PO377 ETHNIC CONFLICT AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE Week 8: Gender and Nationalism

Lecture Outline  Gender-Blindness in the Study of Nationalism  Feminist Approaches to Nationalism  Gender in nationalism and ideas of nationhood  Difference between men and women and amongst women  Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements  Anti-colonial nationalist struggles  Contemporary nationalist movements  After the struggle  Summary  Chpt. 3 of my Women and Political Violence book (Alison 2009) is a good starting point for these discussions.

Gender-Blindness in the Study of Nationalism  Nationalism: ‘it is hard to think of any political phenomenon which remains so puzzling and about which there is less analytic consensus’ (Anderson 1996 in Mapping the Nation).  Literature on nationalism has not been interested in questions of gender or the differential participation of women and men.  Texts on nationalism that try to incorporate a gendered perspective usually just ‘tack on’ gender.

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism  ‘Gender cannot be analysed outside of ethnic, national and “race” relations; but neither can these latter phenomena be analysed without gender. It is not a case of simply adding these two sets of analyses together; but rather that they mutually affect each other in a dynamic relationship’ (Walby 1996).  ‘[A]ll nationalisms are gendered; all are invented; and all are dangerous… in the sense that they represent relations to political power and to the technologies of violence’ (McClintock 1997).

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism (2) Gender in nationalism and ideas of nationhood  ‘[T]he nation never just is, anymore than the state just is. Nationality and citizenship, like race and ethnicity, are unstable categories, and contested identities. They are all gendered identities, and the constructions of “women”, inside and outside their borders, are part of the processes of identity formation’ (Pettman 1996).  The nation is frequently figured as a woman and women are constructed as bearers of the nation.

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism (3) Gender in nationalism and ideas of nationhood  Constructions of nationhood involve notions of masculinity and femininity.  ‘[L]aws and discourses pertaining to gender are central to the self-definition of political groups and… signal the political and cultural projects of movements and regimes’ (Moghadam 1994a).

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism (4)  Reproduction is highly significant to nationalist movements and identity constructions; reproduction is politicised and motherhood militarised: ‘demographic race’.  Constructions of masculinity as integrally linked to warriorhood are also extremely significant.  E.g.: In former Yugoslavia wars, constructions of ethno- national identity intersected with restrictive constructions of gender identity placing a high value on female chastity and nationalist motherhood, whilst framing masculinity as equal to warrior aggression.

WWI recruitment posters

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism (5)  Women’s appearance and behaviour subject to nationalist movement (state and non-state) political and socio-cultural objectives.  Two models of revolution and constructions of national identity: 1. modernising, incl. ideas of equality and women’s emancipation: Women’s Emancipation model. 2. form viewing cultural identity and integrity as strongly dependent upon proper behaviour of women: Woman-in- the-Family model. (Moghadam 1993.)  Clashes between models: ‘patriarchal backlash’ (Kandiyoti 1991).

Feminist Approaches to Nationalism (6) Difference between men and women and amongst women  Women may support a different national project from men; struggle to define what constitutes the national project and women are usually less heard than men (Walby 1996).  Women are not homogeneous and are no less affected than men by social hierarchies; the ways different women are situated re. divisions of power, violence, labour and resources will shape their nationalist allegiances (Peterson 1998).

Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements  Virginia Woolf: ‘as a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world’ (1938 Three Guineas).  ‘[N]ationalism typically has sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation and masculinized hope’ (Enloe 1989/2000).  Western feminism historically opposed nationalism whilst Third World feminism more sympathetic.  Nationalism is doubly ‘Janus-faced’: looks to both the past and the future, and simultaneously mobilises and excludes women.

Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements (2) Anti-colonial nationalist struggles  ‘Woman question’ central part of many anti-colonial nationalist struggles; greater freedoms for women = modernity and civilisation. J S Mill: ‘the condition of women is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the manner of nations. Among rude people the women are generally degraded, among civilised people they are exalted’.  Jayawardena (1986): in most Asian anti-colonial nationalist movements in 19 th /early 20 th centuries struggles for women’s emancipation were integral. Advances in women’s legal and political equality in Asia but didn’t achieve change in patriarchal structures of family and society.

Pop Quiz  Thinking of the J S Mill quote, can you think of a current/recent example of ‘the condition of women’ as the marker of civility/incivility being used to justify war?

Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements (3)  Coulter (1993): women in colonised countries had more space to be politically active than women in colonising countries because of the nationalist political context and their different experiences of family and religion.  Tension between women representing modernisation and nationalist discourse about cultural ‘authenticity’.  Women who are both nationalist and feminist often have to work both in and against their nationalist movement.

Northern Ireland: women’s nationalist activism

Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements (4) Contemporary nationalist movements  Feminists and nationalists are often opposed and nationalism is not assumed to be a progressive force for change (Moghadam 1994b).  Nationalist movements today often more ethno-national, more exclusionary, less progressive than past anti- colonial nationalist movements. Less likely to accommodate feminist perspectives and aims??  BUT women around the world continue to form their own conceptions of feminist-nationalism, despite problematic relationship.

Northern Ireland: women & armed republicanism

Women’s Participation in Nationalist Movements (5) After the struggle  Women’s participation in nationalist movements (even as soldiers) has never guaranteed greater rights and freedoms in a new political/ territorial structure.  E.g.: formation of independent Ireland (e.g Constitution).  ‘Women might have had a place in the revolution, but for Ireland’s new rulers, aping their imperial masters in this as in so many things, they certainly had no place in government’ (Coulter 1993).

Summary  Mainstream works on nationalism tend to be largely gender-blind, to the detriment of theorisation.  Feminist scholars argue there is a mutually constitutive relationship between gender and nationalism.  Women are constructed in nationalist discourse and participate in ethnic and national processes in a variety of ways. Nationalist representations of women (and men) have political significance.

Summary (2)  Women participated in anti-colonial nationalist movements and women’s rights were an integral but contested part of these.  Women continue to participate in nationalist movements but the relationship between a feminist agenda and a nationalist one is even more complex and contested now.  Women’s participation in nationalist movements (in various ways) has never guaranteed them greater rights and freedoms after the struggle is over; they are frequently disappointed.