‘War is a man’s game,’ or so goes the saying. Whether this is true or not, patriarchal capitalism is certainly one of the driving forces behind war in the modern era. So can we end war with feminism? This book argues that this is possible, and is in fact already happening.
Each chapter provides a solution to war using innovative examples of how feminist and queer theory and practice inform pacifist treaties, movements and methods, from the international to the domestic spheres. Chapters propose a range of solutions that include arms abolition, centering Indigenous knowledge, economic restructuring, and transforming how we ‘count’ civilian deaths.
Ending war requires challenging complex structures, but the solutions found in this edition have risen to this challenge. By thinking beyond the violence of the capitalist patriarchy, this book makes the powerful case that the possibility of life without war is real.
Just as women changed the direction and agenda of the peace movement when they became progressively more involved in an all-male club, black women altered a cause that had previously lacked racial diversity when they were first granted admission to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915. As Joyce Blackwell illustrates in this first study of collective black peace activism, the increased presence of black women in the WILPF over the next sixty years brought to the movement historical experiences shaped by societal racism.
No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1975 explores how black women, fueled by the desire to eradicate racial injustice, compelled the white leadership of the WILPF to revisit its own conceptions of peace and freedom. Blackwell offers a renewed examination of peace movements in American history, one that points out the implications of black women’s participation for the study of social activism, African American history, and women’s history. This new perspective on interracial and black female global activism helps redefine the often-covert systemic violence necessary to maintain systems of social and economic hierarchy, moving peace and war discourse away from its narrow focus on European and European-American issues.
Blackwell looks closely at the reasons why white women organized their own peace group at the start of World War I and assesses several bold steps taken by these groups in their first ten years. Addressing white peace activists’ continuous search for the “perfect” African American woman, Blackwell considers when and why black women joined the WILPF, why so few of them were interested in the organization, and what the small number who did join had in common with their white counterparts. She also shows how the WILPF, frustrated at its inability to successfully appeal to black women, established a controversial interracial committee to deal with the dilemma of recruiting black women while attempting to maintain all of its white members.
Tracing the black activists’ peace reform activities on an international level from World War I to the end of the Vietnam War, No Peace Without Freedom examines the links black activists established within the African American community as well as the connections they made with peoples of the black Diaspora and later with colonized people irrespective of race. The volume is complemented by eighteen illustrations.
Violent conflict, climate change, and poverty present distinct threats to women worldwide. Importantly, women are leading the way creating and sharing sustainable solutions.
Women’s security is a valuable analytical tool as well as a political agenda insofar as it addresses the specific problems affecting women’s ability to live dignified, free, and secure lives. First, this collection focuses on how conflict impacts women’s lives and well-being, including rape and gendered constructions of ethnicity, race, and religion. The book’s second section looks beyond the scope of large-scale violence to examine human security in terms of environmental policy, food, water, health, and economics.
Multidisciplinary in scope, these essays from new and established contributors draw from gender studies, international relations, criminology, political science, economics, sociology, biological and ecological sciences, and planning.
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