Otto,Dianne --- "International Peace Activism: the Contributions Made by Women" [2003] ALRCRefJl 7; (2003) 82 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 30

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Reform Issue 82 Autumn 2003

This article appeared on pages 30 – 36 & 70 of the original journal.

International peace activism: the contributions made by women

By Dianne Otto*

“The Security Council recognize that peace is inextricably linked with equality between women and men ... [and] that the equal access and full participation of women in power structures and their full involvement in all efforts for the prevention and resolution of conflicts are essential for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.”
Ambassador Anwarul Karim Chowdury
President, UN Security Council
International Women’s Day (2000)¹

Women have a long history of organising internationally, as women, in the pursuit of peace.² The most courageous (and maligned) early testament to the transnational solidarity that the cause of peace can engender between women was the Hague Congress of Women, held in 1915 during the First World War, which was attended by women from neutral and belligerent states. The Congress established the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, renamed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1919, which continues today. The Congress also boldly decided to send delegations to speak with the warring governments and, based on the information they gleaned, to encourage the neutral states to mediate between them.³

When the WILPF was founded in 1919, women’s suffrage and world peace were identified as the two interconnected goals of the organisation.

The first wave of women’s international opposition to war was galvanised by World War I, partly because of women’s political exclusion, which allowed them not to feel personally responsible.

In the inter-war years, while there were many ideological and tactical differences between international women’s organisations, they remained strongly united in their opposition to war as women’s transnational peace activism blossomed.

However, the virtual impossibility of maintaining an anti-war position in the context of the rise of fascism in Europe and the Pacific, which was occurring despite women’s increased political participation, meant that this activity all but dissipated.

Following World War II, the divisions of the Cold War and the nationalist focus of most women involved in anti-colonial independence struggles made women’s internationalism more complicated.

Eventually, in the late 1960s, it was the Vietnam War rather than the Cold War that revived the international peace movement, in which women played many important roles. But it was not until the 1970s that women’s peace activism was revitalised on a global scale, which has grown in diversity, spread and ingenuity ever since.

Thus, perceived gender commonalities have proved to be an enduring and powerful force for motivating many women to organise against war, separately from men, despite their many other differences, like those of nationality, race, ethnicity, class and sexuality.

Notwithstanding the durability of this female bond, there continue to be competing views about what women’s distinctive contribution to peace might be and whether it is shaped by women’s shared social experience or arises from a biological predisposition.

In this article, I will examine these questions and, in addition, discuss some of the successes and failures of women’s international efforts to promote peace.

1. The basis for women’s international peace activism

How can such enduring transnational solidarity between women in the cause of peace be accounted for?

Leila Rupp, in her study of the first wave of the international women’s movement, identifies three main forces for solidarity or ‘sisterhood’ as it was, and still is, often termed: women’s potential or actual motherhood, their systemic gender disadvantage, and their vulnerability to wartime sexual violence.

Of these, maternalist ideas were the predominant unifying force for the early international women’s peace movement. Many women believed that it was their maternal potential that made them predisposed to nurturing and protecting life, unlike men.

Although there were conflicting views about the correctness of this approach, an early WILPF pamphlet observed, pragmatically, that it appealed ‘quite spontaneously’ to women from around the world.

The debate about relying so heavily on a paradigm of sex stereotyping — however it is framed, whether as a result of women’s nature or socialisation, or as an ethical predisposition — has continued into the second wave.

The maternalist paradigm is problematic because it reinforces the notion of biologically determined dichotomous gender roles, which are consistent with military discourses and inconsistent with women’s equality, despite the argument of many maternalists that to use gender stereotypes in this way is to subvert them.

Notwithstanding the debates, the resort to women’s association with motherhood in order to mobilise women in the cause of peace has endured.

The other two forces for women’s international solidarity identified by Rupp — systemic gender disadvantage and vulnerability to wartime violence — have also played a role in second wave women’s peace activism. These rallying points are based on commonalities that arise from women’s shared gender experience and are therefore less prone than maternalist movements to produce gender stereotypes and the sense of their immutability.

