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. K&R!

[abqtommy]

2. This is an opinion piece and I don't agree with it. I rely on Al Jazeera's news coverage

but not their opinions.

[PortTack]

3. Same..DW.com and France24 are good sources too

[Srkdqltr]

4. I dont have a clue what the author is saying.

If only the men fight, civilians would not be killed? Women should not have to fight? Actually no one should be fighting but the MAN IN MOSCOW started all this and should be stopped. I have no clue what is going on with the Russian troops, mostly men I assume. This whole article is not clear.
BTW the little girl with the lollipops and a gun was posed.