Another deeply gendered war is being waged in Ukraine

[niyad]

Another deeply gendered war is being waged in Ukraine

Countries with ‘feminist’ foreign policies need a sharper gender framework for addressing Ukraine’s predicament.


Azadeh Moaveni
Director, the Gender and Conflict Project, International Crisis Group

Chitra Nagarajan

Activist, writer, and researcher working on conflict, gender, human rights, and peace-building

Published On 15 Mar 202215 Mar 2022


Even before the Russian military fired its first strikes in its assault on Ukraine, there were signs that this conflict, like all wars, would upend the peacetime relations and identities of men, women, and people of all genders and inflict suffering on them in very particular ways. Writing about World War II, the Russian author Svetlana Alexievich reflected that, “Women’s war has its own colours, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.”


Last week, the image of a wounded and pregnant Ukrainian woman curled on a stretcher appeared on the front page of nearly every British newspaper, and Western leaders, as well as the Ukrainian president, mentioned the horrors facing women and children in every address calling for unity. But the Western supporters of Ukraine, especially the US, NATO, and the European Union, who have insisted for more than two decades now that women’s security shapes their approach to dealing with war, have done little to show that gender will be their framework, or even a framework, for addressing Ukraine’s predicament. We already see this war cementing old gender roles and inflicting terrible harm on people of all genders in the process. The forced universal conscription of men in Ukraine and Ukraine’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are resurrecting binaries of men as defender-warriors and women as fragile and needing protection. At the same time, the dozens of Ukrainian women signing up to fight, and the narrative imagery of these gun-strapped blonde soldiers skittering across social media, makes it hard to talk about gender and this war in conventional ways.


Ukraine is contending with the tensions of a masculine narrative playing out in border policy and the narrative of brave Ukrainian female warriors rising to repel the advancing enemy. Grimmest of all is the imagery of mobilised children. Recently a picture of a little girl with a lollipop in her mouth perched on a window with a weapon circulated online. What might prove most challenging for a traditional gender-sensitive approach to this war is the emerging and dominant glorification of the militarisation of an entire society.
Despite universal forced conscription, many men do not wish to fight. Men trying to leave the country have been shamed by crowds for not wanting to stay. Trans women who are identified as men in their paperwork have been stopped at the border and prevented from leaving.

We know from other contexts where there seemed no alternative but to mobilise men of fighting age that it often causes further problems down the line. In Nigeria, too, communities saw little option but for young and middle-aged men (and some women too) to join fighter groups to defend themselves from the attacks of Boko Haram. Protecting the family and community was integral to what it meant to be a good man so men and even adolescent boys faced significant pressure – from their friends and others in their communities, from the state, and from themselves – to join such groups. This development blurred the line between fighter and civilian and meant all people living in these locations were seen as fair targets.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/15/another-deeply-gendered-war-is-being-waged-in-ukraine

[SheltieLover]

1. Kicking for visibility

[niyad]

3. Thank you. And congratulations on your DUnniversary.

[SheltieLover]

4. It's my duversary?

I had no idea! Ty!

[Hortensis]

2. "Is this arms spending race, action that seems certain to hurt gender equality, and

world of militarised masculinities really the future we want? Alternatives seem impossible to imagine right now."

They sure do, especially ones that could have been implemented. Ukraine's authorities could have decreed conscription of able women without children and delivered men carrying children to the border, but would Ukrainians themselves have accepted that upset of the order of many centuries?

In any case, it's not the future more than half most populations would want, but it's certainly the present the Ukrainians have. Having raised the issue, it'd be nice if some alternatives that a people scrambling/fighting for survival and others helping by throwing rocks from outside at invading hoards might implement were mused over.

[Takket]

5. I wonder what the authors would have done in Zelensky's place

They speak of the harm done to women and children and the reinforcement of old gender roles brought on by the war. They speak of the harm that will be done to the most vulnerable Russians by the sanctions.

I wonder what they would have done in Zelensky’s place? Or any leader of NATO? Gender issues are important ones and a great topic for peacetime. But it seems awfully short sighted, and borderline offensive, to be criticizing the actions of Ukraine when they are the ones with the guns to their heads and little time to have in depth conversations about gender equality issues while thousands of tanks roll across their border. It is very easy to make these criticisms from the comfort of you desk at work.

This is a war. A war rammed down the collective throats if the world by one person. Yes. Vulnerable people in Russia will be victims of the sanctions. Yes. Evacuated Ukrainians will be exploited.

Should all those women and children have stayed in Ukraine to be with their men/dads? Should Ukraine have simply surrendered to avoid these gender based separations? Is that a better alternative? What do the authors think should be done? Should we try to talk to Putin about the harm his toxic masculinity causes? Maybe he will back off.

Ukraine is doing the best it can to simply EXIST from one day to the next. NATO is doing the best it can for this flood of refugees without trigging a WW3 that would increase the suffering a million fold.

Cut them some slack.