The equality approach of the first wave was dominated by the struggle for suffrage, but by the second wave this narrow focus of equality had broadened to encompass an understanding of women’s universal economic disadvantage.

In fact, there are many ways in which contemporary feminists understand equality, which are reflected in women’s peace activism.

Mary Burguieres draws a distinction between liberal feminists (those who reject female stereotypes) and anti-militarist feminists (those who reject both male and female stereotypes) in her charting of the streams of feminist thought that have informed second wave women’s peace movements.⁴ I would place these two streams together under the rubric of equality, and distinguish between them as formal and substantive versions of equality. I find the linkages that feminists have made between militarism and women’s continuing inequality to be the most compelling focus for feminist peace activism.

The third force for women’s peace work, the mobilisation of women to expose and protest the violence directed at women during wars, has taken on increasing momentum since the end of the Cold War because of the heightened awareness of the cruelty that targets women in situations of armed conflict and its links with the violence that women endure during peacetime.

But the infliction of sexual violence as a tool of armed conflict, and its justification as a natural consequence of war, is by no means a new phenomenon. Many women protested against rape during World War I, and the 1915 Hague Congress of Women deplored the ‘odious wrongs’ perpetrated against women in times of war.

That this earlier knowledge had to be virtually ‘rediscovered’ by feminists in the 1990s attests to the powerful effects of the legal and political discourses of militarism in silencing the war-time experiences of women rather than expose the extremes of the aggressive masculinities that war fosters.

As many feminists have observed, the most common form of violence in our [global] society is violence against women by men. As something which most women have either personally experienced or feared, gendered violence has proved to be a very powerful focus for women’s international peace activism.

2. The unique contributions that women feel they can make

What then are the special contributions towards peace that women perceive themselves as making?

Ideas about this differ depending on the underlying assumptions about the basis for women’s peace activism. The ideology of maternalism strongly links women’s peace activism to pacificism.

Jane Addams, the first international president of WILPF and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in 1931, made important contributions to developing the pacifist framework of the women’s peace movement. She claimed that, as the sustainers of life, women had a distinctive talent for rationality, which they needed to use as active citizens to promote the evolution of methods of governance that relied on the rule of law rather than force.

The resolutions adopted by the 1915 Hague Congress of Women were very much influenced by her pacifist views. They rejected the approach of ‘humanising’ war through developing legal and customary conventions of war, and instead promoted peaceful resolution of international disputes through arbitration and conciliation. The Congress stressed the ‘essential importance’ of universal disarmament and control of the arms industry, and planned to organise the next International Congress of Women concurrently with the peace settlement conference at the end of the war, in order for them to present ‘practical proposals’ to the conference. They also appealed for the education of children in the ‘ideals of a constructive peace’.

Maternalism and, by association, pacificism have also inspired many contributions of the second wave. Women have sought to contribute the practices and strategies associated with maternal work — such as protection, nurturance and training — in the public sphere, towards the attainment of peace. Such contributions are implicitly recognised and valued in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action (PFA), adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women, which calls for the increased participation of women in conflict resolution and the promotion of women’s contribution to fostering a culture of peace.

The contributions towards peace that emerge from an equality perspective overlap with maternalist strategies in that achieving the full and equal participation of women in decision-making associated with the resolution of armed conflicts is also a central goal.

In 1915, the Hague Women’s Congress called for women’s active and equal involvement in peace negotiations, in foreign policy determination, and in peace settlement processes.

More recently, women have not limited their demands for equality to participation in decision-making, but have sought to mainstream a gender perspective into every aspect of international institutions and law-making processes.

While some equality strategies reject drawing any distinction between women and men, having as their aim the achievement of women’s formal equality, those who seek more substantively equal outcomes for women argue that women’s equal participation is not only important in a democratic sense, but also because women will bring different points of view to bear on the issues at hand.

