The Gender Imperative: Human Security vs State Security

463 Pages·2018·1.652 MB·English

by  Betty A. Reardon, Asha Hans

The Gender Imperative
This collection of essays by feminist scholar-activists addresses the
crucial problem of human security in a world of heavily armed,
militarized states. It describes the gendered aspects of human security
excluded from the realist militarism that dominates current security
policy in most nation states. The book deepens and broadens current
security discourses, encouraging serious consideration of alternatives
to the present global security system that functions to advantage state
security over human security, a system the contributors perceive to be
rooted in the patriarchal nature of the nation state.
This second edition will be of interest to academics and students of
gender studies, women’s studies, international studies, development
studies, human rights, security studies, peace studies and peace education.
Betty A. Reardon is Founding Director Emeritus of the International
Institute on Peace Education (IIPE), a global consortium for continuing
education on issues of peace, and a feminist peace educator. Her work
with IIPE and as a theorist and designer of pedagogic materials and
processes in peace education was recognized by the special Honourable
Mention Award from UNESCO at the Peace Education Prize Ceremonies
of 2001. She was the initiator and the first academic coordinator of
The Hague Appeal for Peace Global Campaign for Peace Education
launched in 1999. She is the recipient of the 2009 Sean MacBride Peace
Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau. Her published and
unpublished professional papers are archived in the Ward M. Canaday
Special Collections at the University of Toledo Library in Ohio.
Asha Hans is Founder Director of the School of Women’s Studies,
Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, and heads the gender
research institute Sansristi. A peace activist, she has written extensively
on issues of peace and security, including Kashmiri women, refugee
women and disability issues. Her recent work is on UN Security
Council Resolution 1325. She is currently Co-Chair for the Pakistan
India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy and serves on the
editorial board of the Journal of Peace Education.
‘Betty A. Reardon and Asha Hans have provided an essential gift for
anyone fed up with and tired of war. This book, on why we need to figure
out and implement alternatives to war, and why gender and war are
totally related, belongs in every women’s and gender studies classroom,
every peace studies and peace education course, on the reading lists for
peace organizations and on the night tables of government officials and
generals who take our money and send our youth to kill and be killed.
The time for war to go has come. It steals resources from desperately
needed health and education budgets, among other needed domestic
programmes; it destroys people and other living things. We have
advanced in science, technology, art and music. Why can’t we settle
our differences without killing one another and destroying our homes,
polluting water supplies and torturing the enemy?
“It’s time to abolish war”, declared 10,000 people at the end-of-
the-century Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in 1999. That call
for institutional change could be traced to the 50-year-old motto of
Women Strike for Peace – ‘War is not healthy for children or other liv-
ing things’. And, as UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women,
peace and security and 1820 on sexual abuse of women make clear,
war is not healthy for women. The men at the table who unanimously
adopted these resolutions understood that neither oppression of
women nor war would cease without women’s full participation in
the politics of security. Gender equality is essential to the reduction
and elimination of armed conflict. The Hague Agenda for Peace and
Justice for the 21st Century, now a UN document (A/54/98), has 50
points for getting from a culture of war to a culture of peace, includ-
ing assurances of gender equality and the demilitarization of security.
It also proposes the institutional changes needed to eliminate war. A
decade after the publication of The Hague Agenda and the adoption of
Resolution 1325, the editors and contributors to The Gender Impera-
tive: Human Security vs State Security call for applying ourselves to
the same goal through serious public discussion of alternatives to war.
We can’t wait for another war. It’s must reading now. ’
Cora Weiss , a leader of Women Strike for Peace;
President of The Hague Appeal for Peace; Former
President of the International Peace Bureau; and
among the civil society initiators of UN Security
Council Resolution 1325
‘Betty A. Reardon and Asha Hans have brought together in this
volume a collection of powerful statements on the human cost of
militarism and set before us a line of serious inquiry into possibilities
for alternatives. The contributors paint vivid pictures of the interplay
between the gendered inequality integral to militarism and the
consequent frustration of human security. We Afghan women know
well the price of war and understand that our human security depends
upon peace. As one who has so long worked to provide the education
necessary for women’s full participation in their own and world
society, I welcome this book as an important contribution to the global
movement for gender equality, peace and human security.’
Sakena Yacoobi , Founder and Director,
Afghan Institute for Learning; recipient of multiple
awards for contribution to the education
of Afghan women
‘ This volume commits to the daring task of reclaiming the notion of
Utopia. Against the grain of dismissive real politique, its scholar-
activist authors study the practicalities of demilitarizing national
security systems in a crucial expansion of the body of feminist analyses
and knowledge of the essentially patriarchal worldwide war system. A
concrete exploration of security for and of the living individual human
beings who make up states, this project is sorely needed and inspiring,
a rare resource for scholars, activists and scholar-activists alike.’
Rela Mazali , author and contributor to Sexed Pistols:
The Gendered Impacts of Small Arms and Light
Weapons (2009), a founder of Gun Free Kitchen
Tables and member of New Profile, a women’s peace
organization working for the demilitarization
of Israeli and world society
‘ The book is an excellent contribution to the discourse on human security
and to the vision of a truly secure humanity and planet Earth. Skeptics
may say that the authors’ vision is utopian, but this attitude is in itself
a characteristic of patriarchal thinking, dismissing alternative thinking
and proposals as unrealistic and impossible. ’
Loreta Navarro-Castro , Global Campaign
for Peace Education, January 2011

