Female Bodies and Battlefields

What does it mean to be “female” in times of social and political instability? How are the standards of “femininity” controlled and maneuvered in wartime? And what are the implications for a “female body” and the meanings behind it?

In Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War, Cynthia Enloe, a feminist theorist and writer well-known for her work on gender and militarism as well as her contribution to the field of feminist international relations, points out that “war takes place at a particular moment in the history of gender—that is, in the history of women’s organizing, in the history of women’s relationships to the state, in the history of contested masculinities, in the history of patriarchy’s rationalization and reach.” Therefore, in order to draw a comprehensive picture of war and conflict, we ought to include the accounts and perspectives of those who are often silenced, omitted or simply not taken seriously—women and girls–and the voices and lived experiences of their “female bodies”. If female agency is to be considered with all its complexity and dynamics, it is crucial to move beyond the iconic notions of being merely a “wife”, “mother”, “daughter”, “working woman”, “military official”, “woman soldier”, “prostitute”, or a “rape victim/survivor”. The personal needs to be seen as political, whereas a private matter should become an issue of international importance.