Further, many equality strategists believe that working for women’s equality is itself making a contribution to peace. This perspective is behind the observation in the PFA that ‘[peace] is inextricably linked with equality between women and men and development’, and clearly also informed the comments by Ambassador Chowdury on International Women’s Day in 2000 to the effect that peace and women’s equality are ‘inextricably linked’ (see quote at start of article).

The contribution of the anti-violence strand of the international women’s peace movement has been to seek an end to the impunity that has been enjoyed by most perpetrators of violence against women during armed conflict, which has given it a particularly ‘legal’ focus.

To this end, women have sought to raise public awareness about crimes committed against women during war and to ‘mobilise shame’ in order to change the definitions and/or interpretations of war crimes so as to be fully inclusive of women’s experience. Their focus has, over time, expanded to include many other problems that women face as a result of armed conflict, including the poverty that results from the effects of indiscriminate means of warfare such as landmines, the problems faced by women in preserving social order during armed conflict, and the difficulties that women face in the aftermath of conflict.

Like the other two strands of thinking, the anti-violence approach has stressed the importance of involving women in decision-making at all levels of conflict resolution and post-conflict peace building.

The influence of this approach has been strengthened by making links with women’s movements that have been concerned to address violence against women at the domestic level, and compelling connections have been drawn between war-time and peace-time violations of women’s human rights.

As a result of this activism, both the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women declared that crimes committed against women during war were violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

3. The successes and failures of women’s international peace activism

Given the contributions that women feel they can make to peace, what has been their success?

Clearly, women’s efforts to organise cross-culturally and transnationally, as women, have been resoundingly successful.

The presence of thousands of women’s non-government organisations (NGOs) at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, many of which were concerned with achieving peace, and their considerable influence on the content of the PFA, testifies to the magnitude of this success.

The vision and tenacity of international women’s peace organisations have also made major, more formal contributions to both the League of Nations and the United Nations, which Rupp confidently argues would not have been the same without the involvement of women.

Women’s forging of bonds across nationality, race, politics, class and sexuality has laid crucial groundwork for the development of a more universal collective identity, which, ultimately, is necessary for world peace.

International women’s peace movements have also been successful in destabilising the line between the public (masculine) world of military and political affairs, and the private (feminine) world of home, motherhood and children’s education, at least in the popular imagination. For example, the huge ‘petition for peace’ campaign of the early 1930s organised by WILPF gathered the signatures of over seven million ordinary people from 56 countries who supported the League of Nations’ efforts to promote disarmament. In another example, cruise missiles became a matter of public debate in the 1980s as a result of the Greenham Common women’s peace camp.

Such campaigns have made it clear that questions of war and peace are not just the business of military and political elites, and that ordinary people, including women, have important roles to play in bringing different perspectives and insights to bear on solving global problems.

That peace was one of the three themes of International Women’s Year (1975), the International Decade for Women (1976–1985), and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women marks this achievement, taking a giant step away from the traditional vision of women as only victims of armed conflict. However, many governmental representatives have remained reluctant to seriously discuss peace in women’s forums.

The anti-violence stream of women’s peace activism has also had some recent success through their involvement in lobbying those who drafted the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

As a result of the tireless promotion of gender inclusivity at every opportunity, it was agreed in December 1997 that a new class of war crimes involving sexual violence would be created and included in the Statute.

Although this was a major advance for women, feminist international lawyers have generally concluded that it still does not amount to a ‘significant’ shift in the boundaries of the masculinist and militarist discourse of international humanitarian law.

Some progress has also been made in involving women directly in processes of conflict resolution and peace-building, although women have had to struggle every inch of the way.

Although the League of Nations adopted a resolution in the 1930s that called for increased collaboration with women’s organisations in the search for peace, and a similar call was made at the 1975 UN World Conference on Women in Mexico, little headway had been made until the UN Security Council’s recent unanimous adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.⁵

Inspired by Ambassador Chowdury’s comments on International Women’s Day 2000, a coalition of international NGOs, including the WILPF, seized the opportunity and decided to work towards the goal of convincing the Security Council to hold an Open Session on the issue of women, peace and security.⁶ This Session led to the adoption of Resolution 1325, which calls for, amongst other things, the increased participation of women in decision-making relating to the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.

