Human Security, Armed Conflict and Religion: The Role of Gender Professor Barbara Einhorn Gender...

Human Security, Armed Conflict and Religion: The Role of Gender

Professor Barbara EinhornGender Institute

LSE31 October 2012

Barbara Einhorn 2012

Lecture Sections

• Human Security and Gender• Gender in National Identity• Gender and Armed Conflict• The Role of Religion• Conclusions

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Human Security

• New theories of ‘human security’

– economic and social ‘wellbeing’

– safe and secure living environments

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Human Security

• ‘The ultimate weapon is no weapon’ (Beebe and Kaldor, 2010)

– violence prevention – focus on civilians and human rights – political and development processes

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Human Security and Gender

• Need for gender lens

– ‘people’ don’t always have common interests

– violence as gendered

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The Role of Gender

• Gender as a key variable

– analytical and empirical category necessary for understanding conflict

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Gender and Feminism

• Gender without feminist lens insufficient

– Gender not about men and women, or even just masculinity and femininity

– Issue of politics and power

– Structurally unequal power relations

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Is a Gender Lens Helpful?

• Gender as part of problem– Essentialist dichotomous role definitions

• Gender as part of solution– Understanding how gender integral to politics – First step to overcoming social divisions which

lead to exclusions and ultimately conflict

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Gender in National Identity

• Gender and Militarism as twin stabilising factors in national identity

– Traditional gendered stereotypes of (heterosexual) masculinity and femininity

– Militarism in national identity

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Royal Wedding 2011

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Luxembourg Crown Prince Weds Belgian Countess

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Changing Nature of Armed Conflict

• Inter-state to intra-state conflict with non-state actors

• Distinction frontline/civilian space blurred• Differentation between combatant/civilian as

gendered male/female respectively confused• Humanitarian, ‘secure’ space lost

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Gender and Conflict

• Conflict derives from a process of Othering

– Gendered/raced and classed national/religious identities essential to conflict

– Liberal multiculturalism sees its Other as ‘essentialist and thereby false’ (Zizek, 2008/9: 125)

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Afghan Women in Burkas

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Rationalising/Legitimating Conflict

• Men as participants and perpetrators

• Women as victims, not political agents

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Kosovan Refugees

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2003 RAWA Demonstration in Islamabad

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Gender and Armed Conflict

• The gendered ‘Other’ – Hyper-masculinised, brutal ‘terrorists’ – Helpless, oppressed female victims of violence

• ‘Our’ men and women– ‘Our (brave) boys’ as defenders of the nation– ‘Our’ women as supporting wives

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Taliban Fighters

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Heroic Firefighters at Ground Zero

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Militarised Gender

• Militarised women as anti-essentialist fig leaf• Non-conformist men

• Conformist vs transgressive femininity– Jessica Lynch vs. Lynndie England

• ‘Failed’masculinity – Serbian prisoners; male victims of torture in Abu

Ghraib, prison run by woman generalBarbara Einhorn 2012

Private Jessica Lynch

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Lynndie England in Abu Ghraib Prison

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The Role of Religion

• Force for peace or cause of conflict?

• Are religions inherently patriarchal?

• Fundamentalism/essentialism?

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Religion and Conflict

• Religion: cause of conflict? – Geo-political or economic causes– Colonial heritage

• Religion instrumentalised – Religion projected onto actual causes– Forces of (secular, Western) modernity ‘saving’ primitive

backward (religious, read: Islamic) cultures

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Religion in Crisis

• The crisis of organised religions – Not theology – Gender and sexuality

• The headscarf debate – Gender as political accelerator– What is the debate really about?

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Turkish Students in Istanbul 2007

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Conclusions

• Transcending narrow nationalisms– Communication with/compassion towards the ‘Other’– ‘Other’ within diverse societies

• ‘Human’ security paradox– Needs to be gender-disaggregated– Essentialist gender binaries need to be overcome

• Gender equitable societies– Prerequisite for peaceful and socially just world

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