Reviews: 4 books on women and war

<*> In the past few years, "women and violence" seems to have become the most fashionable issue in the peace and human rights movement. I suppose that this is a good thing; at any rate, it's certainly better than the days when the issue was virtually ignored, though at the moment we are perhaps overly provided with publications saying mostly the same things, and a certain tendency to speak in truisms.

Women and Violence, Amnesty International's Human Rights Are Women's Rights, and Women In War Zones, published by Women Living Under Muslim Law, are all solid and useful collections in their own way. None of them break new ground, and probably only someone with a very specialised interest in the field would want or need to read all three of them.

Women and Violence is made up of a series of essays from around the world, detailing many forms of gender-specific violence--domestic violence, female genital mutilation, rape in war--and both legislative and grass-roots anti-violence efforts. It is very systematic in covering most of the important aspects of the issue, though only a few of the essays strive for a larger analysis. There is also a certain tendency to publish essays by women who are internationally known or connected to large bodies like UNIFEM, which is not always the best choice--for instance, Slavenka Drakulic, though no doubt a fine writer, is hardly the most appropriate person to contribute the book's one essay on rape in Bosnia. As a general overview, however, it is quite useful.

Human Rights Are Women's Rights is actually, and sadly, somewhat less challenging than Amnesty International's previous reports on women's rights; one has a sense that they can't think of anything new to say, so have just repeated some points from earlier publications. Amnesty's strength, as usual, is the detailed and usually very accurate case studies, particularly in the "Women and War" section (although their outline of the aftermath of the Gulf War does not include the outbreak of violence against foreign domestic workers, most of them women). The book also includes several pages on the persecution of lesbians, under "Women at Risk" -- it's good to see this acknowledged.

Women in War Zones, at 30 pages long, is really more of a booklet than a book. It's an interesting selection of personal testimonies from women in different conflict situations--Kashmir, Korea (the testimony of former "comfort women"), Somalia, Ossetia and former-Yugoslavia--delivered at the Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights at the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993.

Simona Sharoni's Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, unlike the other three books reviewed here, is interested more in analysis than in case studies, and for that reason is probably more useful to activists who want to apply the book's ideas to their own work. Sharoni, a long-time Jewish Israeli peace activist, examines the way in which assumptions about "appropriate" gender behaviour have conditioned the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and makes interesting suggestions about the operation of beliefs about gender in the construction of militarism; looks at concrete ways in which the war has changed the lives and roles of both Palestinian and Israeli women (and also the ways in which roles have remained stable underneath apparent changes); and studies Palestinian women's resistance and their role in the Intifada, and the emergence of the Israeli women's peace movement and the relationship of these activists to Palestinian women.

Not surprisingly, it is in her analysis of the Israeli women's peace movement, which she knows as a participant, that Sharoni is at her most interesting. She suggests that collaborative projects have proven more effective than "dialogue groups" at creating genuine alliances with Palestinian women "precisely because personal relationships are viewed as a possible, but not necessary, outcome of a political alliance" and because, unlike dialogue groups, "this type of relationship does not focus primarily on similarities and on the shared experiences of women, but rather recognises from the outset the differences ... collaborative projects require that Israeli-Jewish women not only acknowledge but also act upon the power and privilege they enjoy".

She also has a clear analysis of the relative failure of the Oslo peace talks, and the way in which the peace movement allowed themselves to be sidetracked. "The common view is that it is the task of grassroots activists to immediately respond to events unfolding in the official political arena. This narrow understanding of resistance has narrowed the parameters of possible responses by the women's peace movement in Israel."

Sharoni questions the widespread belief that the Intifada led to any lasting change in the position of women in Palestinian society, and indeed blames the Oslo talks, in part, for reversing the gains which women had made: "the exclusive focus on ... international diplomacy marginalised grassroots work for social and political change in general and women's efforts in particular." However, and more hopefully, she suggests that both Palestinian and Israeli women have--in some cases--learned enough from this experience to begin constructing new, less reactive approaches to peace which will depend, among other things, on "our ability and courage to call into question the gendered language and assumptions that inform dominant interpretations and practices of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict".

Sharoni's ideas are well worth thinking about for female or male activists, engaged in work for peace in any number of situations. Her book provides a good example of how the issue of gender and violence can be taken beyond individual cases and situational remedies, and made part of the framework of a larger process of transforming our societies.