The Resolution has since generated a great deal of activity in places like Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo, where grass roots women have used the Resolution as a means of demanding participation in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction.⁷

Besides calling for the participation of women in decision-making related to the resolution of armed conflict, Resolution 1325 bears many other marks of the international women’s movements for peace. It commits the Security Council to improving the gender sensitivity and responsiveness of peacekeeping operations, and urges member states to do the same through improved training for both military and civilian personnel. It calls on all those involved to ensure that peace agreements adopt a ‘gender perspective’, which includes addressing the special needs of women and girls, supporting local women’s peace initiatives, and protecting the human rights of women and girls.

All parties to armed conflict are called upon to respect international law pertaining to the rights and protection of women and girls, to take special measures in relation to gendered violence, to end impunity for war crimes, including sexual and other violence against women and girls, and to address the particular needs of refugee women and women ex-combatants.

While the adoption of Resolution 1325 by the Security Council can be seen as a watershed for women’s peace activism, it should also be acknowledged that the Resolution falls a long way short when it comes to perhaps the two most important goals of disarmament and demilitarisation. It fails to make any reference to disarmament, apart from in the limited context of the post-conflict reintegration of ex-combatants.

This is a far cry from the PFA, which identified reducing excessive military expenditures and controlling the availability of armaments as one of its strategic objectives, and included an undertaking that governments would ‘work actively towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’. Further, the call of women’s peace movements for the development of non-violent forms of conflict resolution and the fostering of a culture of peace are nowhere evident in the language of the Resolution. This highlights its underlying assumption that the use of military force remains an essential tool in the attainment of peace.

Finally, there is only one reference to respecting and protecting the human rights of women and girls, in the context of implementing peace agreements, yet realising women’s full and equal enjoyment of all human rights is perhaps the best strategy that can be found to advance human security over military security.

Conclusion

In conclusion, women’s international peace activism is as important as ever.

While many successes have resulted from over a century of campaigning for peace by generations of feminist activists, it must be admitted that the goal of world peace is still as far as ever from achievement. Women, and their concerns, are still largely excluded from the traditional calculus of managing and resolving armed conflict, despite formal commitments to changing this state of affairs.

While the violence that is routinely committed against women during armed conflicts has finally been properly classified as among the most serious of war crimes, there is as yet no indication that it is on the decline.

And the inequality of women remains a global phenomenon, despite many formal undertakings by states to address it.

The effectiveness of these achievements at the international level depends on the continuing vigilance and activity of international women’s movements.

But above all, the goal of world peace is heavily dependent on grass roots women’s movements that are able to use the formal developments at the international level to hold their governments accountable and to build a culture of peace, involving whole communities, which will ultimately make the production and use of ever more deadly weapons of war unthinkable.

* Dianne Otto is an Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne.

Endnotes

1. ‘Peace Inextricably Linked with Equality Between Women and Men Says Security Council, in International Women’s Day Statement’, Press Release, SC/6816, 8 March 2000.

2. Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement, (1997) Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 19. The International Council of Women established the International Committee on Peace and International Arbitration in 1899. Its establishment was inspired by the 1899 intergovernmental conference on peace and disarmament at The Hague.

3. Anne Wiltsher, Most Dangerous Women: Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War, (1985) Pandora, London.

4. Mary K. Burgieres, ‘Feminist Approaches to Peace: Another Step for Peace Studies,’ (1990) 19 Millennium 1.

5. S/RES/1325 (2000), 31 October 2000.

6. Five non-governmental organisations were involved in this lobbying: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF); International Alert; Amnesty International; Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children; and the Hague Appeal for Peace. In their continuing efforts to ensure full implementation of the Resolution, these groups have been joined by the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court, and International Women’s Tribune Centre (IWTC) — these NGOs are together called the Working Group on Women, International Peace and Security.

7. See further <http://www.peacewomen.org/> .