The Gender Imperative
Human Security vs State Security
Second Edition
Edited by Betty A. Reardon
and Asha Hans
Second edition published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Betty A. Reardon and
Asha Hans; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Betty A. Reardon and Asha Hans to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
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Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2010
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-32090-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-32094-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-45213-0 (ebk)
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Contents
Notes on contributors x
Foreword xv
Introduction: challenging patriarchal violence 1
PART I
Confronting the militarized state security paradigm:
human security from a feminist perspective 5
1 Women and human security: a feminist framework and
critique of the prevailing patriarchal security system 7
BETTY A. REARDON
2 Gendered insecurity under long-term military presence:
the case of Okinawa 37
KOZUE AKIBAYASHI AND SUZUYO TAKAZATO
3 Human security and intersectional oppressions: women
in South Africa 59
BERNEDETTE MUTHIEN
PART II
Patriarchal conditioning to violence and human
insecurity 83
4 Challenging the patriarchal national security paradigm:
the role of Ethiopian women in peace and security 85
MESFIN G. AYELE
viii Contents
5 War and armed conflict: threat to African women’s
human security 108
FATUMA AHMED ALI
6 Sexual violence and genocide, the greatest violation
of human security: responses to the case of Darfur 134
LISA S. PRICE
7 Security discourses: a gender perspective 167
MICHELE W. MILNER
PART III
Militarization/demilitarization: eroding and
promoting human security 189
8 Seeking human security in a militarized Pacific: struggles
for peace and security by Pacific Island women 191
RONNI ALEXANDER
9 Education, violence and schools: the human security of
girls in Afghanistan 222
CHLOE BREYER
10 The Soldiers’ Mothers, human security and the Russian-
Chechen Wars 246
VALERIE ZAWILSKI
PART IV
Alternative and transitional approaches to human
security 275
11 Security Council Resolution 1325: toward gender
equality in peace and security policymaking 277
SOUMITA BASU
12 Jordanian women define security: a feminist approach
to an age-old problem 303
NORMA NEMEH
Contents ix
13 Public health and patriarchy: militarism and gender
as determinants of health insecurity 335
ALBIE SHARPE
14 Human security: the militarized perception and space
for gender 366
ASHA HANS
15 Patriarchy and the bomb: banning nuclear weapons
against the opposition of militarist masculinities 392
RAY ACHESON
Conclusion: framing a gender and human security
discourse: initiating the inquiry 410
Annexure: Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 427
Index 438