Gender and Armed Conflict

Learning objectives

Course Objectives. This course has been designed with three main purposes in mind:

• To learn about how taking genders and sexualities seriously alters how armed conflict is conceptualized, defined, experienced, observed, analyzed, theorized, and recounted;
• To learn about gender and armed conflict in a wide variety of situations around the world; and
• To be able to formulate the questions that you would ask about gender were you exposed to a ‘new’ armed conflict to analyze.

Learning Outcomes. By the end of this course, participants should be able to:

• Identify and explain the significance of a number of gendered dimensions of ‘armed conflict’;
• Discuss the ways that genders and sexualities might influence how one understands what armed conflict is, and how one conceptualizes knowledge of it;
• Identify gendered ways that armed conflicts are defined, understood, presented, and experienced
• Articulate what nationalisms are and how they are or can be related to genders
• Articulate what militarisms are and how they are or can be related to genders
• Provide examples of the ways in which gender has mattered to interstate military relations in the past;
• Discuss empirical examples of ‘female fighters’ and their significance (or lack thereof) for thinking about gender and armed conflict(s)
• Provide nuanced analysis of the many positions in debates about women, femininity, and ‘peace’
• Discuss the complications with the conflict/post-conflict dichotomy through gender lenses; and
• Discuss gender in peace-building, peace-making, and transitional justice.

Course content

Despite the importance of gender in global politics, gender is still not fully integrated in the academic study of international politics. Feminist approaches are offering new views of a field previously defined as devoid of gender politics. Early IR feminists challenged the discipline to think about how its theories might be reformulated and how its understandings of global politics might be improved if gender were included as a category of analysis and if women’s experiences were part of its subject matter. IR feminists critically re-examined some of the key concepts in the field - concepts such as sovereignty, the state, and security. They began to ask new questions - such as whether it makes a difference that most foreign policy leaders, military personnel and heads of international corporations are men and why women remain relatively disempowered in matters of foreign and military policy. IR feminists have also sought to make women visible as subjects in international politics and the global economy. They draw attention to women’s invisibility and gender subordination in the theory and practice of international politics. This course looks to explore the relationship between gender and armed conflict. As it does, it looks to show that ‘gender’ is not a euphemism for ‘women,’ and that women can be found in many places in armed conflict other than on its sidelines or as its civilian victims. In its overview of gender and armed conflict, the course looks at armed conflict through ‘gender lenses’ (h/t Peterson and Runyan, Global Gender Issues), looking for gender, and seeing what else is seen along the way. In this journey, it engages with how genders and sexualities matter in how ‘we’ see armed conflict; how armed conflict is lived and experienced; the conceptual and practical interdependence of genders, nationalisms, and militarisms; the dimensions of gender-based and sexual violence in/around armed conflict; women’s engagement in political violence; associations of femininities and peace; and a wide variety of gender-based insights about whether ‘post-conflict’ periods exist and how they can be understood. Note that the course will not go over the basic readings in gender, feminism, and/or global politics/International Relations (IR). It is assumed that you have some background in IR, with their included gender content. It is not assumed that you have read the readings that would be in a general course on gender and IR. Having some background in those readings may make doing the readings that are assigned easier, but it is not required that you do that work. If you decide to do some preparation reading, you are free to choose your own background readings – many syllabi for gender and IR courses are available around the internet (a central location is the Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights’ syllabus collection: genderandsecurity.org/projects-resources/syllabus-collection).

Course structure and indications of the learning and teaching design

The course will be delivered as a block seminar over a period of five days. The course will consist of ten blocks – two hours forty-five minutes in the morning and afternoon, in lecture-discussion format, where there is a one-hour lecture, a fifteen-minute break, and one and a half hours for discussion and activity.

The topics are as follows:

• Unit 1. Thinking about ‘Knowing’ Gender and/of Armed Conflict
• Unit 2. Gender and Armed Conflict(s) (Experiences)
• Unit 3. Gender, Nation, Nationalism, and War(s)
• Unit 4. Gender, ‘Terrorism’ and (Other) (Neo-)Orientalisms
• Unit 5. Genders and Militarisms
• Unit 6. (Conflict) Sexual Violence and Gender-Based Violence
• Unit 7. Rethinking Gender and Armed Conflict: Other ‘Arms’
• Unit 8. ‘Female Fighters’
• Unit 9. ‘Women’, Gender, and Peace
• Unit 10. Gender(ing) Peace-making, Peace-keeping, and Other ‘Post’-Conflict Phenomena