Abstract
Feminist analyses of nationalism have produced a substantial body of knowledge on the previously overlooked ways in which nationalist projects rely on and reproduce patriarchy. Feminist interrogations of nationalism have elucidated the gender patterns evident across nationalist movements and chronicled the numerous ways in which women are oppressed by nationalism and nationalist movements. Nationalist movements tend to rely on traditional gender tropes to construct and define the nation (McClintock 1993; Yuval-Davis 1997). Women’s bodies are quite often the battleground over which armed conflicts in the name of the nation are fought. It is for the nation that women’s rights are often curtailed, their citizenship gendered and their membership defined in the most restrictive of ways. The nation typically sees women as mothers or, in effect, reproducers of the national community in both a biological and cultural sense (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). As such, their reproductive rights are often curtailed and their sexual freedoms diminished (Bracewell, 1996; McClintock 1993). Nationalism can affect women’s right to work outside the home, as the symbolism of mother of the nation translates into the proscription of work when women married (as in the case of Ireland until 1973). Ethno-national conflicts produce levels of gender-based violence that regularly targets women in the most horrific of ways, most notably in the form of rape as a widely used weapon of war (Leatherman, 2011; UN Report on Conflict-Related Violence 2012).
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Notes
I will return to this argument in a subsequent section dedicated to women’s victimisation as ‘women as reproducers’ of the nation. See also, Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1996); Alexandra Stiglmayer, (ed.), Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1994); Carolyn Nordstrom, Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival (Berkeley: University of California, 1995); Jill Benderly, ‘Rape, feminism, and nationalism in the war in Yugoslav successor states’ in Lois West, ed., Feminist Nationalism (London and New Tork: Routledge, 1997); Cynthia Enloe, ‘When soldiers rape’ in Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California, 2000).
See also: Miranda Alison, ‘Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity’, Review of International Studies (2007), 33: 75–90; Pankhurst D, ‘Sexual violence in war’ in L. Shepherd (ed.) Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations. (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 148–160. Wilson Njita, ‘Sexual violence against women and girls during situation of armed conflict’, Canadian Women’s Studies 19 (2010) (4); Ronit Lentin, Gender and Catastrophe. (London & New York: Zed Books, 1997). Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin eds, The Women and War Reader (New York: New York University, 1998); Tamar Mayer, ed., Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). It is important to note that chapters in the listed edited collection are overwhelmingly dedicated to examining the ways in which women are victimised by conflict through sexual violence.
For further examples of woman/mother as signifier of nationalism, see Julie Mostov, ‘Sexing the nation/de-sexing the body’ in Tamar Mayer, ed., Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); Vesna Nikolić-Risanović, ‘War, nationalism, and mothers in the former Yugoslavia’ in Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, eds, The Women and War Reader (New York: New York University, 1998); Anne McClintock, ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review 44, (Summer 1993); Zengie A. Mangaliso, ‘Gender and nation-building in South Africa’ in Lois West, ed., Feminist Nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1997); Deborah Gaistskell and Elaine Underhalter, ‘Mothers of the nation: A comparative analysis of nation, race and motherhood in Afrikaner nationalism and the African National Congress’ in Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias, eds, Woman-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989). For examples of woman/mother as social reproducer of the nation, see Julie Mostov, ‘Sexing the nation/de-sexing the body’ in Tamar Mayer, ed. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaxhes and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, 2nd Edn (Berkeley: University of California, 2000); Sarah A. Radcliffe, ‘Gendered nations: nostalgia, development and territory in Ecuador’, Gender, Place and Culture 3, no. 1 (1996): 5–21. For examples of woman/mother as biological reproducer of the nation, see Danielle Juteau, ‘From nation-church to nation-state: evolving sex-gender relations in Quebec society’ in Norma Alarcon and Minoo Moallem, eds, Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State (Durham, NC: Duke, 1999); Julie Mostov, ‘Sexing the nation/de-sexing the body’ in Tamar Mayer, ed. Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation (London and New York: Routledge, 2000); Lorraine Dowler, “‘And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady” Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland’, Gender, Place and Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): pp. 159–176.
See, for example, Zillah Eisenstein, who argues that ‘Nationalism speaks men, and applauds the fraternal order while imagining women to call forth notions of motherly love’, in ‘Writing bodies on the nation for the globe’ in Sita Ranchod-Nilsson and Mary Ann Tétreault, eds, Women, States and Nationalism: At Home in the Nation? (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), p. 41.
Simona Sharoni reiterates these points quite well in her discussion on women in conflict in both the North of Ireland and Israel-Palestine. Simona Sharoni, ‘Women in Israel-Palestine and the North of Ireland’ in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, Caroline Mosher and Fiona Clark eds, (London and New York: Zed Books, 2001), p. 86. See, for example, Susan Leisure, ‘Exchanging participation for promises’ in Jill Bystydzienski and Joti Sekhom, eds, Democratization and Women’s Grassroots Movements (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1999); Linda L. Reif, ‘Women in Latin American guerrilla movements: a comparative perspective’, Comparative Politics, 18, no. 2 (January, 1986); Mary Ann Tetreault, ed., Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia and the New World (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, 1994) or Miranda Alison, Women and Political Violence: Female Combatants in Ethno-National Conflicts (New York & London: Routledge, 2009).
The term ‘not now, later’ is used by Cynthia Enloe in Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California, 2000), p. 62.
See Margaret Ward, (1996–7:17) as cited in Tricia Cusack, ‘Janus and Gender: women and the nation’s backward look’, Nations and Nationalism 6 no. 4 (2000), p. 546. Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage Publications, 1997); Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias, eds, Woman-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989); Susan Jacobs, ‘Zimbabwe: state, class, and gendered models of land resettlement’ in Jane Papart and Kathleen Staudt, eds, Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989); Valentine Moghadam, ed., Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies (London: Zed Books, 1994); Mary Ann Tetreault, ‘Women and revolution’ in V. Spike Peterson, ed., Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), p. 111; Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism (London: Methuen, 1989).
Throughout Irish history there have been a number of organisations who have participated in the armed struggle, many of which claim the IRA brand, including the Provisional IRA or ‘Provos’ associated with Sinn Féin, and Official IRA. See Ed Moloney, The Secret History of the IRA (Toronto: Penguin, 2000); Hanley and Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party (Dublin: Penguin, 2009); McIntyre, 1998; Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Pan Macmillan, 2003).
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© 2013 Theresa O’Keefe
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O’Keefe, T. (2013). Introduction: Rethinking Women and Nationalism. In: Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314741_1
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