NEWSLETTER No 5

FEMINISM AND THE STATUS OF WOMEN IN WAR AND PEACE

Introduction – Three Fragments

The time has come when a comment in broad terms on the status of women is long overdue. The hard or neo-fascist right is flourishing everywhere, more dangerous when masked or concealed; and with it comes male chauvinism, misogyny and violence. Feminist protest is recognised but evidently has little impact; there is a lack of balance in this state of affairs.

In the notes that follow, I shall focus on the western political tradition. I am aware of issues in other societies, over the burka, over women being denied the right to drive and much else besides, and some reference to these matters is unavoidable. But to comment further requires in-depth knowledge of other cultures that I do not have. Yet even within this restricted focus, the following comments are too superficial, and fall far short of the discussion and analysis long overdue.

1 Feminism

The issues to which Feminism responds have undoubtedly been much in the public eye in recent years. Feminism now constitutes a modern movement, somewhat inchoate perhaps but extensive. Its core belief is that women are treated unjustly by society, whose fundamentally patriarchal character denies them major rights. Its main concerns first became widely visible with the suffragettes’ demand for the right to vote, as universal suffrage slowly emerged.

That its emergence is relatively recent perhaps is not surprising. Religion has never allowed equality between the two sexes; in this subjugation, religion repeated another denial of freedom, that of speech, through the blasphemy and similar laws.

The historical background can be taken further. Though in England we have seen Queens on the throne as sovereign rulers, in many countries such as France, the monarch, the ruler, was male and the Queen merely wife or consort.

Some further points of a more general historical character relating to feminism may be recalled:

i) In the West, the place of woman in marriage is subordinate to the male. Rape within marriage was not legally recognised until recently. (In the UK, in 1991 a court supported the woman’s case and this decision was followed by legislation in 2003.) Traditionally, and still today, police did not often respond to allegations of rape and the household was considered outside their jurisdiction; public order was their brief.

Ii) There has been a mountain of cases in recent years concerning male excess with regard to women’s status and also the rights of the young generally.

iii) A glass ceiling at work with respect to pay and promotion still exists despite the recognition the matter has been accorded.

iv) Abortion rights are still controversial. Divorce is not everywhere allowed. Contraceptive methods are often disallowed.

vii) Ownership of property has historically been denied to women.

viii) Right to education especially university education denied to women before the 20th century.

Over the course of history, in Western Christian civilisation there have been few major texts supporting the woman’s role. Much literature is written by men and is constrained by that point of view. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman is an exception.

In the. 19th century and especially the 20th century there have been more: Brecht’s Mother Courage, de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Germaine Greer’s work most recently, to mention only three texts. Then there are the writings related to the movements, e.g. Spare Rib and no doubt much that I am unfamiliar with. Yet I find it hard to discover in empirical substance just how far the suppression of female status has been pressed or enforced over history and in other cultures. The suffragette movement grew as universal male suffrage spread and perhaps as religion declined in importance. My reading of these texts is superficial and I would alternatively cite Jane Austen, whose 250th anniversary is currently being celebrated, as a leading female commentator on male conduct in western society. She wrote just subsequent to Mary Wollstonecraft but from a conventional point of view within the Christian tradition. I am not well informed as to the family or creative background to her work, but her social observation is outstanding.

Turning to the present day, many current events have brought into public view questions about the status of women. A substantial number of press and other media reports concern male chauvinism and misogyny.

While many of these reports emanate from the USA, it is worth remembering that in the early days Americans made an attempt to counter European traditions and, following Independence, sought to give equal status to their women. I believe the USA has historically assigned greater equality of rights to women. Yet in recent years, macho and machismo were two words that became smart in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Both Spanish in origin they came into fashion first in relation to Hollywood’s more gory westerns and crime thrillers and later in the UK, in the rock music world that thundered menace. Modern feminism has made them less fashionable words; but a better ethic has still to be developed.

My purpose here is to look at these matters on a wider front.

2 In War and Peace

So, I note today the Israel/Gaza conflict, Iranian repression of women and defence of the burka, the refugee crisis in Sudan and the abduction of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria; these events all force our attention in another direction, that which concerns the status of non-combatants in war, especially women and children.

