Jennifer Turpin
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
U.S.A.
VOICE: (415)666-6496
FAX:(415)666-2346
Militarism not only causes environmental degradation, it is also connected to underdevelopment and to the subordination of women around the world. The issues of militarism, environment, development, and gender are intricately bound in a system in which everyone eventually loses, but women are most affected. Women suffer most from the consequences of war, from underdevelopment, and from environmental decay. The relationship between these three problems and women will be explored in the first section of the paper.
How do women respond to these threats? How is women's relationship to war, development, and to the environment being conceptualized theoretically? In the second part of the paper, I try to make sense of the seeming theoretical contradiction between what Sara Ruddick has called "maternal thinking", that is, women's greater propensity to advocate peace and to be nonviolent, and research documenting women's widespread support of war and their contribution to environmental destruction. I argue that the resurging "difference feminism" has obscured this debate. "Nature" and "nurture" have been juxtaposed as binary forces which determine women's behavior. In contrast, an analysis of gender socialization lends to a more informed theoretical analysis of the relationship between women and both physical and structural violence. I contend that women's roles both in support of and in protesting violence, both physical and structural, stem from their complex and sometimes contradictory roles as nurturers and as citizens intricately fused with the nation. It is dangerous to conceptualize women as more peaceful "by nature" - this simply uses the "anatomy is destiny" argument toward a different goal. Part of women's challenge to militarism and to environmental decay must also be a challenge to difference feminism.
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