“Are women, by nature, particularly suited to nonviolence?”

• Women are by nature suited to nonviolence

• Women use nonviolence because of their status in society – often the only option available to them

• Women are not suited to nonviolence anymore than men are

Gandhi“if nonviolence is the law of our being the future is with women”

Emancipation of women was the key to the emancipation of India – “the first condition of nonviolence is justice all round in every department of life”

Everything he knew about nonviolence he learnt from his wife – “What if a man were to behave in this way towards his oppressor? What if a man were to lower his fists, drop his gun or his sword and refuse to fight?”

Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa - infinite love, infinite capacity for suffering

Salt march (over 60% female); boycotted liquor stores; spinning movement

• Carol Gilligan – “women have a trajectory of moral development that is distinct from men’s.”

• Inherent fundamental differences between the sexes

Ethic of justice vs ethic of care

(men) (women)

Women’s Peace Movements in the West

20th century – accepted rhetoric that women, as mothers, had a special commitment to ridding the world of war

An enduring belief – the women at Greenham Common peace camp also believed in their duty to protest against war and violence for the sake of their children

Scientific proof?

“Fight or flight” vs “tend and befriend”

Scientifically proven that men are more willing to start a fight whereas in the same situation women want to connect with others and defuse the tension

Women are nonviolent because of their position in society

• Socialised away from violence

• Perhaps the idea of nonviolence being a feminine quality says more about society’s perception of the different gender roles than the nature of women themselves

• War as the cornerstone of masculinity; motherhood as the cornerstone of femininity

• When a man, “decides that he will not retaliate, but search instead for common ground, and cultivate love and respect for his opponent, he is going against millions of years of conditioning.” (Flinders)

UMWA strike 1989

To ensure success and support amongst the miners, the union framed nonviolence in gendered terms – nonviolence became something very masculine, and violence was increasingly dismissed as something mindless and foolish

• Their position outside of the major hierarchies enabled women to look critically at the matter of war

• “free from patriotism and unreal loyalties to their nation and were able to understand war as the barbarous institution it was.” (Fisher)

• Virginia Woolf: Men favoured war because they had a vested interest in their positions of power, whereas women, who had always been excluded from these positions of power, had no interested motives in war

Interdependence of peace and the emancipation of women; just as men had vested interests in war, women had vested interests in peace

AIWC, 1940: “In a plan of life based on nonviolence, woman has as much right to shape her own destiny as man has to shape his.”

Nonviolence: a way of assuming a degree of power in a male dominated world

Pam McAllister: “most of what we call women’s history is actually the history of women’s role in the development of nonviolent action.”

Lyristrata showed women refusing to have sex until peace was negotiated – a tactic employed by women throughout time (Iroquois Nation, Liberian War, Togo)

Rosenstrasse – Berlin 1943

Non-Jewish wives protested at the round up of their Jewish husbands

Stolzfus “having originally arrived to get information, the women were drawn into a feeling of solidarity that expressed itself in public protest”

Would have been hypocritical for the Nazis to have acted against the protesters because women were considered incapable of political action – the authorities could not legitimately arrest them

Ackerman and Duval – “without fully realising what they had done, the Rosenstrasse women had forced the Nazis to make a choice.”

Process of National Reorganisation – 30,000 people disappeared

Most of the women were uneducated and had been conditioned to not get involved in politics

Challenged the traditional image of mothers as passive and apolitical – entered the public sphere for the first time

Posed a dilemma for a regime which based its moral legitimacy on the defence of Christian values of family and motherhood

Plaza de Mayo - Buenos Aires 1977

Do not prove that women are by nature suited to nonviolence, but if women want to act alone, it is often only by using nonviolence that they can do so

Rosenstrasse and Plaza de Mayo – important nonviolent movements instigated by women

Ruddick: women as inherently nonviolent is an “intoxicating myth which prevails even in the face of massive historical contradictions.” Women may not have fought in as many wars, but they have still supported them

Women are no more suited to nonviolence than men

• White Feather Campaign• Violent tactics employed by the Suffragettes• Female SS guards • Female emancipation has been accompanied by a rise in crime committed by women (250% increase since 1970s)

Conclusion• The idea that women are by nature suited to nonviolence

ignores all evidence that states otherwise.

• Cannot separate men and women into violent and nonviolent categories

• Women have often been portrayed as nonviolent people because of their physical weakness and secondary status in society – nonviolence is the only form of action available to them

• Should gender matter? Core belief of nonviolence is that all life is one and the same, regardless of gender.