity is the hero – a man who triumphs over something or someone, or dies in the attempt. The archetype of heroism is the warrior. Related female roles are subservient and instrumental to this: to encourage or support warriors, or to become a victim whose fate reinforces their power. As is widely recognised, it is not a coincidence or an unfortunate side effect of war that women are raped. Sexual prowess is an important element in constructions of masculinity and rape is a deliberate assertion of the dominant masculinity of the perpetrator. It is also an emblem of his triumph over the males associated with the victim.

The fact that in recent decades women and (particularly) children have been drawn into fighting roles does not alter the fact that war is founded in male gender construction. It means that within that framework children are forced to become instrumental in the agendas of men and that women sometimes choose and are allowed to participate in lowly positions in the currently prevailing model of power – within which they often, in fact, play servicing roles – particularly sexual ones.

I do not mean to suggest that wars are simply displays of masculinity and have no other causes. I do want to say that gender as we know it, which positions men as dominant and characterises them as aggressive and heroic, is fundamental to the culture of domination of which war is an expression. And I want to argue that war not only embodies the goal of domination (or resistance in kind to it) but is occasioned by dominatory (in contrast to co-operative) relationships and projects in the fields of politics, ideology, culture, and economics. These dominatory relationships have their own violent effects, leading to the shameful reality that millions live in want and squalor while others struggle to cope with a surfeit of opportunities and consumables.

The male-female axis of domination is enmeshed with others – such as those of age, wealth, class or caste, and ethnicity or cultural identity. In some ways it is nonsense to talk about women in a general way. How could one include in the same bracket, for instance, a prosperous young business executive in the UK and an old woman living in the mountains of Bolivia? But the pattern remains nonetheless, manifesting itself in different forms and intensities, in economic exclusion, political marginalisation, social control, sexual exploitation and cultural disrespect, as well as physical violence.

This is not to say that women are essentially nicer than men or that gender violence is the only structural violence there is. It is to say that prevailing gender constructions are based on the domination by half of the world’s population over the other. I believe they are maintained by men’s capacity, generally speaking, to prevail physically over women, as well as on culturally entrenched models of masculinity and femininity and related habits of subservience and bullying.

Not only are girls and women trapped and degraded by gender: boys and men are also imprisoned and diminished by it. They are coerced into ways of behaving, presenting themselves and relating to others, and into responsibilities and roles, that may be quite inimical to their otherwise potential identity, relationships and place in society. The suffering involved for gentle boys and men in fulfilling their gender roles must at times be terrible. The gender trap prevents boys and men, as well as girls and women, from achieving their full human potential.

As I write, the debate about ‘combat stress’ has been renewed by the case of a young US soldier court-martialled after reporting to his commanding officer that he needed support after being rendered incapable of action after seeing the corpse of an Iraqi. In most circumstances, killing clearly does not come ‘naturally’ to most men. It apparently has to be prepared for through initiation rites and military training that will suppress timidity and humane feelings and excite aggression. The culture and structures of domination create and maintain these destructive processes and keep us all trapped in their effects.

The direct physical abuse of women by men may have been outlawed and become, broadly speaking, culturally unacceptable in some societies, but even there it remains a serious problem. Elsewhere it is endemic. Of course women can be violent too, to their husbands or to the children and old people whose care is part of their assigned gender role. But the structural and direct violence against women by men amounts to a global, chronic war, except that it is too diffuse and one-sided to qualify as such. Every ‘real’ war that is fought reinforces this reality and the patterns of domination of which it is a part and, at the same time, diverts attention from it.

If we are ever to achieve a systemic transformation of conflict, rather than continue with ad hoc and often ineffectual fire-fighting, we shall have to address this global reality within which specific patterns of violence and individual wars occur. We will need to transform the attitudes and assumptions, relationships and processes that perpetuate it, creating new forms of politics and economics. This will involve transforming the culture of domination and violence of which male-female relationships are not only an example but, I would argue, the foundation, developing a new understanding of gender, or rather of what it is to be human, male or female.

Current realities of violent conflict and ‘peace processes’

Violent political conflicts, even when they are aimed at social change, not only destroy lives and livelihoods and ravage infrastructure and the environment; they prevent most social issues from being addressed and often exacerbate them. I have been told by women friends in different parts of the world where there is a sharp ongoing political conflict that this is used as a reason for them to ‘be patient’ about women’s rights. The priority, they are told, must be to obtain justice for the whole group first. Women’s rights can come once that has been achieved. Those who make (or accept) this argument clearly do not notice – or choose to ignore – the contradiction inherent in it: that justice cannot be achieved for the whole group while there is systemic discrimination and oppression within the group itself.

