WOMEN IN WAR

A paper presented at the AAUW Education Foundation Symposium by Carol Mann, Founder of FemAid.

International Perspectives: Global Voices for Gender Equity

Washington DC November 16th 2002

I would like to present a few considerations on the role of women in wars in recent history and today, comment on their systematic misrepresentation in order to put forward the idea that systematically collecting women’s narratives in contemporary conflicts may be an essential part of long-term peace-keeping strategies. The daily distortion of facts by media causes permanent damage to the fragile cause of women’s rights in the developing world.

I will start with a brief history of the stereotypes of women and war in European representations and confront them with the reality they do not depict, then follow up with some lesser known aspects of women’s fate during World War II, especially during the Siege of Leningrad and the Holocaust and see how they are relevant in analyzing contemporary situations. I shall dwell on my own field work in wartime Sarajevo and Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, especially where RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) is present.

This paper is based on research I am conducting at the EHESS and a book on Women and War to be published in Paris by Flammarion. I have to add that my research in anthropology is based on direct humanitarian aid: from 1993 onwards I was involved in Sarajevo, starting an NGO called ‘Enfants de Bosnie’ where I worked directly and consistently during the siege with women living in a suburb of Sarajevo called Dobrinja. After the war and in more recent years, I started another NGO, FemAid and I work with RAWA the only feminist group in Afghanistan. So if the historical part of this paper is based on theory and research, the rest comes from direct experience, revisited by a more academic perspective

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