There is a substantial body of rules in relation to war. They are mainly modern and collectively known as International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and are centred on the Geneva Convention. These rules and conventions have considerable ethical substance but little authority as regards enforcement.

The Geneva Convention is important even though it carries no weight as law. It was inspired by the Swiss Henry Dunant following his publication of his account of the horrors of the conflict at Solferino. A dozen European and adjacent states signed the convention in 1864 and it resulted in the establishment of the Red Cross. The Convention was supplemented by a number of further Agreements and Protocols including three following World War II. To give the Convention context, may I remind you that the American Civil War took place between 1861 and 1865; and that Florence Nightingale was active in the Crimean War of 1854.

The Geneva Convention’s main provisions include the following points. In war women and children are meant to be spared and it is the military resources that should be targeted. In practical terms this means focussing only on the fighting men, munitions works, and other military facilities.

The Geneva Convention specified further rules for the conduct of war. It specified rules for the protection of combatants in situations when injured or when held as prisoners of war. It further protected hospital provision and non-combatant civilians. Besides women and children, special services such as medical transport and personnel are protected. It rejected combat conducted against the provision of food or water supplies.

Current Analysis

In the comments that follow, focusing on the Western tradition I shall create two different models relating to the status of women and children, each based on a single principle.

MODEL I

In a conflict such as war, women and children are not combatants and therefore should be spared the dangers or menace to which combatants are subject. This principle was enunciated in the Geneva Convention and enhanced in the subsequent Protocols. Further, combat itself should be subject to rules. These conventions have a long history going back to the rules of medieval chivalry, but appear to be ideal rather than realistic.

MODEL II

In a conflict such as a campaign against terrorists, women and children are considered inescapably complicit or compromised and therefore need not be spared. Terrorists target civilian facilities such as markets and shopping centres.

The reality however is that the boundary between the two models disintegrates and there are many war-like situations when women and children are not spared. This is I think fact, but it is scarcely recognised. Generally, the latter situation arises when military targets are terrorists or guerrillas or similar and women and children appear complicit.

Thus, even in the West, while Model I may be the ideal, Model II is too often the reality for women in conflict zones. It is unrealistic to say there is a clear distinction between war and terrorism, just as the military use of non-combatant facilities like schools and hospitals may be more widely practised than is commonly acknowledged. Yet to target a hospital on the grounds that it is being used by terrorist looks specious. There is also a consideration as to proportion to note: the present slaughter of over 50,000 in Gaza in the pursuit of much fewer terrorists is excessive’ and it repudiates even the Old Testament principle, ‘life for life, eye for eye and tooth for tooth’.

To summarise, we have two different accounts of the status of women and children and two different views of the activities of combatants. The danger is that Model I is used to whitewash the western democratic states and to blacken all other states that seek to challenge the West. This differentiation has major implications when the historically subordinated status of women is challenged.

For, if the complicity of the female arises from peacetime subordination, the interpretation contained in Model II, that women are complicit, cannot be justified. If there is an element of force or coercion in a marriage arrangement, then the woman cannot be held responsible for, or complicit in, the man’s actions. This consideration cannot be over-emphasised. The woman and child must be protected. Yet war in the West does not spare them. It is long overdue that we take the Geneva Convention in all its ramifications with full seriousness and look with scepticism on excuses for slaughter that may follow from Model II. Think of chemical and nuclear weapons as paths of or to excess violence. Reject, as does the Geneva Convention, use of deprivation of essentials like food and water, and the forced movement of populations and seizure of land. Be sceptical when impregnable military weapons are used to attack defenceless civilians. Question the use of chemical or biological weapons.

There are implied in the above, issues of choice and coercion that pose intractable problems. There is a place for coercion but it is not here. It is a very complex and difficult matter. However much the male may argue that paternity matters, it cannot justify rape in marriage. The earlier English law made a travesty of a principle, by misapplying it.