In practice, wars are often waged at least as much for personal agendas of greed (Berdal and Malone, 2000) or power as for social agendas of justice. Because violence is the basis of their power, warlords often have no desire to end a conflict and delay any serious negotiation for decades. Children, women, old people and those who are marginalised by their ethnic or cultural identity (like the Roma population in the Balkans) continue to suffer war’s effects, as do those who get enlisted to fight for them. Since it is the ‘men of violence’ who are able to stop the violence, it is they who get the seats at the negotiating table. Negotiations to end violent conflict that are carried out in this spirit, and exclusively by those already dominant within society, are unlikely to produce outcomes that remove that dominance. Their negotiations tend to be the occasion for the continuation and often the intensification of intra-party battles between competing factions, rather than efforts to honour the variety of perspective and needs of the people who should be represented.

It is fruitless to argue whether it is more painful and degrading to be actively involved in the fighting, to become a passive victim of it, or be left to cope with its ravages. Men and women, young and old, are differently affected, but the toll of suffering for all is extreme. The terrible violence inflicted on civilians increasingly during wars is so much a part of our awareness that it hardly needs to be delineated here. It includes not only the direct effects of maiming, killing and rape, but also displacement with all its hardship, physical and psychological, and the loss of livelihood and protection – in addition to the emotional trauma caused by experiencing and witnessing brutality and by shocking, often multiple, bereavement.

Despite the laws that supposedly protect civilians and the rhetoric so often deployed about their care, little is done to protect them during war. Likewise their recovery needs are never addressed in any way that begins to approach what could be considered as adequate. This is because the negotiations to end wars, like the wars themselves, are – whatever the rhetoric – driven more by the wants of the powerful than by the needs of the powerless. Those who were not powerful in the conflict are not heard. Negotiations tend to be a continuation of war by other means. The co-operative and inclusive approaches that characterise the ideal of conflict resolution are absent and the needs of ‘ordinary people’ are neglected.

Women of all categories have inadequate opportunities to voice their needs and name their agendas and as a consequence these – if they are ever articulated – are addressed at best inadequately. Even women within the dominant social group or groups are, when it comes to political and military leadership, marginal. Those women who are the exceptions often achieve their positions by stepping into male shoes and are disconnected from the realities of other women within their society and do not represent them.
Gender constructions also have a negative impact on the post-war recovery of men. Although the importance of demobilisation processes and the social and economic reintegration of fighting men is increasingly recognised, the psychological traumatisation and brutalisation of fighters is insufficiently acknowledged and addressed. That is because the very institution of war is built on the notion that men should be strong and take the inflicting and suffering of violence as part of their masculine role. As discussions in the West are beginning to uncover, this means that the human needs of men are disregarded. The sharp rises in male violence and suicide after wars are evidence of the ongoing effects of war on their psyches.

Moreover, war negates all the moral standards of peacetime. To become effective fighters, human beings must set aside the moral resources (Glover, 2001) that equip them as social beings. They learn to commit atrocities that would sicken them in civilian life. The ethical, as well as the physical, social and psychological fabric of life is torn by war.

The reintegration of women combatants is also not only neglected but extremely difficult, because although they may be lionised during war, they do not, in most societies, fit into the norms of day to day life. They have stepped out of their civil gender roles and cannot step back into them. Once they take off their uniforms they are likely to be seen as ‘spoiled goods’ and, as I heard from women in Sri Lanka, as insufficiently feminine and submissive.

Gender relations between combatant men and non-combatant women are also disrupted by war. The head of household and breadwinner roles normally filled by men are necessarily taken on by their wives while they are away. While much hardship is likely to be involved, this hiatus in social patterns creates a space for women to exercise abilities (and powers) that are not usually given any expression. This can be liberating for women, as well as tragic and taxing.

Men who are displaced with their families by war may also find themselves unable to provide for them in the ways that they have been used to and sink into a state of inertia. Their wives somehow find means of generating a meagre income in whatever way they can. In either case – displacement or war fighting – men find themselves excluded from the domestic positions they have been used to holding. This is dispiriting and disorientating for them and they may respond with depression or violence.

Not only, then, are the post-war needs of women – and consequently of children – neglected, but as a consequence of the psychological effects of trauma and social displacement and the disruption to family patterns brought about by war, domestic violence and social violence increase. General levels of sexual abuse against women and children also rise – another indication of the connection between violence, gender and sexuality. The human resources of moral sensibility and decency have been buried or seriously depleted. In addition, the impetus towards peace that is so necessary in the ending of violent conflict is diminished by the discouragement of half the population from active participation. Women’s resources, influence and perspectives are vital to peacemaking.

Gender and Conflict Transformation continued >>


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