In relation to coercion a key concept is Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Yet Kant wrote in the 18th century in the years that preceded German reunification under Bismarck and the two world wars of the 20th century. His work must be handled with care; yet the Imperative, a grammarian’s term, is also important as an element of ethics as R M Hare indicated in the in the second half of the 20th century. There are imperatives in marital arrangements if not always recognised. Marriages imposed by parents point to misplaced coercion albeit of a different character from rape. But there are also imperatives of matrimony asserted in the Book of Common Prayer of the utmost importance. The imperative here is expressed in other grammatical forms but creates a duty or obligation of care.

Choice is a hallowed concept in the modern world – freedom of choice. Yet like the imperative it can only too often go astray. Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism developed choice at the same time as de Beauvoir was writing. It is an important text. But choice, like coercion, can only too often go astray. Wrongly exercised choice by a woman will lead to disaster.

There is a clear asymmetry in the relation between man and woman based on biological differences. It must be respected in culture at the same time that the equality of the sexes is recognised: the asymmetry results in different sets of choices and different imperatives for male and female. This is a challenge that has still to be well resolved. But if women and children are in a situation of forced subjugation then they cannot be regarded as wholly complicit in male force in a situation like war or other conflict. This consideration demands more recognition.

My view is that too much hangs on the distinction between war and terrorism in these two models. The Geneva Convention establishes an admirable set of principles but the reality of history may render it a cover story with more sinister undertones as in Model II. Development of the rules of war is urgently needed when buildings and with them lives may be destroyed by bombs or missiles and the victims have no hope of making an effective response.

The purpose of this note is to show how modern Feminism has brought to our attention some the failures of western society and its precursors. In the current era of growing right-wing extremism if not fascism, with its accompanying traits of misogyny and male chauvinism, it is important that these failures should be brought out into the open. Abuse of women still extends, according to recent reports, in the streets, in the World Wide Web, in the armed forces and in prison, as well as in the office. Change will not be easy. There is everything to be done. How little history has contributed.

3 Societal Aspects

Given the extent of the decline of religion in the present-day world, it is a mistake to denigrate it in excess. Added to this, the historical facts concerning the attacks on religious buildings, sites and monuments by various radical, revolutionary or socialist forces create an undesirable precedent.

I do not want to follow along this path. I believe the New Testament has a limited value as an ethical text, and even the Old Testament with some interesting history and fine passages is not worthless. But in the modern world these ethical texts are insufficient. Indeed, from a different vantage point, I follow Ruskin, who considered that the greatest architecture of the West is to be found in Early French Gothic. It is an architecture that implies criticism of the then political order. It has yet to be equalled, though, if I follow his line of argument, this might well come to pass at some date in the future.

I would suggest in the context of my earlier comments that, as religion declines, we might usefully put forward a view of the sanctity of the body. I make this point partly in response to questions about the foundations of ethics. The body is sacred, just as is all our natural world. The fact of evolution in all its wonder far outweighs any myths of the supernatural and should not be reduced to a political doctrine of the ‘survival of the fittest’. A prerequisite of the state is an ethical dimension; force alone does not make a state. Yet religion as in Christianity or Islam offers only a minimum of moral guidance; society needs something better and we must give attention to that prerequisite.

There are many further aspects to consider beyond anything I can say here. I do not suggest worship of evolution. And I certainly do not suggest tearing down churches or other man-made masterpieces. It is more a matter of respect for nature at a time of frequent global outrages such as destruction of forests, the failure to tackle pollution, or the construction of oversized or otherwise damaging dams, mines and other objects of commerce.

Beyond the natural world created by evolution, the edifice of social and political institutions that accompanies physical or material advance must also be recognised. The currently fashionable desecration of language and procedure needs to be reversed. Business requires an ethical foundation beyond that which ought to be contained in contract, yet many in commerce see its practice reduced to money and deals of a degrading character. Further, language is man-made and its variations are abundant. Yet good use of language is less often found and respect for procedure other than a pantomime of obsolete rites even rarer. Western civilisation has developed over centuries social and political structures that constitute the society we live in. Understanding of this fact we spend years developing in our children through schooling and further training beyond school and it must not be ignored or undervalued. Indeed, the Geneva Convention itself must be extended and built upon.

If we are to recreate the place of women in society, it is here we must start.

Peter Collier

June 2025

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